Eavesdropping
You may know that I also post regularly over at a site called Donklephant (not my name choice), which strives to strengthen the center in modern American political life. It's not a wimpy conflict-avoiding center, or else I wouldn't bother. It can get cantankerous and robust, which is as it should be.
The main man over there is Justin Gardner. I don't know him except on line, but he's a very decent fellow with a good heart and even though his background and sympathies are all to the left (from where I stand), I am certain he sits down to the Internet and tries to write to the tune of higher virtues than partisan positions. He tries to keep the long view of things, and look out for the ultimate good of the people and the country.
I know how difficult it is to look at a particular case and not take note of certain personalities you despise and mark and which side of it pleases them most. I have to swallow hard sometimes before speaking up for something I believe is right, even if demagogue X and blogger Y, who has savaged me in the past, also applaud it.
I suspect Justin's a good bit younger than me, but he already has the quality of a statesman, something so rare in the blog world: like Peel, when he suspended the Corn Laws in 1826 amid public unrest to keep the English poor from starving. The agricultural faction among the MPs accused him of bowing to the mob, he shot back, "Sir, there are two sorts of courage which may be displayed in respect to them. There is the courage to refuse to accede to such demands at all. And there is another kind of courage -- the courage to do that which in our conscience we may believe to be just and right, disregarding all the clamour with which these demands may be accompanied."
If Peel had chosen a stronger verb than "may believe to be just and right" to hinge that on, it would be one of the great things ever said in politics. As it is, it's good enough to hang above the computer screen of any online writer with a bent for polemics.
So I'm pretty much the only "conservative" posting daily over there, and I'm a damned poor example of that genre, but it's the hat that everyone keeps putting back on my head every time I try to take it off, so I accept it. Funny thing is, most of the commenters seem to break to the center-right, and they're an informed, thoughtful bunch. If It ever falls apart, I want the commenters.
But Justin is himself an active commenter on some of the leftward blogs he's used to reading, and he usually seems to link his comments back to Donklephant. At least from the small sample of blog reactions to Donklephant, the idea of a centrist dialogue is much more acceptable on the right than on the left. To the degree the right has noticed the site, it's been politely applauded. But it's been savaged from the left.
Again, that makes sense in the overall political scene. When you're behind in the score (as thge left seems to be every election day), you don't want more compromise, more bridge-building.
So I don't follow Justin's career as a poster on left blogs, but sometimes it develops into a row that spills back into the site I share with him. Here's an example. And when that happens I feel awkward, like when you go to a friend's house and he and his wife start a plate-hurling argument right in front of you.
But I can't help noticing how brutal are the intermural battles of the left. Like medieval Venetian gang wars, all stiletto and jugular. In the fight cited above, one character keeps coming back to post and tell his rival why the rival isn't worth the trouble of answering. I once shared a house with a very kind jazz musician whose girlfriend broke up with him and called him about 5 times a night for a week to harangue him for hours about why he wasn't worth one minute of her time. Sort of like that.
And how revealing, perhaps. In the thread above, the smug commenter sums up the gist of a disagreement thus:
Wow, indeed. That's everything wrong with the modern left in America. That's why, while George W. Bush's approval slouches toward single digits, the same polls reveal that, if you reran the 2004 election today, Kerry still would lose.
The "progressives" are a high school clique. "You didn't get the Simpsons joke. You're not one of the cool kids." The Red States don't get the Simpsons jokes, either.
The main man over there is Justin Gardner. I don't know him except on line, but he's a very decent fellow with a good heart and even though his background and sympathies are all to the left (from where I stand), I am certain he sits down to the Internet and tries to write to the tune of higher virtues than partisan positions. He tries to keep the long view of things, and look out for the ultimate good of the people and the country.
I know how difficult it is to look at a particular case and not take note of certain personalities you despise and mark and which side of it pleases them most. I have to swallow hard sometimes before speaking up for something I believe is right, even if demagogue X and blogger Y, who has savaged me in the past, also applaud it.
I suspect Justin's a good bit younger than me, but he already has the quality of a statesman, something so rare in the blog world: like Peel, when he suspended the Corn Laws in 1826 amid public unrest to keep the English poor from starving. The agricultural faction among the MPs accused him of bowing to the mob, he shot back, "Sir, there are two sorts of courage which may be displayed in respect to them. There is the courage to refuse to accede to such demands at all. And there is another kind of courage -- the courage to do that which in our conscience we may believe to be just and right, disregarding all the clamour with which these demands may be accompanied."
If Peel had chosen a stronger verb than "may believe to be just and right" to hinge that on, it would be one of the great things ever said in politics. As it is, it's good enough to hang above the computer screen of any online writer with a bent for polemics.
So I'm pretty much the only "conservative" posting daily over there, and I'm a damned poor example of that genre, but it's the hat that everyone keeps putting back on my head every time I try to take it off, so I accept it. Funny thing is, most of the commenters seem to break to the center-right, and they're an informed, thoughtful bunch. If It ever falls apart, I want the commenters.
But Justin is himself an active commenter on some of the leftward blogs he's used to reading, and he usually seems to link his comments back to Donklephant. At least from the small sample of blog reactions to Donklephant, the idea of a centrist dialogue is much more acceptable on the right than on the left. To the degree the right has noticed the site, it's been politely applauded. But it's been savaged from the left.
Again, that makes sense in the overall political scene. When you're behind in the score (as thge left seems to be every election day), you don't want more compromise, more bridge-building.
So I don't follow Justin's career as a poster on left blogs, but sometimes it develops into a row that spills back into the site I share with him. Here's an example. And when that happens I feel awkward, like when you go to a friend's house and he and his wife start a plate-hurling argument right in front of you.
But I can't help noticing how brutal are the intermural battles of the left. Like medieval Venetian gang wars, all stiletto and jugular. In the fight cited above, one character keeps coming back to post and tell his rival why the rival isn't worth the trouble of answering. I once shared a house with a very kind jazz musician whose girlfriend broke up with him and called him about 5 times a night for a week to harangue him for hours about why he wasn't worth one minute of her time. Sort of like that.
And how revealing, perhaps. In the thread above, the smug commenter sums up the gist of a disagreement thus:
Wow.
You still don’t seem to grasp the Simpson’s reference. I suppose that this is representative of the entire conversation; we make points that you don’t seem to understand, so you ignore them.
Fascinating.
Wow, indeed. That's everything wrong with the modern left in America. That's why, while George W. Bush's approval slouches toward single digits, the same polls reveal that, if you reran the 2004 election today, Kerry still would lose.
The "progressives" are a high school clique. "You didn't get the Simpsons joke. You're not one of the cool kids." The Red States don't get the Simpsons jokes, either.
