Iain gets it - sort of

Iain Macwhirter's latest post has this to say:

The best way is to make inflammatory attacks, preferably on other bloggers. This is the easiest and quickest way to get noticed and to generate traffic for your blog - as my silly stunt this week has confirmed. And apologies again to Iain Dale and Alex Massie for abusing them gratuitously.

So we've all been victims of a stunt! OK, fair enough. Welcome to the blogosphere Iain.

But he hasn't quite got it yet though. Consider this:

There is a science to blogging which mitigates against its mission statement as a new and accessible democratic medium of comment and debate.

Mission statement? The Herald may have one but the blogosphere collectively doesn't. I don't think that most bloggers see the medium as "democratic". We say what we want to say as individuals. Whether we allow others to interact with us is up to the blogger, not to a democratic majority.

In fact I'd go further. Large numbers of bloggers wish to reduce the proportion of human interactions that are subject to politics altogether, no matter how "democratic" those politics may be. In other words many of us are far keener on liberty than on democracy.