Bloggy News

I have some pretty exciting news. Freddie deBoer, Scott Payne, Chris Dierkes, Mark Thompson, Dave Ruggerio, Kyle Moore, and myself have started a new cooperative blog, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

The purpose is to get not merely a multi-author blog with disjointed posts by various authors, but to start a series of dialogues within the blog. It's going live today. Right of this moment, actually...

Check it out. Thanks!

A tad curmudgeonly?

Is it just me, or is Joe Carter just a tiny bit curmudgeonly today?

The Best Job in the Bloody World

I was tipped off to this by NPR this morning. If I had been blogging about travel or scuba-diving or something I might have a chance to actually get the job:

Wanted: one "island caretaker", must be able to swim and willing to move to Hamilton Island in Australia's tropical Whitsundays to begin 1 July. Flexible hours, six-month salary of $150,000 (£75,000), non-negotiable.

Caretaking duties do not, island bosses insist, extend to litter-picking and sieving leaves and other detritus from the pool. Instead, the eventual incumbent will be paid to explore the crannies – both on land and underwater – of the Great Barrier Reef's 600 islands, reporting back through a fortnightly internet diary with photos and video.

That's right. Approximately $100,000 dollars to swim, sail and blog for six months in the Great Barrier Reef.

The BBC reports:

The job is being advertised around the world. Candidates have until 22 February to submit an online video application.

In May, 10 shortlisted candidates and one wildcard, voted for by visitors to the Tourism Queensland website, will be invited to the islands for a four-day final interview process. The successful candidate will start the new job on 1 July.

Mr Hayes says he is expecting thousands of applications: "I'm having to beat my staff off with a stick at the moment because most of them want to apply too."

Sounds just awful, doesn't it? Application information can be found here.

some good reading, listening, watching, etc.

Jon Schwenkler of Upturned Earth has an interesting piece up at Cutlure11 on Father Neuhaus. It's a nice, short piece that touches on the good and bad of the man. So many obits and reflection pieces abound right now, from harsh critiques by Andrew Sullivan, to plenty more graceful rememberances.

Jon and Scott Payne and Freddie deBoer have a dialogue on Same-Sex-Marriage at Scott's blog. Well worth the listen. (Freddie links there from his supposedly dormant blog...)

Tony Jones talks about gnosticism at his blog. He has a nice line: 'There's nothing secret about Christianity. There never has been. Let's make sure there never will be."

Mike Pontera thinks Obama, unlike his predecessors, has some "breathing space." We shall see...

And Max Socol has an interesting write-up on the question of cease-fire in Gaza. Jason Corley thinks we should "give war a chance" and while I think the phrasing is a little on the brash side, (though clever) the general idea that Israel ought to finish what it starts is certainly a good one. Different perspectives are always good to have...especially when it is not the ends, but the means that are in question...

Max:

Hamas may ultimately be destroyed by a Gaza takeover. But long after they're dead, it will be Israel that has to live with a new occupation.

It's therefore in our interest to make the ceasefire workable, before a messy invasion. Israel ought to concede to allowing Hamas to maintain oversight of its borders, alongside Israeli forces on their respective border, and international forces along the Egyptian border. I don't know what harm there could be in such a concession, as long as non-Hamas monitors still have access to everything coming in and out. And in exchange for this concession, Israel can demand that international forces be stationed within Gaza, rather than Egypt. Egypt, (which has nearly as much of an interest in concluding this mess, as it is nothing but a daily public relations disaster for Mubarak) for its part, should exert serious pressure on Hamas to accept this trade. And if it is unable to do so, Egypt should accept a multinational force in the Sinai, as a good faith gesture to make up for Hamas's intractability.

In exchange for the total cessation of rocket fire from Gaza, Israel should agree to a formalized schedule for lifting the blockade. This is in any case in Israeli interests, as many have pointed out that miserable conditions in Gaza have done nothing to damage Hamas, and may in fact have strengthened the organization.

Jason:

The message is a clear one. This is the price you pay when groups like Hamas are elected. This is the price terrorist organizations pay when you endanger the lives of citizens of other countries. The lessons and results may be more binding and constructive then permanent evacuations or cease fires that only secure the status quo and, ironically enough, contributes and guarantees more suffering and death in the future.

