Response to comments

Manifesto

Anonymous writes in response to the below post:

Out of curiosity and not criticism - how do you think blogs can be a part of generating such a public dialogue? I would assume that people generally read blogs that they are politically or ideologically aligned with, so the people who might most benefit from such a dialogue will not be reading this blog.

First, I think even if you only read blogs with which you are politically or ideologically aligned there are going to be many situations where a blogger expresses a point of view that you don't necessarily agree with, or argues a point that you wouldn't necessarily have considered. That is step one in creating a dialogue. A good conversation among the like-minded is the first step in creating a broader dialogue. Most movements begin as a group of like-minded people exploring the ins and outs of an issue and discussing it among themselves. If they are successful, this forces the "other side" to consider the issue. As positive examples see the Civil Rights Movement or Emancipation. Of course there are negatives, see the rise of Nazism.

Next, I think blogs can raise issues that can then become topics of discussion in larger forums. We've seen it with the Jeff Gannon issue and CBS Memo-gate. This blog clearly isn't on that level, but is more a place to toss around ideas and current thoughts, but the logic is the same. Both of those stories were broken by ideological/partisan blogs, but both reached the center of public consciousness because the respective side that discovered the issue kept discussing/investigating and wouldn't let it die.

Thanks for the comment. I hope you keep checking back in, even if you don't necessarily agree with what we write. In fact, especially if you don't. Hopefully, even if we have an ideologically slant, we can stimulate thoughts that our few readers wouldn't necessarily have considered themselves.