Ann Althouse tells us she started blogging with NO interest in politics… Yeah. Right. Nicholas Kristof tells us about Somaliland. Let’s see what Prof. Althouse has to say:

Unlike a lot of other political bloggers, I started blogging with a distinct lack of interest in politics. My first post about a presidential campaign, back in January 2004, the first month of my blog, was purely an accident. I was reading The Isthmus, our free alternative newspaper here in Madison, Wisc., when I ran across a chart comparing the Democratic candidates for president.

Because I had the longtime habit, inherited from my grandfather, of reading out loud whatever little things in the newspaper happened to catch my attention, I said: “Hmm. ‘Little known fact: at 59, Wesley Clark has only 5% body fat.’ ”

My son Christopher, who was used to finding himself on the receiving end of this habit, came back with: “Should it be: ‘Wesley Clark is 5% body fat?’ ”

That cracked me up, and, instantly making the transition from old family habit to new blogging habit, I posted our little interchange on my blog. I didn’t care at all whether I was helping or hurting Clark’s campaign for the Democratic nomination. I had merely encountered something that amused me at the time. I wasn’t aiming to become a political pundit. That blog post had more to do with my interest in the rhetoric of dieting, the subtleties of language and my son’s sense of humor than with politics.

Blogging is just writing, and there is no end to the things you can do with writing. When you read a political blog, you might be running into someone like me, a solo blogger who reacts casually to issues that surface on any given day, or you might be reading the work of a writer who is pursuing an intense, partisan agenda and pushing particular candidates.

If the blog is open to comments — as mine is — there is a mysterious additional layer of writing. Who are these people who tap into another person’s readership? Some of them must be there just to pass the time interacting with other people who have responded to the personal style of the blogger. Others are much more politically engaged, perhaps to the point where you wonder whether they are part of some candidate’s campaign.

“Political Bloggers Fear Publicists Will Infiltrate Sites” was the headline for the column Alan Wirzbicki wrote in The Boston Globe last Friday. He tells us about a little incident on the Redstate blog, where a commenter seemed excessively supportive of John McCain (who is, apparently, not terribly popular on Redstate).

This moved Erick Erickson, who runs Redstate, to do a little research and discover that the commenter worked for a company with some connection to McCain’s political action committee.

“This is going to happen more and more, and blogs are going to have to be vigilant,” Erickson told Wirzbicki.

Somehow I can’t work up much fear over this. How vigilant do I need to be? As long as no one is dropping unverifiable factual assertions in the comments — trying to stir up a scandal for a candidate? — why should I care if my commenters have their secrets, their ulterior motives and their as-yet-undiscovered manipulative ways? That’s the way life is in the real world.

It’s good to have a place where strangers can meet, and it’s fine if it takes you awhile to learn what other people are really up to. The blog is a coffeehouse, and if some new commenter is actually a political operative, I think it would be fun to see how well he can take on the sharp, individualistic commenters who have already set up here, carrying on a long conversation. I bet it wouldn’t take them long to unmask and embarrass him.

Let life on the blog unfold like off-blog life.

I can understand the urge to enforce standards in the blogosphere, but my inclination runs the other way. Watching a video dialogue on the Web site bloggingheads.tv (where I regularly participate), I rankled when the columnist Eric Alterman said:

“I think it would be good if we had some sort of, you know, blogging — you know — council, where we could condemn people. ... You could still blog if you want. Nobody’s going to stop you. But ... everybody’s gonna know that you’re not to be trusted.”

What undermines my trust is that impulse to control. Those who want such things worry me as much as a candidate with too little body fat.

Ann Althouse is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin and writes the blog Althouse. She is a guest columnist this month.

Well. Now here’s Mr. Kristof, who actually is worth reading:

Here’s the ethos of Somalia, as a former Mogadishu resident explained it to me: “If I use a dollar to buy food, then tomorrow I have nothing. If I use a dollar to buy a bullet, then I can eat every day.”

That enterprising can-do spirit has turned most of Somalia into the poster child of a failed state, where you feel underdressed without an assault rifle. But wait! Here in the north of the carcass of Somalia is the breakaway would-be nation of Somaliland, and it is a remarkable success — for a country that doesn’t exist.

The U.S. and other governments don’t recognize Somaliland, so the people here get next to zero foreign aid. And when the “country” was formed in 1991, it had been mostly obliterated in a civil war and was a collection of ruins and land mines.

Yet the clans and elders here formed their own government, held free elections and even established an international airline. Relying on free markets and a general exhaustion with violence, the people of Somaliland embraced tranquillity and democracy and searched for ways to make a buck.

Walk down the streets of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and instead of gunmen you come across the thriving jewelry and financial market: scores of vendors, most of them women, are hawking millions of dollars worth of gold, precious stones and foreign currency out in the open air. (Don’t try that at home!) Continue down the street, and you see that Hargeisa has police cars, DHL service, cable television, orthodontists, a multitude of Internet cafes and traffic jams (including the horses and camels). There are public schools and hospitals — even a public library.

This is a conservative Muslim country, yet it is generally pro-American and tolerant. In the last election, more women voted than men. Women’s groups are fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation, administered to 97 percent of girls here.

The lesson of Somaliland is simple: the most important single determinant of a poor country’s success is not how much aid it receives but how well it is run. If a country adheres to free markets and good political and economic governance, it will generate domestic and foreign investments that dwarf any amount of aid.

As President Dahir Rayale Kahin told me: “There is a proverb in our country: ‘You can wash your body only with your own hand.’ Outsiders can help, but the indigenous people must find a solution themselves.”

One lesson is that Western countries should not only increase their financial aid but also their pressure for better governance. It’s great to forgive debts, but not graft or antimarket policies.

The U.S. Millennium Challenge aid program, which promotes good governance, is a useful step in that direction. So is Tony Blair’s program to battle corruption in Africa.

One useful kind of Western aid is simply support for civil-society groups that battle corruption. Here in Somaliland, the press is generally free, but the president recently tossed three journalists in prison for reporting on corruption in his family. If Western countries speak out strongly in their defense, that effort may be worth a few million dollars in aid by reducing corruption in the future.

More peer pressure from within Africa would also help. Other African countries should stand up to a racist like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe with the same vigor they once used to stand up to white racist governments.

Another essential kind of foreign aid is supporting market-friendly economic policies, especially those that would nurture manufacturing industries.

In Mauritania, whose location in northwestern Africa would be ideal for exporting clothing to Europe and America, it takes 82 days to start a new business, which would then have to make 61 tax payments each year, requiring 696 hours to calculate and pay. And in the end, the tax would amount to 104.3 percent of the profit, according to the World Bank.

All that explains why you don’t have any shirts in your closet labeled “Made in Mauritania.”

So let’s be more generous with foreign aid, giving more than 22 cents per $100 of national income to development assistance (the average for rich countries is 47 cents). But those of us who call for aid and debt forgiveness also need to push just as hard for recipient nations to improve their governance, for ultimately the best way for poor countries to prosper is to adopt pro-growth policies.

And in the meantime, it’s time to recognize Somaliland as a nation. When a place does this well, we should hail it as a model, not shun it.