The region deserves peace and the people of Gaza and Israel deserve to live quietly and securely. I think its time we give war a chance.

It's hard to say what will actually achieve peace. I do hope Israel secures Gaza at least to the point that a lift of the blockade will become possible. I hope, also, that Egypt will find some way to clamp down on smuggling over their borders--not bread, but bombs and rockets and machine guns.

Interesting

I guess this is why I rarely refer to myself as "moderate" but rather "independent." I am independent because I am fine with taking, at times, radically ideological views. I'm often referred to as moderate because I don't take sides. So in a sense I am non-ideologically centrist, but more in a zig-zag fashion (from left to right, haphazardly) rather than down the center in a straight line.

America First with Caveats - Becoming an Owl

The funny thing about my political writing is that it has been, from the beginning, very public. And it's gotten better over time, which is good, and bloggier, too. You learn the tricks. The pacing. All that.

But I've also found that I have gone through sea changes in terms of my politics--largely due to the constant writing, reading, and self-evaluation that this process entails.

Early 2008 I was staunchly behind Israel, all my talking points came from an almost neoconservative perspective. I truly believed in the force of good America could provide through humanitarian intervention, and truly felt that getting out of Iraq (a war I have always opposed) would be a tragedy for the Iraqi people.

But I've had huge awakenings on all these fronts. For one, I've learned that simply "supporting" Israel is not enough. To truly support our ally, we need to be critical. I still can't stand half the online attacks on Israel, the calls for the expulsion of the Jews, etc. etc. But that really is a symptom of the online format. All the lunatics with a PC and a keyboard can make their nutty views known loud and clear. It doesn't reflect the larger debate.

Fortunately I've moved beyond much of the brash, naive blogging that goes on in the intense Israel/US vs. Terrorists blogging circles. The whole "axis of evil" mentality never sat well with me, and as soon as I began to realize that much of what I perceived was only that--a perception, not reality--I began to back off my presuppositions and sit back, and listen carefully.

One might say, I moved from Dove to Hawk to Owl, and I believe Owl is where I will remain. For one, I'm not so sure as Freddie deBoer or Daniel Larison that there is never a time for intervention. Maybe they are few and far between, and certainly taking a neo-realist approach to foreign policy--call it "America First with Caveats"--especially in this age of turmoil, seems to be sensible and not so much cold as practical and wise. But there are just wars. There is a time for aiding our allies or the weak. We just have to be extremely cautious, and conservative, about when we make that choice. I have come to the point that I believe that choice should be almost never, and that yes, it should be grounded in our self-interest in some way. I certainly no longer support democracy promotion, as I have seen its effects with clarity in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan--realms unfit for democracy unless home-grown and organic. The rule of law must precede the implementation of democracy; and the rule of law must have time to take root. A long time.

On domestic policy I've moved away from what I call the "talking-points conservatives" most of whom espouse free trade at all costs, tend toward a brazen form of debate, and shoot first, asking questions later (too late, too often). They are not so much conservative in disposition or temperament, but follow all the talking points (and heads) with careful precision. And they're rarely very interesting to argue with, so entrenched in their ideologies.

Paul Gottfried might sneeringly refer to them as "neocons" but I think that is a mis-generalization. I think TPC's works better.

I've moved into other circles, reading more of Daniel Larison and The American Conservative, finding myself at odds with some of it and agreement with some. I frequent Takimag and Culture11, read Andrew Sullivan and Ross Douthat, and numerous other thoughtful blogs with numerous viewpoints but one thing in common--they are all interesting, and present challenging opinions that don't necessarily represent the mainstream or "movement."

So the point I was getting at is that if I were to go back through all this public writing of mine I would find myself debating myself. Either that shows that I'm fickle or open-minded or both. I just think the truth is hard to pin down. Economics, foreign affairs, diplomacy, monetary policy--all of this is frought with nuance and consequence that this lone blogger can't possibly understand fully.

