Mark Steyn writes:
You’re not in the battle unless you put your name to it – and don’t give me that Scarlet Pimpernel stuff: you’re not riding out after dark on daring missions, you’re just reTweeting some bloke’s hashtag.
Mr McInnes is withering about the cyber-warrior ethos — the butch pseudonym, the graphic-novel avatar. But, cumulatively, it’s making the Internet boring and ineffectual for everyone other than Isis. (…)
As Kathy Shaidle notes, many of the commenters to the McInnes video are talking past each other. There are always rational reasons for not flying under your flag. But cumulatively and objectively they have a corrosive effect. McInnes cites the stand-up mommy who, in response to the arrest of a parent who let her children walk home from the park unaccompanied, organized a “Leave Your Kids At The Park” day — to demonstrate to the statist control freaks that they can’t arrest us all. Her name is Lenore Skenazy, not “WarriorPrincess437”.
The trouble is the opposite also applies: the more people who sit it out under handles like “Freedom Crusader” the easier it is to arrest the few who do put their names to it.
