1. Ethics Alarms is not a public forum, like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram—okay, or Truth Social and Bluesky. Nobody has a “right” to post here. Nobody has a right to post on those platforms either, but at least in their cases, the ethical standard should be that they are platforms for all. This blog is not like that, and was never intended to be. That’s why all commenters have to initially pass through moderation before their comments will post. This is my forum. I make the rules. If you don’t like them, fine: go someplace else (or explain to me why I should change them; that’s worked occasionally).

2. The claim that I ban comments and commenters I disagree with is a lie. Simple as that. The falsehood is disproved by even a casual perusal of past debates. I ban comments and commenters who break the rules in the manner or content of their commentary.

3. That isn’t “censorship” or “canceling.” Nor is it “bullying,” demanding submission, or any other kind of unfair conduct on my part to give non-compliant commenters an opportunity to restore lost commenting rights if they apologize and pledge to follow the rules in the future.

4. I have stated on the Home Page from the beginning that Ethics Alarms is an online colloquy which I will run as I facilitate my ethics seminars. No other blogger, certainly none in the ethics or legal field, engages with readers to the extent that I do. (I just passed the 70,000 comment mark.) If a participant in one of my law school ethics classes started making the same claim over and over again regardless of the topic being discussed, or insisted on non-substantive comments after I told him or her to stop, or began insulting me personally, that individual would be told to leave the class and not come back until he or she had resolved to stop interfering with it. Ethics Alarms is no different.

5. I don’t care if Ethics Alarms has only “five commenters,” as another banned critic claimed earlier this year. They are five serious, erudite, thoughtful, knowledgeable and intelligent commenters. I’ll take five participants of that stripe over 5,000 of the kinds of commenters I see on most blogs (Althouse being a striking exception).

6. Do most veteran commenters here tilt to the conservative side politically and philosophically? Sure, for several reasons. The main one is that the progressives who have tried to debate here have been factually and intellectually outgunned, and even the most astute of them seem to prefer abandoning the field of battle rather than admit, “You know, you are right about that.” Another is that this is not a progressive blog, so progressives don’t care to visit here although it would do them a lot of good if they possessed open minds. The most important one, however, is that the political Left in the United States has become openly, wildly, and proudly unethical, while conservatives, while still stubbornly holding on to some long-held unethical positions (discrimination against gays, for example, and opposing same-sex marriage) have landed on the ethical side of the majority of current policy controversies.