Speak Up

It's not surprising when a liberal web site, like Slate, has mostly liberal commenters in its threads. I'd like to see more of a conservative presence there, but the dominance of liberals isn't surprising. However, you wouldn't expect most commenters to be liberal at a conservative site, like National Review. And I don't think most commenters there are liberal. But liberals do have a disproportionately high presence at many such sites. Some of the threads I've recently seen at National Review are what prompted me to write this post.

In one thread, a conservative there commented on how liberals had been bused in to post comments. Another poster said something to the effect that liberals on welfare have more time on their hands to do something like post in online forums. It's true that people often are bused in to online forums and other contexts. And it's true that welfare recipients and other people who are home a lot tend to be liberal. But I doubt that either explanation, or a combination of such explanations, even comes close to entirely explaining what's going on.

For example, there will often be a thread with, say, ten people commenting. Four of them are liberal. Even if those four were bused in, are welfare recipients, etc., it's not as though outnumbering four people by a large margin should be difficult for conservatives to do in a context like the National Review web site. Yet, it frequently doesn't happen. Often, to make the situation even worse, the conservatives who do post aren't posting as often, aren't making as much of an effort to argue for their position, and so forth. In the thread with ten participants, the four liberals will say more than the six conservatives and will make more of an effort to argue for their position. Or one conservative will make a significant effort to support his side of the argument, but the other five won't. Or something like that. It isn't just a matter of liberals being so active at a site like National Review. It's also a matter of conservatives being so inactive relative to their potential.

I've seen a lot of explanations offered for the sort of tendency I've described above, and there's some merit to those explanations. I've already mentioned some of them (busing in efforts, liberals tend to be home more). Another explanation often put forward is that liberals are more concerned about politics. They tend to be less religious, so politics is some sort of equivalent to religion for them. Liberals put the sort of effort into politics that conservatives put into other aspects of life, like religion. Though explanations like these do have some merit, they're insufficient.

Take the last explanation I mentioned. Yes, liberals are less religious, and that does explain the tendencies I'm describing to some extent. But why do the same tendencies show up in so many other contexts? For example, I often see threads at Christian apologetic web sites that are an equivalent of what I've described above regarding National Review. Five people are posting in a thread, and two of them are atheists. Or, worse yet, four of the five are atheists. The fact that only five people are posting is part of the problem. And, apparently, all of the Christians who aren't posting think it's not a problem for them to be uninvolved while they let a small handful of other Christians do all of the work. I frequently see threads at apologetic and other religious web sites, not just at political sites and in other less religious contexts, where Christian participation is absurdly low and highly disproportionate to the level of participation by non-Christians. Why?

The problem isn't just that liberals, atheists, and others who are wrong are so active. There's also a problem with conservatives, Christians, etc. being so inactive.

Apparently, one of the reasons why the Democrats did so well in the 2012 election was that they were so active online (contacting people on Facebook, sending out emails, buying ads at popular web sites, etc.). The Republicans didn't make as much of an effort, even though many of the potential voters were so open to being influenced. It's even more appalling when Christians allow themselves to be outperformed. More is at stake.

Part of the problem is that conservatives, including conservative Christians, have tended to overestimate their position in society. They've been complacent with their majority status, or they've thought of themselves as a majority when they haven't actually been one. Minorities often fight harder. Being cornered sometimes has that effect on people. Even as liberals become a majority on some issues, like homosexual marriage, they retain some elements of the minority mindset. And their conservative opponents keep thinking like a majority in some ways, a majority that's largely presumptuous, apathetic, complacent, and lazy.

Then there's the problem of being too slow to adapt to changing technology and social expectations. A Christian web site will give itself a facelift, perhaps improving its appearance and starting to have a Twitter account, for example. But the behavior of the site's owners doesn't change much. They're still too slow to notice societal trends, too shallow in how they address issues, too unwilling to interact with opposing positions in depth, etc. Their web site's facelift doesn't amount to much.

Part of what we need to do to adapt to the changes occurring in the world around us is to get more active online. That's where the technology is headed, and that's where people are. Complaining about it doesn't make it go away. If you'd prefer to spend more time offline, then too bad. God placed you in the twenty-first-century world, with its technological advances and unprecedented access to information. I suspect that the large majority of you live in a wealthy nation with a lot of technology, political freedom, and other advantages. You have opportunities that people living in other times and places haven't had. To whom much is given, much is required. Our responsibilities are largely of an intellectual nature. We have such easy access to information through books, web sites, etc. In addition to being involved in praying, reading the Bible, and other common Christian disciplines, you should be participating in online forums frequently (discussion boards, blogs, Twitter, and whatever else). Do you regularly make an effort to participate in such things? When you see a thread at a political web site about homosexual marriage, and the liberal participants have a disproportionately high presence in the discussion, do you just remain silent? Or do you speak up? When you see a Christian at an apologetics web site carrying on a discussion with an atheist (or two, three, or four atheists at once, as often happens), do you just sit back and watch? Or do you get involved? Do you help your fellow Christians carry the burden, or do you just let them do all of the heavy lifting? Why don't you give up some of the time you spend on sports, movies, housework, etc. in order to do more important things, including spending more time in online discussions about issues that are significant? Since so many of the most important issues in life are discussed online more than they are offline, and people are spending more time online than they used to, shouldn't your behavior change accordingly?