Some of the loudest voices are faceless.

During many of the recent town halls on health care reform, we’ve seen a lot of protesting on television. Many people, proclaiming themselves ordinary citizens, have hurled verbal arrows at public officials. It is all to the good when Free Speech is exercised. But those who use Free Speech as an excuse to shout others down, it’s no longer a Constitutional exercise, but a descent into mob rule. Even worse is when people with vested interests in maintaining the status quo pose as ordinary citizens when they are in fact political operatives, as has been the case in many of these town meetings.

The modern version of this behavior is to be seen on the Internet. Anonymous posters at Cleveland,com and other sites, posting the most vile racist, anti-Semitic (or anti-Arabic), homophobic remarks. On my own site, I’ve received an increasing number of anonymous and semi-anonymous responses to my posts, some of them racist and one just plain threatening. Therefore, I am instituting a new policy: responses to my blog will not be posted unless you either have a blogger ID with a profile, a link to a blog of your own, or an email address.

Whether one agrees with my views and observations or not, they are my own opinions. I state them openly, and I back them up with my name. And if you want to respond on my blog, you should have the guts to do the same.