The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto has been mercilessly hammering John Kerry recently for his statement that there was no bloodbath in Southeast Asia after the US exited Vietnam. On Saturday, the Journal (and its opinion website, opinionjournal.com) published a letter from Kerry defending his statement (http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010427). And today, Taranto, in a brilliant stroke, has allowed readers to respond, line by line, to Kerry's letter (http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010435).

The responses themselves are striking, for the most part, in both their clearheadedness and in their civility (though a couple are a bit combative in tone). I wonder if these characteristics are due to Taranto's choices, to the demographics of WSJ readers, or due to constitutional differences between thinking conservatives and thinking liberals. I have long held that while unthinking noisy gongs on both sides are obnoxious, that the thinking conservatives tend to be much more reasonable and accommodating than their liberal counterparts (present website company excluded, of course). At any rate, I don't think the editors of The New Republic or The Nation (or The New York Times/LA Times/other major papers, or CBS/NBC/ABC/MSNBC/CNBC/PBS/NPR) would have gotten the quality of responses shown here. More tellingly, I'm not sure it would have occurred to them to seek those responses.

Or am I thinking about this wrong?