March 31, 2005
Note to Powerline
Dear Powerline crew (re: your post entitled The Global Left's Vision of Blogging :
I see that your trackbacks are still turned off (@#$%& spammers!). I just finished a post yesterday entitled: Blogs and Libertarianism. Link:
Excerpt:
One final thought before I go earn my daily bread. As a small-l libertarian, I am greatly heartened by the rise of the blogospere. Why? Again, let's look back at the architecture. Journalists have readers. Bloggers have ... bloggers! Again, the devil's advocate says: nonsense! Bloggers have blog readers (or lurkers, to dredge up old Usenet terminology). I am quite willing to admit that many blog readers are content to remain just that. But the Welcome Mat to join the ranks is forever and always there to join the blogging ranks. An intermediate rank between blogger and blog reader is blog commenter. Bloggers love good commenters! Bill Whittle credits getting his start as a commenter on Rachel Lucas' and Kim du Toit's sites. Frank Martin got encouragement as a commenter on Stephen Green's site. And Hugh Hewitt I believe has got be credited with encouraging more bloggers to get started than any other blogger with his Vox Blogoli series, where he introduces a discussion thread and vows to post a link to every response he receives.
End Excerpt.
To the point: I am a staunch supporter of the Bush Doctrine. The saplings of liberty are abloom all over. The Bush Doctrine is a "hard power" doctrine. Juxtaposed to this, is their a "soft power" doctrine afoot? As we all know, European and American elites are always whining about the use of soft power to effect geopolitical results. Witness the EU/Iran nuclear issue. Well, in my opinions, the elites need not worry: the soft power afoot, right now, are the blogs.
Blogs are effecting results that no amount of Hilton and Four Seasons diplomacy ever could. For anyone who bounces from Powerline to Instapundit to Belmont Club to Roger Simon knows not only that there are bloggers in Afghanistan, the Ukraine, Zimbabwe, Iran, Iraq, Khyrgystan, and the like, but that their eyewitness reporting and editorializing are moving geopolitical mountains. Just as one can opine that without the huge military successes in Iraq and Afghanistan there would not be the blossoming of democracy throughout the Middle East and beyond, one can also opine that those successes would not be forthcoming without the primary source bloggers to "unfilter" the MSM delivery of news. Peoples are organizing around these poles of liberty. Is George Bush enjoying an accident of history? Sure, but who cares? Bill Clinton enjoyed the accidental contemporaneousness of the dot com boom.
In a sense, nothing is broken. On the contrary, things are "unbreaking" at lightning speed. I'm just not sure this genie can be put back into the bottle, despite even the most heroic efforts of the European and American elites.
Keep up the good work!!!
Kenneth Greenlee
Posted by nopundit at March 31, 2005 01:15 PM