Is it really valuable blogging if you ALWAYS disable your comments?

I have been here for 14 months now, and I have never written a rant directed at anyone else on this network....until now.  I know that this topic has bounced around with a few members here in recent weeks, but I came across one member recently who prefers to use ActiveRain as a platform to speak AT us, not with us.  It looks like it didn't start out that way on this person's blog, but I am guessing that the strident tone in his/her political posts attracted some negative attention, so he/she now doesn't want to hear from us at all.  Instead, this member writes wordy tomes in an effort to force a specific political opinion on us. 

I have always had a laissez-faire attitude about what is allowable with regard to the subject matter on our AR posts, barring those things that are blatantly offensive.  To that end, I really don't mind if someone wants to write about politics, although I do think you risk alienating roughly half of your audience when you do this.  What irks me is that this person doesn't have the guts to allow anyone else to disagree, because the comments are ALWAYS disabled, or at least for the past 20-30 posts that I saw.  Some of them may not be disabled, but they didn't get any comments.  Maybe they are just plain boring?

The fact that you have never been featured on ActiveRain doesn't surprise me in the least, since you don't really bring anything of value to the community, in my humble opinion.  Are politics valuable?  Sure, but I think discussion and debate are also sometimes important.  Maybe it's not fear, but instead a desire to feel like you are right? 

"Well, no one called or emailed me to disagree, so I must have scored a big victory with my scathing political post yet again."

If I wanted to read an article about politics and not be able to state my opinion, I can just pick up the newspaper.  Better yet, I can just watch the news on TV.  I come to ActiveRain and other communities online to interact with others.

After reading some of the reasons that people have for disabling comments, I can understand that there may be occasions when this would prove useful, although I have never used this feature myself. 

The most ironic thing to me is that your message/agenda doesn't have much reach, since you have a very small handful of subscribers.  Gee, I wonder why?  Actually, I don't wonder why, because I have read your stuff, and it strikes me as divisive and bitter.

Do I have strong political opinions?  Absolutely.  Will I share them with you?  Probably not, because you don't want to hear from me, or from anyone else for that matter.  I also won't write about them on my posts here, because I sincerely don't like arguing with my friends, or being pre-judged based on my vote. 

I am very open about my Christian faith, but I defy you to find a post or a comment that I have written where I have attempted to shove my beliefs on someone else.  It is a part of who I am, so it comes out naturally in my writing sometimes, but it is not an agenda on my part. 

There was an agent I was seriously considering recruiting from another area awhile back, until I saw some very opinionated posts and decided that it showed a lack of good judgment on his part.  Now that I think about it, his posts reminded me a whole lot of yours.  Believe me, I have enough liability to contend with as a broker with 16 agents - no reason to recruit a potential loose cannon, right?

I doubt that you will ever even read this post, since I haven't ever seen you around commenting, but it made me feel incrementally better to write it.  However, if you do happen to see it, you are welcome to comment below.  The comments are "enabled" here, and they always will be.