Appreciation for Readers

Wow! What an interesting week it's been around here. I knew there were people coming by for a while now, but only rarely did I know what you all thought. Something changed this week; I'm not sure what. Maybe suddenly I hit a nerve. Or maybe it's just that the day before fingers started flying across keyboards, I had posted a story called "Let Us Argue" about McCain's speech and you, my readers, took the exhortation quite seriously.

What has impressed me most has been the high quality of readership and commenters on this site. Sadly, it is not so everywhere. On some other sites, people curse, name-call, and use inflammatory statements designed to cause someone to lash out. I don't know if those people are just rude in general or if the anonymity and lack of face to face contact causes people to forget that they are responding to a real human being and not merely to words on a screen. That's not been the case here, though. Have we disagreed? Oh, yes. With so many voices in the world, how could we not? But we've maintained civility. We've discussed our points of disagreement rather than vilifying each other. In the process, I think maybe we've even learned from each other or at least saw a situation through another's eyes. At least, I can speak for myself and say that even when I've not agreed with some of the comments, they've made me stop and think. That's a good thing, right?

In short, I think I have some of the classiest readership around. Thanks; you're the best.