Honestly, look at all the brilliant economists out there disagreeing on this current recession. They're all far more informed than me on the subject. How am I supposed to make up my mind? I can read two totally opposing essays on the bailout and come away from both shaking my head, thinking "these both make sense." How can this be?

How can people become so partisan, when so little in politics is coherent or certain? I know that maintaining a conservative disposition is a valuable skill, and essential to the utilization of wisdom in politics. Beyond that, I want to know more. I want to question all these talking-points and haphazard ideological positions, and dig through the dirt of it all. I want constant revelation of my own intellectual fallibility.

The more I know, the less I know.

UPDATE: John Schwenkler from Upturned Earth leads us to Alex Massie discussing how "movement conservatives" have circled the wagons around the Cult of Reagan...

"But the Cult of Reagan actually helps explain the mess the Republican movement finds itself in. It used to be that it was the left that specialised in writing dissenters out of the movement; these days, in America at least, that's become a conservative trait. The RNC debate was illuminating in this respect: in addition to passing the Reagan litmus tests candidates were asked how many guns they own. And that was more or less it. Tick those boxes and you're a proper Republican; waver on either question and you're subject to suspicion."

This is exactly what I mean about Talking-Points-Conservatives. Read the rest to see what I'm getting at here...and for a bit more depth on the matter, read this as well...

Is Freddie finished?

It looks that way.

Has anyone started a petition?

extremism online

Freddie has responded to a comment I made in this post which essentially speaks to Freddie's generalization of pro and anti Israel arguments. And it may be an exercise in futility, this whole definition of the argument and those who make it, but let me expand a little. Freddie writes:

I have a tendency to rhetorical maximalism that is nothing else than a character flaw. I'm working on it. I am perhaps overzealous in the prosecution of my arguments. But I don't back down from anything I said in that post, and this is why I think that examining the context in which those who oppose the hardline regarding Israel operate is so important: while I may be extreme in my language, I think my side's ideas, what we advocate (rather than how I express it) is remarkably moderate in comparison to the consensus position of Israel hawks. (As opposed to Israeli hawks.)

Ultimately, this is an impossible conversation to have in some ways, because you can never really pin down who, exactly, is an extremist in any given debate. Extremism is a relative quality. It seems to me, though, that the side that is consider extreme and the side that is considered mainstream are exactly opposite. As ED points out, there are not actual holistic camps on either side that have signed any affinity statements or endorsed any particular set of beliefs, so this is necessarily general. But I find that there are no real anti-Israel extremists in what I would consider the mainstream, national conversation.

I think the important thing here is the definition of mainstream vs. non-mainstream. I think that what a lot of pro-Israel people don't ever forget, and what a lot of critics of Israel simply don't notice, is that outside the mainstream there is actually an awful lot of really vapid, hateful, over-the-top criticism of Israel that is way beyond anything reasonable critics of Israel ever suggest. There are those who spend all their time and energy criticizing Israel's human rights record, ignoring utterly the track records of any other nation, turning a blind eye to Iran, China, etc. out of some strange, obsessive need to bash Israel.

What this creates online at least is a disproportionate debate--one in which the extremists have a much louder megaphone than anyone else. You get these hard-liner Zionists on the one hand, advocating the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel, and on the other you get these hard-line anti-Zionists who want to expel the Jews and give the land back to the Palestinians (an argument I, as a North American, find difficult to espouse, since it is just a tiny bit hypocritical unless we, too, give back our land to its original inhabitants...)

Of course, Freddie is right about the mainstream discussion, and certainly there is a lot less constructive criticism of Israel in the mainstream dialogue than there ought to be--and perhaps this is a reactionary trend. Perhaps things like the UN declaring Zionism was racist have had a backlash effect. Extremes beget extremes, after all.

This is a shame, because we do need legitimate criticism of Israel. I, for one, think the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank needs to stop, and that the extremists behind the settlements are not only harming the Palestinians, they are also bringing about indirect harm to their fellow Israelis. But it's hard to say that in the current climate, and that's simply not conducive to a healthy debate.

