State of the Discussion

More seriously:
How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate?
tl;dr - anybody sensible, for any reasonable definition of "sensible", is probably OK with me.
I'm OK with people who voted for Trump, per se. Not sure about full on MAGA cultist, they yell a lot and don't seem to understand the concept of argument from fact. But, I'd be willing to give it a try.
Also re: MAGAs, I personally would draw a bright line around gender- or race- or ethnic-based theories of human value and superiority, they just trigger my inner impulse to invite them to f*** right off. It's a personal failing, I know - judge not, keep an open mind, right? - but one I am willing to own. We all have our limits.
I'm probably more comfortable with religious fundamentalists than most folks here due to personal history, but conversations with them tend to devolve into unanswerable arguments from authority. I.e., if "the Bible says" is not part of your epistemology, there isn't really a basis for conversation. It can be kind of a dead end.
All the other flavors of conservative you name here are pretty much fine with me. I just ask that people keep it out of ad hominem territory, probably in both directions.
Also, it's a fraught time, it's easy for things to go sideways. If there actually are conservatives of any of the varieties you name interested in joining the party, we might need to update / reinstate posting rules, just to make sure everybody stays in bounds.

For those who would like to see a greater diversity of views here (diversity! What a concept!), it might be useful to ask a couple of questions:
How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate? Full on MAGA cultists? (I'm guessing generally not, but I suppose that could be projection.) Religious fundamentalists, of whichever religion? (Not, I think, those demanding that society generally conform to their views, but perhaps those who think the world would be a better place if more people embraced some of their views. Again, that could be projection.) Straight up conservatives: "I don't much care for change, but can be convinced that it's necessary in specific instances"? Moderate conservatives: "There are things that need changing, but I'd generally prefer gradual changes, small changes that can be reality checked as we go, to sweeping changes"? Centerists-- those who see merits in both liberal and conservative views, and want to create compromises between them? New voices even further left than what we have now?
What ideas do you have for reality checking, both of new and existing commenters? Which mostly comes down to What is an authorative sourse? Does it have to be reliable across the board, or just in some areas? How much agreement do we need for something to be accepted as authorative?
Yes, I realize that I'm assuming a general preference for reality. Challenge that if you wish.

Hilzoy, Katherine (who did pro bono work for detainees) and Publius who probably wouldn't be put in a Iraq war hawk box
These three were definitely not hawks.
I think the general consensus was that Afghanistan was the necessary war. And people were quite positive about Libya, at least initially - because of Obama/Clinton.
I am talking about having conversations with people who would excuse every atrocity and defend the use of torture. It's quite similar to the positions taken regarding the Gaza war now.
Besides the actual torture apologists there were those who grandly conceded that torture is wrong, but strongly justfied blowing scores of people to bits in the name of freedom a la "you have to destroy the village to save it". I'm glad those people left.

If you are talking about the original crew, that was before my time, but we had Hilzoy, Katherine (who did pro bono work for detainees) and Publius who probably wouldn't be put in a Iraq war hawk box. I would try and take a look, but the whole Typepad architecture is very slow and creaky.
But I can pull up the first blog post in case you want a starting point.
https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2003/11/howdy_howdy_how.html
which has this
Second, this is not, strictly speaking, a Right-wing blog: it's pretty much a centrist one. While I carry my Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy card with pride, my fellow-bloggers do not. They aren't froth-at-the-mouth Bush-haters, mind you - which will probably disqualify them as being on the Left for a very small yet vocal group of people - but they are most assuredly not Republicans. I look forward to their insights and challenges to my own ideological leanings. I also have a somewhat larger list of people (of varying political beliefs) whom I'm going to hit up for special guest posts from time to time: but for at least the start, three bloggers is probably an optimal number to regularly post here.
Again, this is before I was here, but my understanding is that Moe Lane started the blog, and he was on the conservative side, and worked hard to get voices from the other side, which then moved the blog to the left of center slant it has today.
Talking about good old days, during Iraq/Afgahnistan/Libya, a common plaint (out on the internet) was gee, I wish we could go back to the old Cold War days.

LOL. I guess there's a reason the Hippocratic oath is supposed to start with 'first do no harm' (a wikipedia check says it ain't so
Although it is often said that "First do no harm" (Latin: Primum non nocere) is a part of the original Hippocratic oath, no such phrase from which "First" or "Primum" can be translated appears in the text of the original oath, although a similar intention is vowed by, "I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm". Another related phrase is found in Epidemics, Book I, of the Hippocratic school: "Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient". and it likely took shape from longstanding popular nonmedical expression.

I actually miss most of the commenters who have been banned during my roughly 2 decades here. Does anybody have the full list?
I don't have a list, but we may have different definitions of banning. In my definition, we've only 'banned' a few people while I have had the keys, which to me, means blocking them from commenting. There is a longer list of people who caused issues and were contacted off list and issues were discussed and at the end of that, the person said something to the effect that they didn't, for reasons said and unsaid, want to change and so stopped. Some might say that was 'banning', but there seems to be a difference, at least to me. of asking someone to leave and they choose not to come back and having to do something to stop that person from coming.

