Respectful Disagreement Meme

Peter Thurley has passed me a meme whereby I have to name three people I disagree with a lot, and say something nice about them. It's a neat idea.

(For the record, I'm not sure that I always manage to live up to the ideal of civility that Peter attributes to me. I can be a bit prickly at times. But I do appreciate his kind compliments.)

First up would have to be Brandon of Siris, with whom I disagree on just about everything. But I do value his intelligent and challenging comments, which often highlight different perspectives that I have overlooked. And it must be said that Brandon's is one of the most consistently civil voices in blogdom.

Second is David Farrar, New Zealand's premiere blogger for the Opposition. Even if I don't much like his right-wing (economic) politics, at least he is a consistent social liberal. Also, his monthly presentations of "New Zealand blog stats" help to create order and unity out of the chaos of the NZ blogging community (which is, of course, something I value too).

Third, Jeremy Pierce is a conservative Christian, so again I disagree with him on mostly everything. But his posts are always fair, balanced, and well-reasoned. He is the most rational and compelling conservative blogger I've come across.

I'm supposed to pass it along to five people, so in addition to the above three, I'll add No Right Turn and Dr. Pretorius. I tend to agree with both quite a lot, so I'll be interested to see who they choose. (I also share Peter's hopes of seeing Brian Leiter's picks -- that could be very interesting indeed.)

P.S. The "three people" don't have to be other bloggers. Mine just happened to be.