The Battle for Hawaii Minds

Honolulu's afternoon paper, the Starbulletin, has a loose comments policy.  A number of wing nuts on the Mainland (and, to be fair, in Hawaii too - and there is someone from Japan) have figured out that Barack Obama is from Hawaii - he's Hawaii's favored son.   So every piece he gets in Hawaii's press attracts a string of comments loosing forth.  The attacks are of the "how can you all be so stupid" variety - the writers have an interesting take on fact.

In the spirit of countering bad speech with good, readers may want to start work o, their argument skills here.  And then take a good long shower.

I don't normally read sites with this kind of stuff on it.  I'm basically a NYTimes reader.  I read the Starbulletin and LA Times for local news.  But swimming in these comments makes me wonder how many otherwise average people are truly unhinged.  For instance, I had not heard about it before, but this one really startled me.  Our marketplace of ideas seems to not trade very well.  Maybe Churchill was right when he said, "The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

Could we please have a nanny state?