There's a lot to admire about Israel, and hopefully someday we'll be able to say the same thing about Palestine. Two states living peacefully side-by-side is a good dream to have, and I think a lot of people in the middle feel that way. Does the mainstream conversation need to change to reflect this? Yes, it does. And we'd all do well to remember that the conversation online is usually a lot more virulent, heated, and outrageous than the conversation in the real world. So maybe a little less "rhetorical maximalism" would do us all good, though in Freddie's case at least his rhetoric, however maximalist, is at least coherent and sensible. Take a trip around the Israel/Pali blogosphere sometime. It's illuminating, to say the least...partisan to the point of inanity...

Reading List addition...

Just added a fantastic new blog "The Left Conservative" to the sidebar... Dylan Waco and Daniel Bein are contributors, and just browsing for a few minutes convinced me that this was a top notch site.

Check it out.

Google link alerts

Has anyone else noticed that Google link alerts has become totally worthless, reporting every comment, every blogroll link...dozens and dozens of posts with only a sidebar link to your site?

And then actual links don't show up?

One would think a company such as Google would be able to get this right. They have the funds...

Twas the Monday before Christmas...

Well I've been honored with a mention at the fantastic Ladyblog, where Elizabeth Nolan Brown drudges up my rather ambiguous post on social vs cultural conservatism and asks:

I’ve always thought "social conservative" and "cultural conservative" meant the same thing....So I thought I’d bring the discussion to Ladyblog. Do any of you make a distinction between ’social’ and ‘cultural’ conservatism? Or have you heard people make it? And, if so, what’s the distinction?

My response on her thread is rather messy and floundering, so if anyone has a better answer stop by Ladyblog (a Culture11 location) and air your thoughts...I admit this is one of my most difficult struggles. I view conservatism as a disposition, and a cultural disposition at that, not a set of ideologies, whereas today's social-cons tend toward a pretty defined set of ideologies. Maybe that's all the distinction I can muster...

It's a struggle because I am drawn most toward a brand of Christianity that is quite conservative--classic Roman Catholocism or Orthodox (I am still digging about the bones of my spiritual self to find what it is that Faith and God mean to me, and it is an endless struggle) and yet I'm drawn also toward political positions that generally reflect a much more liberal standpoint on such issues as gay marriage (well that's the big one, I admit.)

In other pre-Christmas happenings, John Schwenkler has moved his blog to Culture11... so go change your bookmarks and let the fact that all best blogs are moving to the same neck of the woods sink in for a while. (H/T Publius Endures)

Speaking of Publius, Mark and I (and others) have been engaging in a very healthy debate over school vouchers, though it has for the moment come to a close. In any case that has led to an exchange of blogroll additions, and exposure for yours truly to some really excellent commentary. Go check it out....

Elsewhere, please go read Jack Gillis's take on the Caroline Kennedy potential appointment and join him in his quest to repeal the 17th amendment! Probably the best commentary on the Kennedy mess I've read so far...

In any case, Merry Christmas everybody! Stay warm...

underwhelmed

Coming into this week I'm feeling a bit underwhelmed at the prospect of blogging. Perhaps this is due to the encroaching Holidays; perhaps to the still-lingering weariness of too-little sleep this weekend; or maybe it is because I am working on a larger piece and it's having the usual effect on me: writer's block--that hideous curtailer of ambition...

I'll snap out of it, I'm sure...

Re-engage, elevate...

Scott Payne has an interesting piece up on community, in which he discusses one direction he'd like to see conservatives take their politics (which gets into the Sam's Club Republican vein a little)

I would like to wax theoretical about the GOP and conservatives more broadly moving to become the party and movement that goes about reengaging and reinvigorating those considerable segments of the population who feel utterly disenfranchised. When I suggest that kind of re-engagement I mean it in more than just the economic fashion that Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat suggest in their book Grand New Party. I mean a re-engagement in the first principles of democracy that don’t necessarily swing into simply populist majority rules democracy, but the intellectual and emotional re-engagement in the ongoing discussion about what the country does and how it goes about doing it. I would like to wax optimistic about this as the responsible direction for American conservatism moving into the future, but I’m not optimistic.