Supposedly seeing things on TV helped turn people against Vietnam.
True this. But, it was a different time.
There were three national broadcast TV networks, many if not most people got there news from those or newspapers. Or both. So there was a common set of news sources for most of the country, and those sources generally provided the same basic set of information, although with a somewhat different slant.
The cliche is that everybody trusted Walter Cronkite (CBS, through 1981) and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (NBC, through 1970). They didn't necessarily agree with everything they said, but they were seen as basically truthful, reliable voices.
And, the cliche continues, when Cronkite in particular began questioning the war, that was the tipping point.
Vietnam was also (I think) the first war where there was a lot of video coverage, and it was timely, i.e., you would see things fairly soon after they happened. The photomagazines like Like also provided a lot of coverage.
Net/net, most people got their news from the same places, and those places were trusted, and they were all fairly consistent in the information they presented.
I don't think any of that is true now.
Re: Gaza in particular - I read a couple of foreign news sources - the Guardian, the BBC, Reuters, El Pais, Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera has a *lot* of coverage of Gaza, but I don't think very many people read it. It's based in Qatar, no small number of USians would probably not read it for that reason alone.
On the US side, I read the AP, which has a fairly "just the facts" stance (I think?), but they don't have the same level of coverage of Gaza as others do.
And I think everybody has basically forgotten about the Ukraine at this point.
I read Krugman on substack, but that's about it. I signed up for a bluesky account but basically never read it.
Don't do TikTok or similar.
News and information is a remarkably fragmented and siloed universe these days.
I wish there still was something with the ubiquity and trust level of the old 6 o'clock news guys, I think it would help make some of horror shows going on now more widely visible.
But they're more or less gone.

I was wondering about Charles’s age range myself. I think I have given away my approx age once or twice.
Thanks, Gftnc. But the tone thing sort of makes my eyes roll a bit. People should get a Twitter account, ignore the crap ( I have no idea what “the algorithm” wants me to see most of the time— I know about some people and they interact with others) and read Palestinians first hand. Some over there, some here. You will get tone, all right. Some Western lefties, some antizionist Israeli and American Jews. And plenty of pro Israel people respond, I am a cuddly little teddy bear in comparison to most of that crowd. I mean the substantive ones— there are of course plenty of people who only cuss out the side they are against, but you see plenty of bigotry on both sides with those folk, so even with them you get to see what sort of sewage is out there.
Supposedly seeing things on TV helped turn people against Vietnam. I think you see vastly more on Twitter. I almost never see anything on TikTok, which is supposed to be a site that helped turn young people against Israel in Gaza.
I probably need a break.
More on ranting. I visit LGM fairly often and that entire blog is one long almost continuous rant session, but they have their own culture there and while I think I get the unwritten rules and one or two of the inside jokes, they are a different type of ranter. I wouldn’t fit. It involves how and in what manner you are supposed to criticize the Democrats. The focus is on politics along with policy but mostly how it fits with politics. Nowadays they really hate the feckless Democratic leadership. I learn things from reading them.

Most everyone here at one time or another has either implicitly or explicitly revealed their age or birthdate. Odds are that anyone who hasn't is within the range.

“ often find Donald's comments more annoying than wj's.”
Interesting. You mostly seem to agree on the war crimes thing, which is most of what I post about when ranting. In fact, that is virtually all of my rants as best I can recall.
“ anyone who agrees, but thinks there are other, more achievable, priorities is at best an utter moral dullard.”
That’s about right. Not supporting genocide is pretty low bar stuff.. You know who we lack here? Palestinian- American posters.
The pie in the sky material is in domestic policy and just keeping Trump from destroying what we have is sort of the best we can hope for.
I like Mamdani for example, but if he wins will be amazed if he can get a fraction of what he wants for nyc.

What CaseyL said. To me, it's just not worth the bother anymore.
But let's also remember that the good old days were those of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
I'm perfectly happy to haggle with wj on occasion, though :)

Donald: we are a pretty narrow group ideologically most of the time. Wj is the token conservative and he is more centrist really.
I'd go with moderate conservative on most issues. I think that the "centerist" perception is mostly because the label "conservative" has been (successfully, to the point that liberals believe it) hijacked by the radical right and reactionaries. I am old enough to actually remember the 1950s and early 60s. For me, it was a wonderful, idyllic time. But then, I was a white kid in a small town California setting. There are some bits of that culture that I wish we hadn't lost, but I have no desire to go back to the 1950s culture overall, even that one.
Not that, here in the real world, it's possible to do anything like that. Hmmmm, an argument for rapidly developing virtually reality systems -- so the Steven Millers can sit in their parents' basement, muck up their private world, and leave the rest of us in peace.
russell: I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
I think the challenges are twofold. The first is: how do we find those centerist/conservative voices? Does anyone here know how to do recruiting? Second is: if someone like that stumbles across us, can we refrain from assuming that someone who says she's a conservative is some sort of rabid reactionary? I note that a new chum arriving could read some comments here** and feel unwelcome before she ever moved from lurker to commenter. As you say, feelings run high on a variety of issues. I've certainly been moved to rant occasionally. ;-)
So I'd say that increasing our diversity of views is definitely a "nice to have." But I'm not sure how we might get from here to there.
**Donald leaps to mind. Not because he's wrong about how outrageous some things are. It's possible to be pretty damn conservative and agree completely on that. It's more a matter, as far as I can explain it, of tone. And an assumption (again as I perceive it) that anyone who agrees, but thinks there are other, more achievable, priorities is at best an utter moral dullard.

