An anecdote to give some perspective on how far outside the norms of Internet behavior this is:

Some years back, Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy had a post that linked to the spectacularly misogynistic rantings of a pseudonymous OB/GYN blogger. A few of the commenters managed to piece together the guy’s identity based on some biographical info revealed here and there in his archives (each piece on its own was not revealing, but taken together, they narrowed the field enough, and someone knew someone who had been to school at the same place, who had a guess, plus info from his IP address, etc., etc.).

And they started discussing in comments whether they should out the guy. They had a good justification - his patients deserved to know they were trusting their health and even their lives to someone who hates women. But they decided, completely voluntarily and through discussing it among themselves, they wouldn’t out him because they wouldn’t want the same thing done to them by someone who found their (radical feminist) views objectionable or even horrifically offensive.

So if a bunch of man-hating radical feminists can find it in themselves to not out a misogynist shit of a doctor, surely Whelan could have found it in himself to not out publius because he felt put out by a few posts.

And as someone who posts pseudonymously for reasons I consider to be very good ones, thank you very much, I clearly have an identity that I feel accountable for. Folks here and the other places I comment know who I am in every way that is relevant to the conversation.

There is a term for people who stick their nose in other’s sexual business.

PERVERT! 

Interesting how this jerk Whelan fancies himself some sort of big bad big boy because he has a secret decoder ring and knows how to use it.  Fact is, he’s a pervert and a peeping tom, but lacks the professional knowledge of a licensed private eye and doesn’t have the balls to get involved in any sort of military situation, including covert CIA activity.

This is further proof that everyone at the National Review (and pretty much all conservatives) are totally unprincipled, egomaniacal assholes.  I wonder how Ed would fill if we sent someone to track his every move and poke around in his garbage for a couple of months?  Everybody has something they would not want publicly broadcast.

I like David Schraub’s post on it:

Franck admits he wouldn’t out a Chinese dissident who’d be tortured if his identity was revealed. But [Whelan] had no idea why publius chose to remain pseudonymous. His reasons turned out to be to avoid family strife, to protect the careers of (Republican) operatives in his family, and to avoid any tenure controversies. All solid enough reasons for me. But they could have been considerably more dramatic. He might have had a stalker. He might have a boss who swore never to hire Democratic scum (unlikely given that he was an academic, but a possibility for bloggers in fields without strong norms of academic freedom). The point is, we didn’t know. And in absence of that knowledge, Whelan cavalierly decided to roll dice with publius’ life. Because he had the right to. And that’s all that matters.

Though I usually sign my name only as Dana, the embedded link back to my site has my full name.  And if you were a regular reader, you’d know in which small town I live.  With an unncommon name, in a small townm—and I’ve even got a picture of my rather distinctive front doors on my site!—I wouldn’t be difficult to find.  Art Downs and Ken Vermillion also use their full names in posting.

The others use only their first names or a complete pseudonym, and I respect their reasons for doing so.  It isn’t up to me to judge why someone chooses to comment under a pseudonym, and outing someone on that may put the blogger’s or commenter’s job or family or whatever in jeopardy.  It’s the wrong thing to do, regardless of from which side it comes.

I find the idea that conservatives like Whelan want to make all arguments about credentials interesting. Once you’ve thrown out evidence and logic as ways of determining what to believe (which they must have, considering what their beliefs are), then the only thing they’re left with is what some authority figure told them when they were little, and their gut. These are not good ways of figuring out the truth (and therefore who wins arguments)

Credentials are meaningless if you are dead fucking wrong.  Seriously, your doctor could graduate top of his/her class from from Harvard, but if s/he is wrong, s/he is wrong.  And no amount of credentials is going to save your ass when you’re dying because the idiot missed your broken ribs, broken collar bone and collapsed lung in the ER and were going to discharge you! (True story, and mine…)  Fortunately, my wife demanded a second opinion and they decided to mollify her.  Instead of, oh, arrest her like they’d do nowadays and I survived.