Neither am I, at least not any time soon. I used to be a hawk until I began to realize the many ways in which our aggressive foreign policy has made governing here at home nearly impossible. From there I moved in the ideological direction of the paleo and crunchy cons, who seemed to fit my style of community-building, strong-families, etc. as well as my hunger for real, intellectual discussion. Just read Daniel Larison's work and then head over and read Michelle Malkin and you see the difference in tone and depth. Read The American Conservative and then go read some of the nonsense over at Pajamas Media. Read Ross Douthat and then read Charles Johnson.

This isn't to say we don't need hawks. They can, at times, push through the inertia that builds up around the school of realism.

In any case, I stray from my point. Which is....

Too much focus has been on foreign affairs these last eight years. Too much time has been spent, too much money, worrying about terror and fighting the "war" on said tactic and on its residuals Iraq, Afghanistan, et al. Conservatives have forgotten that governance extends to the home front, and that they are in a unique position to, as Scott says, re-engage Americans who feel left out. Isn't this in a sense exactly what Obama has done?

Now, as I said, I'm not optimistic, but I am heartened by the great discussion going on at least in the blogosphere--or should I say at least in some corners of the blogosphere (which is mostly populated by less-than-intellectual discussion) which seems quite intent on forging something better, more rational, more substantive...

Scott writes,

Not only do blogs have the ability to generate meaningful communities that might not have previously existed, but those communities then might be spurred to meaninginful action that could very well have wide ranging impacts.

Exactly. This has been my feeling regarding the community-building potential of blogs for some time. There is always a give and take between tradition and technology. We always put our traditions, our communities, our relationships somewhat at risk when we adopt new technologies. Our advancements, our new tools, our new infrastructures, at once open up new realms of possibility and shut down old ones. The neighborhood was never the same after the advent of the car, nor were towns after the building of the national interstate highway system. We become slowly more encapsulated within our gadgets--connected and apart.

Yet blogging, at its best, does just the reverse in a sense, too. It is no replacement for actual communitites, but it can bring together like minds who are passionate about community and help them make a difference. It can elevate the discussion.

That is what we need. Elevation...

Newsvine

I have to say, when I first started "blogging" at Newsvine I really enjoyed it. Now, not so much, and for many reasons.

Let's see, how about a list?

1. It's gotten sort of boring. The same old arguments on the same old threads by the same people.
2. Contrary to number one, the newbies don't help at all. They're typically just a recycled version of the last newbie to come in guns blazing.
3. It's really not the place to "get smarter" as the stated intent of the site proclaims. Most of the articles on the front page are garbage. I think if one were to take the top ten writers from the site you would lose 90% of the quality there.
4. Culture11 is better. More original content. You actually do get smarter there.
5. Blogging is better. There are more options (like videos) and more freedom in general.
6. The site has gotten slow.
7. And buggy.
8. The new comment editor sucks.
9. The fact that the article editor doesn't even have really any editor features at all is even more sucky.

I'll append the list as I think of more stuff to add...

The Thinkers

It appears Indiepundit is a "Thinkers" blog.

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

H/T -- The New Centrist (also one of The Thinkers...)

Words to the wise

Jac hits the proverbial nail on the head:

If we're going to be skeptical of the mainstream media's analysis, we should be even more skeptical of bloggers' critiques of the mainstream media's analysis.

This was in regards to the media coverage of the Mumbai catastrophe, but I think it's good advice to anyone getting their information from the blogosphere. Blogs are wonderful places to find information or analysis or opinion. A good blog will link out to all sorts of relevant information, and will boil all that information down into something somewhat more approachable. There is a frenetic quality to blogging and to reading blogs, a sort of disjointedness that appeals to those hungry for lots of news, clips, tidbits, little morsels of wisdom, the occasional brilliant analysis or prediction.

But I think many people place too much faith in the hands of the bloggers they admire.

Certainly if you want real news, go read the New York Times or CNN. Don't come to my blog for original stories--just my own, often-flawed opinions. I love blogs for what they are, and they provide a new way for us to gather knowledge. I love Wikipedia for similar reasons, but I certainly don't trust it to do anything more than get me started down a path of revelation.

Perhaps the old cautionary wisdom holds true: Trust, but verify.