Are bigots besmirching your blog, fouling up your forum?

Bigotry
1. stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own.
2. the actions, beliefs, prejudices, etc., of a bigot.

Synonyms:
1. narrow-mindedness, bias, discrimination.

Some bigotry can be traced to ignorance, but not all bigots are ignorant. There are educated bigots to be sure. These ones are usually mired in hatred of one kind or another. Hate for a person of a different religion, ethnic background, or sexual practice. No matter the cause or target of a bigot they are exasperating beyond description. Stonewall, is a fitting description. Like talking to a stone wall. The concept of intellectual honesty eludes them and so they deliberately misconstrue opponents arguments, engage in hyperbole, non sequiturs, and bombast. Apparently, a bigot feels if they are loud enough and forceful enough, their arguments will sway opinion. Unfortunately, this belief has some credibility.

Times of crisis seem to bring out the bigots in full force, because they are basically cowards and there is nothing like a crisis to promote fear, which is their stock in trade. Radio and TV shows featuring “talk” are a favorite haunt. Unfortunately, the host of conservative talk shows are raving bigots, and here I am thinking of the likes of Fox news personalities like Hannity, Beck, Goldberg, and O’Reilly. How did we come to the point when ignorance and stubbornness became valued, indeed marketable, personal traits. Professional bigots command salaries in the millions of dollars and preside over programming that is a virtual factory for turning out more of their kind. The danger to our democracy is that these Idiot Americans vote and are easily led.

The Assault on Reason

The Assault on Reason is a 2007 book written by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. In the book, Gore argues that there is a trend in U.S. politics towards ignoring facts and analysis when making policy decisions. He heavily criticizes the George W. Bush administration for its actions in furthering the “assault on reason”, and also the Congress, Judiciary, and press for being complicit in the process. Gore also suggests the average citizen must be proactive in “restoring democracy”. He expresses hopes that the medium of the Internet will supersede television and what he argues is its inherent bias, creating a “marketplace of ideas” that has not been present since the replacement of the printed word with mass media.

The book ranked number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover nonfiction during the first four weeks of its release, and was on the list top 35 for fifteen weeks.[1] Actor Will Patton narrates the audio version. – Wikipedia entry

You can read excerpts from this book here:
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1622015-3,00.html#ixzz0YMQD8QS6

Book Excerpt in Time Magazine: The Assault on Reason
By Al Gore Wednesday, May. 16, 2007

The Last Temptation of Al Gore

Long before our nation launched the invasion of Iraq, our longest-serving Senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor and said: “This chamber is, for the most part, silent-ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate.”

Why was the Senate silent?In describing the empty chamber the way he did, Byrd invited a specific version of the same general question millions of us have been asking: “Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?” The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.

It is too easy-and too partisan-to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America’s public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason-the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power-remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

[...]

So the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way-a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.

So what can we do about them if we wish to have civil productive public discourse? Lately my strategy has been to tell them I am going to ignore them. In the Amazon discussion forums, the designers of the software thoughtfully provided an “Ignore this customer” button. Once pressed, you no longer see any further posts by the bigot but you can guess from the reaction of the other participants how things are going. This strategy usually has the effect of enraging a bigot and they began calling you names, or otherwise making an ass of themselves, which when reported gets them removed from the forum (and likely any other forums so unlucky to have them). If that scenario doesn’t play out, they usually tire of talking to what is effectively a stonewall (ironic, no) and leave of their own accord. The tactic falls under the category of conversational intolerance. Think about it this way. If you are at cocktail party enjoying a conversation with a group of friends and a bigot saunters in and goes into their act, you can make a face and politely excuse yourself and leave the group. From a distance, keep your eye on what happens next. The bigot will eventually get marginalized and leave. Then you can go back and resume your fellowship with your friends, sans molestation.

In the case of a blog, most blog software makes it easy to remove an objectionable, abusive or bigoted participant. I don’t know about you, but my policy is not to issue any warning. It is like being able to build a stone wall for defense.

Conversational intolerance

[Sam] Harris suggests that he advocates a benign, corrective form of intolerance, distinguishing it from historic religious persecution. He promotes a conversational intolerance, in which personal convictions are scaled against evidence, and where intellectual honesty is demanded equally in religious views and non-religious views. He also believes there is a need to counter inhibitions that prevent the open critique of religious ideas, beliefs, and practices under the auspices of “tolerance.”[13]

Harris maintains that such conversation and investigation are essential to progress in every other field of knowledge. As one example, he suggests that few would require “respect” for radically differing views on physics or history; instead, he notes, societies expect and demand logical reasons and valid evidence for such claims, while those who fail to provide valid support are quickly marginalized on those topics. Thus, Harris suggests that the routine deference accorded to religious ideologies constitutes a double standard, which, following the events of September 11, 2001 attacks, has become too great a risk.[13]

In the 2007 PBS interview, Harris said, “The usefulness of religion, the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good is not an argument for the truth of any religious doctrine. It’s not an argument that it’s reasonable to believe that Jesus really was born of a virgin or that the Bible is the perfect word of the creator of the universe. You can only believe those things or you should be only be able to believe those things if you think there are good reasons to believe those things.” — Wiki Entry for Sam Harris

What are your suggestions for dealing with a bigot.