Or if you don’t’ like high-pressure medical as an analogy.  The same can easily be said with my profession.  Some of the people in the tax department of KPMG have better far better professional credentials than myself and I’ve had some of the look down their noses at me because I’m just a little, independent CPA.  Yet the idiots gave us the Son of Boss tax shelter:

KPMG LLP, the fourth-largest U.S. accounting firm, and law firm Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP, who advised it, agreed to pay $225 million to resolve claims by hundreds of investors that KPMG committed fraud by selling illegal tax shelters.

  It was obvious they were basis-less tax shelters and not legal.  Yet they promoted them anyway.  So, being credentialed?  So effing what? 

The bottom line is that credentials don’t make you right.  They just make pretty hangings for the wall…

I was kind of sad to discover this wanker was the

President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Ethics?  Really?

Then I saw that he clerked for Scalia.  Suddenly it all made sense.

Franck admits he wouldn’t out a Chinese dissident who’d be tortured if his identity was revealed. But [Whelan] had no idea why publius chose to remain pseudonymous.

This is yet another face of the same hydra - you are not allowed to decide these things for yourself, just as you are not allowed to call out racism when you see it.  You have to have the permission and say so of a white man before you can have “valid reasons” to be pseudonymous or be a victim of racism.  White men are the only arbeters of validity!

Credentials are more than just something you hang on a wall - it should be an indication of expertise. But that doesn’t mean appealing to authority isn’t a fallacy.

Notice how credentials don’t count when it comes to a Latina.

This is yet another face of the same hydra - you are not allowed to decide these things for yourself, just as you are not allowed to call out racism when you see it.  You have to have the permission and say so of a white man before you can have “valid reasons” to be pseudonymous or be a victim of racism.

Right. Both Whelan and Jonah Goldberg are saying, “Tell us who you are and then we’ll decide whether you deserve to be pseudonymous - I mean, DESERVED to HAVE BEEN pseudonymous.”

How fucking sad is it that a dude with such a long history of prominent legal accomplishment is so thin-skinned that he feels the need to out some poor pseudonymous schnook law blogger.

Oh, shit. I don’t mean to imply that Publius is actually a schnook, but that Whelan would feel the need to out someone that *he* considers a schnook.

Mmmm, possibly because that “schnook” pointed out what an idiot asshat know-nothing that he is in ways that challenge his credentials?

The whole point of this is to impose real-world consequences on internet political speech.  In Whelan’s perfect world, nobody on the left would blog because they would fear for their physical or financial safety.  Political speech is only for the properly privileged, most of whom are, shockingly, conservative.  It’s just another way to keep power in the hands of the oligarchs - make it dangerous to disagree with them.

I couldn’t help but hear the voice of Fat Tony from The Simpsons in my head as a read Whelan’s comments.  I can almost hear him saying, “It’d be a real shame if this information about your identity got out.  Maybe we can come to an arrangement.  How’s about you say some nice things about Ed Whelan, and this paper with your home address on it gets dropped in the shredder?”

The bottom line is that credentials don’t make you right.

No, but they suggest you might know what you are talking about.

I only say this because in our anti-intellectual environment there is an all-too prevalent tendency to belittle credentials. The creationist and anti-global warming movements are based around ignoring credentialled people who provide evidence and cogent arguments.

So yes, credentials don’t make you right. Yes, the argument from authority is a fallacy. But let’s be careful not to pooh-pooh credentials unnecessarily. The word of a credentialled lawyer like Whelan probably carries more weight on the subject of law than that of a layman such as myself. Which is why I rely on other credentialled individuals to give him the slap he so deserves.

“The creationist and anti-global warming movements are based around ignoring credentialled people who provide evidence and cogent arguments.”

...while highly touting the statements of people with credentials who’ve been paid to agree with them.

There is no constitutional right to anonymity on the internet.  It’s not nice to out someone, but perfectly legal. The bottom line is that you get exposed by being sloppy.  You gotta use your triple digit IQ (he had to have pretty decent LSATs right?) and implement something to hide your IP address.  If you call someone a “know-nothing demagogue” and lack the cloaking savvy of a stoned 14 year old, don’t be stunned if you are outed.

There is no constitutional right to anonymity

I think that would surprise “Publius,” the pseudonymous author who advocated the ratification of the US Constitution in the Federalist Papers.

If you call someone a “know-nothing demagogue” and lack the cloaking savvy of a stoned 14 year old, don’t be stunned if you are outed.

