Of Course Blogs Are Boring And Predictable - Road to the Middle Class

Unless the point is that Joseph Rago is thankful that he is an “assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal” by virtue of being editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Review, you know, like the Pharisee, who was thankful he was not like other men, publicans and sinners.

When someone drags Henry James into the argument, then you know that it’s time to check Weather.com for snow warnings.

Rego makes the startling point that political blogs are “predictable,” and therefore “excruciatingly boring.” “[R]ight-leaning blogs exhaustively pursue second-order distractions... Leftward fatuities too are easily found.” No kidding!

Of course blogs are derivative; of course they rely on the mainstream media for their reportage; of course 97.8 percent of blog content is pure dreck. Yet blogs themselves are not the worst of the worst. I would suggest that the comments section of blogs is where you go if you really want to wallow in the gutter.

The great boon of the blogosphere, for conservatives, is that for the first time we have a political community, a place where we can rehearse conservative opinions and find a resonance. It’s something that liberals have had for decades with the MSM, National Public Radio, and the faculty lounge. It’s a link in the food chain between genuinely original thinkers, best-selling popularizers, politicians, and the voters. It gets conservative ideas worked over and given life.

So it’s all boring and predictable. But then so, if you like, is a baseball game, and so is religious ritual. So also is the monthly non-profit board meeting you faithfully attend.

Blogs are like every other technical advance of the modern era. No advance ever solves anything. It just raises the stakes.

Blogs may be boring and predictable. But then so are editorials at the New York Times.

Blogs are now part of the national political conversation.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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