I actually miss most of the commenters who have been banned during my roughly 2 decades here. Does anybody have the full list?
Like the poor sod in the Monty Python sketch, I come here for an argument. Maybe I'm too emotionally inert, but I can't remember ever feeling hurt by a blog comment to or about me. Annoyed, sure, but annoyance tends to inspire me to argue back, rather than depress me.
Arguing with pig-headed opponents can be a bore, but what's a better way to waste time? Watching a horror movie? Listening to a sermon? Tastes differ, of course, and everyone is free to choose their own favorite time-wasting activity. For me, that was Obsidian Wings, once upon a time. I hope it becomes that again, someday.
--TP

I really do appreciate the "somewhat right-wing" contingent here: (wj, Marty, CharlesWT). In fact, I often find Donald's comments more annoying than wj's. Go figure.
When was it that McTx was banned? I don't remember that? But I do recall the most annoying features of McTx's style of argumentation: claiming authoritative knowledge of everything, and imputing opinions to others, mostly in the context of strawmanning.
If there is ONE thing that drives me to an incandescent rage, it's someone trying to tell me what my opinions/desires/thoughts/experiences are. That's all stuff that one owns more profoundly than any property, being the stuff inside your own brain.

Thought I posted a comment, don't know if it's lost in the intertoobz or if I just did Preview and forgot to hit Post before I refreshed the page.
Stupid computers! :)
Anyway, if it's floating around out there and somebody can find it and repost it, great. Otherwise I'll try again later.
ETA: 12:20 comment released from confinement. -Ed.

It's true, there used to be a much greater variety of points of view here back in the day. Von, slarti, bc (who still pops up now and then). Lots of others, some quite good.
Now we're mostly liberal-to-left, mostly (I think) boomer and genx.
It's actually really hard to participate someplace where you are the contrarian voice. It's a lot of work, and is not always particularly rewarding. People yell at you a lot, it takes time and patience to build some credibility. So I can understand why conservatives might not want to hang here.
That said, I'd welcome more conservative voices here. I'd just ask that they not just show up to trumpet their point of view and yell at people. Actual conversation would be good.
I appreciated McK's presence here, but a lot of the time he seemed to just be here to scold us all for being such hypocrites. It was rude and tiresome, which is why he was banned the first time around. And it's why he was banned the second time, having popped up as BigBadBird.
I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
But I personally would be willing to give it a shot.
Regarding the 4th of July, suffice it to say that I was just not feeling it this year. Went to my niece's for her daughter's 16th birthday, ate a hot dog and some birthday cake, hung with family, came home, read a bit, went to sleep. That was my exciting 4th.
In many ways, I feel like I'm about done with this country. Not that I plan to go anywhere else, I just am losing my belief that we are ever gonna get past the same toxic bullshit we started out with. It just never seems to end.
The cruelty - pointless, sadistic, nihilistic cruelty - we are capable of is freaking crushing me.
I don't know if any other place is better, I just know what we are right now, and what we have been, and it breaks my freaking heart.
So that's my 4th of July story.

McKT aside, we are a pretty narrow group ideologically most of the time. Wj is the token conservative and he is more centrist really. Of course things get real heated real fast when there are serious disagreements about important issues. I said this to LJ privately the other day, but the amazing thing about the hilzoy era was how she and whoever else was in charge kept things under control. I didn’t necessarily agree with her on everything, but this was one of the few places I knew about where there was a wide range of views for a few years. Of course people gradually dropped out or in a few cases were banned for being offensive. I remember a couple from the far far left like that.
The culture might also have gotten more polarized, but I am not sure about that. It was pretty polarized with Bush, esp in the early years when he was more popular, I think. Now I can’t remember when I first came here.
It would be difficult being polite with a MAGA type. I don’t think we have had any.
Weirdly,for a couple of years Rod Dreher had a wide range of views in his American Conservative blog comments. For a bit he was repentant about his Iraq War support and would sometimes critique the right. But his anti gay and anti trans mania got more and more evident and his Islamophobia came back if it ever fully left and he got super culture war paranoid and started taking like Franco was justified. I got more and more sarcastic and was eventually banned. Then he wrote his famous root wiener post and got eased out.

Well, libjpn@gmail address is working and he's not written. I don't want to pile thing up that he has to do, but I'd add that he also needs to admit that he snuck back here to try and set commenters against each other. In the normal cut and thrust, you can suggest that some person agrees with you, but trying to gin up conflict is really not acceptable and there needs to be an acknowledgement of that.

I understand the ban on McKT under whatever name, but I'd like to see him back. I urge him to apologise to the powers-that-be for having accused them of holding malevolent beliefs which they do not, and I urge those powers then to rescind the ban.