So, if you are sufficiently thin-skinned and vindictive, you can publish the identity of a pseudonymous author. Got it.

If you call someone a “know-nothing demagogue” and lack the cloaking savvy of a stoned 14 year old, don’t be stunned if you are outed.

But see, that’s what we’re lamenting.  If you call someone a “know-nothing demagogue” then they ought to be able to respond with cites proving their reasoning, should it be other than demogaugery.  If all you do is call someone a “know-nothing demagogue”, you need to back it up with evidence.

Exposing publius does absolutely nothing but show Whelan to be an ass.  It doesn’t disprove anything in the argument, least of all his being a know-nothing demagogue.

What point did Whelan win by the outing?  Nothing.

What point did Whelan win by the outing?

He showed that for all his accomplishments, he’s essentially insecure. Reading his article about Sotomayor, I see he lets partisanship cloud his judgement, because he includes only information that makes Sotomayor look bad. A competent lawyer would mention favorable information while minimizing it, not leave it out entirely. Such character flaws make you less effective.

We on the left would havea better case about not outing Publius if we didn’t out our own. Armando / Big Tent Democrat was outed by a fellow editor at Daily Kos some 2 years ago, for the exact same reason: thin skinned reaction to an online argument.

There is no constitutional right to anonymity on the internet.  It’s not nice to out someone, but perfectly legal.

Then it’s a good thing that absolutely nobody is talking about whether it is legal, and basically everyone is talking about how it is a totally dick move that only a colossal douchebag would do.

I am continually amazed by how some people cannot figure out that not being legally barred from being a dick doesn’t change that fact that you, y’know, shouldn’t be a dick.

There is no constitutional right to anonymity on the internet.  It’s not nice to out someone, but perfectly legal.

Ah, I see.  So everything that’s not illegal is perfectly acceptable and beyond reproach.  Good to know.

Renmiri, I have no notion what you’re trying to say when you say “a better case”. Outing a pseudonymous blogger is a totally crappy thing to do, regardless of your political color. It was totally crappy when Kathryn Cramer outed Coffeeandink, it’s totally crappy when Ed Whelan outs Publius, and yeah, in all instances I’ve heard of, those two this year and others, it’s done by thin-skinned arrogant shmucks who are sore losers.

Renmiri wrote:

We on the left would havea better case about not outing Publius if we didn’t out our own. Armando / Big Tent Democrat was outed by a fellow editor at Daily Kos some 2 years ago, for the exact same reason: thin skinned reaction to an online argument.

One from the right and one from the left, but my guess is that this has happened rather a lot, on both sides of the aisle.  Not everyone is a slang term for the sphincter, but enough are, on both sides, that when an advantage is seen as to be gained, these things will happen.

I accept the idea that people ought to have a right to use a pseudonym, but really, if it is any way possible to write under your real name, that’s what you should do; it not only shows self-confidence, but it removes a vulnerability.

There is another point to be made, however.  Jay Anderson wrote:

<blogging>I know for a fact that there are many times when people write things anonymously or pseudonymously that they NEVER would have written under their own names. I don’t believe that to be a particularly healthy state of affairs. Quite honestly, my own personal opinion is that blogging anonymously/pseudonymously removes much of the incentive for engaging in responsible, charitable, and good-faith commentary, and, therefore, should be discouraged except for the most extreme of circumstances.</blogging>

It seems to me that to blog pseudonymously, you incur a responsibility that you must police yourself: not to say something under the cover of a pseudonym that you would be embarrassed to have attributed to you personally.  You might need the pseudonym to protect your job, but this is one where you have to think of how your friends would react, the people who wouldn’t threaten your job.

Boy, did I mess up that coding!  :(

I am reminded of Sarah Palin’s griping about “anonymous” bloggers. I had written then that I use a pseudonym not to hide but to stand out; there are many Paul O’Briens, there can only be one Judge Moonbox.

There is no constitutional right to anonymity on the internet.  It’s not nice to out someone, but perfectly legal.

It’s perfectly legal for someone to speed in and take the parking spot you’ve been patiently waiting for, too.  It’s still a dickish thing to do.

not to say something under the cover of a pseudonym that you would be embarrassed to have attributed to you personally.

