Those Darn Blog Readers

Jim Lindren references an Ann Althouse post on blogging, adding,

I share Ann's affection for bloggers who are trying to observe and understand what they are writing about, rather than always writing op-eds with a thesis they are trying to prove (which is one reason that I enjoy reading her blog). Unfortunately, I find that many blog readers prefer strongly thesis-driven posts, which they can either echo or attack point by point.¹

Spare me.

If you're truly trying to think through the issues, you should be grateful to have commenters who, whether they're right or wrong, try to take your arguments apart. If your arguments don't hold up, you can rethink them for another day. If they do, congratulations. But don't go whining to me that blog readers challenge your ideas, particularly your bad ones. At least if you're pretending that blogging is an exercise in thinking.

This line of thought brings to mind the power imbalance in law school, and how some law professors relished a power imbalance that forced students to conform to their ideas (no matter how bad) in order to get a good grade. Being a law school professor is a great job for a glass jawed "intellectual". But blogging takes place in the real world, where even law professors occasionally have to take their knocks.
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1. (Law professors tell their students, "I'm teaching you to think like a lawyer." Most practicing lawyers are familiar with motion practice in which one lawyer submits a motion and brief to a court, strongly arguing a point of law, and opposing counsel tries to take it apart, point by point. Appeals work in a similar manner. And if you've ever had a "hot" panel when you've argued an appeal, the judges on the panel can make bloggers who try to "Fisk" your arguments look like pikers.)

Why Aren't There More Conservative Law Professors?

You would have to have a very poor grasp of logic to come up with a nutty idea like this:

Obama clinches; Dow Jones Average drops 72 points in 9 minutes. ... This is not a particularly large drop (it's less than 1%), but the probable trigger was much clearer this time than for market responses to other primary wins and losses.

But apparently law professors aren't required to understand the difference between correlation and causation.

Grasping A Bad Analogy

Ruth Marcus (sort of ) defends John Yoo, contending that his arguments in favor of torture and expansive executive power were amateurish and wrong, but that it would somehow be 'dangerous' if he were subjected to any professional consequence.

Yet the message sent to students by dumping Yoo would be even worse: that some opinions are too dangerous to express. Lawyers are used to staking a foothold on slippery slopes, but this one, with academic freedom at issue, is too treacherous to risk.

I would find that argument more compelling had Yoo made public pronouncements on torture. The controversy is over a confidential memo, something that the Bush Administration and probably Yoo himself would have preferred to have never entered the public realm. But on to the analogy:

The most useful analogy I've read on this subject comes from Princeton professor Deborah Pearlstein, who asked what Berkeley would do if a molecular biology professor "had written a medical opinion while in government employ disclaiming the truth of evolution," and continued to dispute the theory of evolution once he resumed teaching.

That's suggesting that Yoo's sole offense is bad scholarship. And you know what? I don't think that professors should be shielded from scrutiny, or from possible loss of position, if they engage in bad scholarship. Fundamentally, what good is a professor who is unable to grasp the subject matter of his supposed area of expertise? The better argument, attempted on the Volokh Conspiracy, is premised upon a defense of the scholarship.