That would seem to give a natural advantage to those, like Jonah Goldberg, who have no shame and don’t have second thoughts about what they write.

It’s not nice to out someone, but perfectly legal.

Seth on 06/08 at 06:19 PM

Seth, you do realize the uproarious irony of that statement when Whelan is the president of something called the Ethics and Public Policy Center.  Then again, I suppose it’s like “Concerned Women for America - in that fundernut self-naming has no basis in reality.

I accept the idea that people ought to have a right to use a pseudonym, but really, if it is any way possible to write under your real name, that’s what you should do; it not only shows self-confidence, but it removes a vulnerability.

Dana on 06/08 at 07:29 PM

Not when so many of your folks are still clinging to their guns, Dana.  And as evidenced by Roeder, quite ready to use them.

I’ve following these chain of events pretty closely and I couldn’t be more disgusted by Whelan’s actions. I used to frequent a message forum and because of disagreements over politics, a woman began calling my home and place of work. Lucky for me, she lived only 30 minutes away. I ended up filing an harassment charge against her and was awarded a restraining order.

I think it takes a special kind of evil to try to disrupt someone’s life and livelihood all because you disagree with their politics.

“There is no constitutional right to anonymity on the internet.  It’s not nice to out someone, but perfectly legal.”

Nobody called the police, though.  What we are engaging in is simple, old-fashioned, private citizen-based public shaming of a dude who really, really deserves it.  Pointing at someone whose conduct disgusts you and saying “ew” is not equivalent to life imprisonment.  Collection of internet folks gathering together to point and “ew” together is not the State applying juridical power to suppress rampant douchiness.

I have to wonder about why so many conservatives think it’s such a coup to out their opponents, especially when they can’t out-argue them, out write them, or just shut them up. I have stalkers who’ve taken great pains to out me, and then I got death threats and shit at my home. Wow! You, conservative asshole, totally showed me what a conservative asshole you are! You still suck as a human being, a writer, and a REMF, but….. Yeah, I’m still a combat veteran who can kick your ass on the off chance that your cowardly ass shows up on my door step. During business hours, which I doubt.

These are the guys who show up at midnight and think they’re justified because you gave offense. Or else they show up at a church and shoot an unarmed man, then point their gun at two other unarmed church goers, and can’t quite figure out why that doesn’t make them big damned heroes.

Fwiw:

Ed Whelan has apologised.

... and publius accepted....

So if a bunch of man-hating radical feminists

Can we stop with this trope?  Seriously.  I am a radical feminist, and I don’t hate men.  I dislike them waving their privilege around and generally acting dickish, but I don’t hate them.

Radical feminism is not about hating men.  It’s about hating the privilege.

Okay.  Sorry for threadjacking.  I just hate that stereotype.

speedbudget, that was me and that was a joke. I probably should have put it in scare quotes, but I was relying on my reputation for people to understand my intent. I am myself, if not a full-on radical feminist*, highly influenced by and in agreement with many of their ideas.

Jesse thinks Whelan is compensating for something, which I think means he has a really small… OW!

Dan, I’m especially fond of the slavery argument, too. Abortion is like slavery,a nd they’re not referring to enslaving women. Erm…...The slave owners lived inside the slaves’ bodies and made them work for them? Or was it the other way around?

  And I don’t think Whelan’s apology is worth much. Yeah, apology. Whatever. DAmage is done.

I post under a very thin pseudonym (more so now that I link to my blog, where I use my real name). The reason has more to do with a desire not to associate (current or potential) employers with my opinions than with a desire to separate myself from them. The pseudonym indicates that I’m male* and Jewish, as does my real name, and that I’m sarcastic, so it’s better than my real name.

I’m not worried about being tracked down in Brooklyn. My father works at News Corp., but they already know he’s a liberal.

Now, two parallels to the argument that it’s okay to be pseudonymous if you have a good reason: abortion and declining sex. Anti-freedom people who don’t like to admit it will say “ok, you can have an abortion if you have a good reason, but I’m against abortions on demand.” Parallel.

*Though that one’s kind of a crapshoot, historically, frankly.