Thursday, June 25, 2009
Moderation
...as in forum moderation, not “moderation in all things”.
My job has a lot of hurry up and wait elements to it, so I’ve had to find ways to entertain myself in the downtime. One of those ways has been an internet forum that I’ve been a part of for about six years now. For four of those years, I’ve been a moderator.
A couple months ago, the owner of the site decided to clean house and basically booted the entire moderating team. Skipping over the irrelevant details, the entire moderating team and ninety percent of the membership up and left for a new site. I am the owner of the new site, and my role as moderator has evolved significantly from my role on the old board.
On the old site, the moderating team operated more-or-less as a democracy. Well, more of a democracy within an oligarchy. Moderating action required significant consensus, and was very slow as a result. In hindsight, I realized that some rules, against trolling for example, were going completely unenforced because the moderating team could not come to a consensus on what exactly constituted a troll. No one was willing to stick their neck out and say “that there is obviously a troll, so I’m going to smack them down”. Everyone waited for everyone else to act, and as a result, the board atmosphere devolved significantly and around election time became actively hostile in some cases.
On the new site, after the drama of getting booted from the old place wore off, people went back to their old ways pretty quickly. The moderating team had recognized the need to change the tone, but quickly their old ways of the paralyzing need for consensus returned as well.
I hesitated for a bit… and then decided that despite all the talk about the board belonging to the community, it’s got my name on it. I feel responsible for it. And if someone needs to stick their neck out to enforce some rules, that someone has to be me.
I started unilaterally disciplining obvious trolls and NSFW vulgarity. I’ve done my best to be even-handed in it, and I think I’ve succeeded.
What surprised me was the community reaction to my unilateral action. I expected the typical reaction to someone stepping outside their bounds and acting as a dictator - resistance and disobedience. What I got was compliance, sighs of relief, and gratitude.
The entire tone of the board has changed. People are nicer to each other, arguments don’t devolve into name-calling anymore, and as another mod pointed out, people are generally behaving better and the overall number of mod actions we’ve needed to take have dropped significantly.
What fascinates me in all of this is that it is a real-life analogy to a libertarian government and a small, powerful, centralized, mostly unaccountable government like that advocated by Mencius Moldbug.
In the libertarian scenario, the government was weak, and people were allowed to mostly do as they pleased. As a result, Gresham’s Law took over, and the bad apples began to crowd out the good. The populace perceived that the lines of unacceptable behavior were vague and unenforceable, so those lines were pushed further and further back until they were virtually gone. The entire environment degraded as a result.
In the small, powerful monarchical scenario, the worst offenders were shut down quickly and ruthlessly, the moderate offenders immediately backed off, and the decent people came out of the woodwork because the environment was now more inviting. That seems to be Mencius’ main argument for such a government - have few basic fair common-sense rules, enforce them vigorously, otherwise leave people alone, and you will get a well-functioning society. I’m fascinated to see that happen here, in a micro-society that is an internet forum. I’m not even seeing much resistance to my new arbitrary standards. With a few exceptions, everyone else seems to understand well what a troll is, and when they know they are going to get called on it, they don’t do it.
However, I also think about how easily it could be otherwise with someone else in charge (pats self on back), and how easily power corrupts. There is one member in particular who I would love to never see come around again. He is rude, obnoxious, and an all-around worthless human being. He tries very hard to push the limits, and then he publicly complains about mistreatment while misrepresenting the story to make himself look like the good guy. Dealing with this person fairly and justly tests me regularly, when I’d just prefer to see him gone.
Similarly, it’s not like I have God-given authority here, but it is clear that it would be both easy and disastrous to moderate in an unfair way. In Mencius’ world, rulers do have God-given power, and their successors are typically chosen by heredity rather than by qualification. The potential to go from a good ruler to a bad one is significant.
Anyway, I’m finding the whole experiment fascinating, and I’m proud of what I’ve built. It’s not for everyone, as it is populated mostly by young males and the typical subject matter reflects that demographic. But it’s my internet home for many hours a week, almost like Cheers, a place to hang out where everyone knows your name.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Letter to the Editor
In response to this article:
Nock is my favorite author, and his philosophy has literally changed my life in very significant ways. Thank you for writing this article, and for putting it on the web. The more exposure he gets, the better for all of us.
I take issue with some of your conclusions though.
“And that is why the Right is in so much better shape than it was during Nock’s time, even as liberals are mounting a statist revival. ... Moreover, the American people are not nearly as Neolithic as Nock believed, proof of which can be found in the slow and uneven unraveling of statism since his death, as with the still-unfinished Reagan Revolution. ...Nock was content with failure, his heirs are not.”
Nock was absolutely right. He was not content with failure so much as he was accepting of the inevitable. I don’t see how you can assert that there has been a “slow and uneven unraveling of statism since his death”, when Europe has become more explicitly socialist in that time, and here at home, budgets, taxation, regulation, and government intrusiveness have all increased exponentially. When we elect a Republican president, we get expanding budgets, No Child Left Behind, and Medicare Part D. This isn’t an unraveling of statism, this is just a slightly slower march towards it. Then that very same electorate giddily elects Obama, who makes no effort whatsoever to hide his collectivist world-view. I see no evidence at all of any significant long-term movement away from statism, in fact, long-term, we’ve been sliding towards it rather rapidly, exactly as Nock predicted. From his point of view, and mine, we have no real opposition in this country anymore. There are progressive Democrats, and Republicans that are virtually forced to campaign and legislate as progressives in order to stay relevant, because that is what the people want.
I applaud your efforts and the efforts of others at NR to continue saying “stop”, but I see it as a compromised, nearly wasted effort. Real conservatives, like Nock, are selling an ideology that is old and stale, involving such passe concepts as self-reliance, hard work, manners, and the primacy of the individual over the state. The populace of this country has spent 70 years marinating in progressive ideology, and the words of a true old-school conservative sound bizarre and foreign. You folks at NR, while fighting the good fight, have to tailor your message to keep it acceptable to the populace, meaning that whether due to actual belief or sheer practicality, old-school Nockian conservatism doesn’t get much play. You are constrained to the realm of practical politics, while Nock threw politics out and entered the realm of pure ideas, appealing to what is right and what is best regardless of how it would be received.
Nock insisted on seeing things as they are, and living accordingly. Early on, he saw what would be the result of mixing democracy and progressive populism, and all events since then have proven him right. He focused his efforts on the Remnant, because he knew they and only they would stay true to what is right and good through thick and thin. Any exposure Nock gets these days is a good thing, because like echoes, his words reverberate through time, bucking up the Remnant, reminding them that they are not alone, and encouraging them to continue doing what is right even in the face of opposition. That will only become harder and harder, as yet another generation grows up with a statist status quo, and with real conservatism becoming a more and more distant cultural memory.
Sincerely,
American Farmer
Friday, May 01, 2009
Monarchy
I’ve been reading Unqualified Reservations lately, in part because some of his ideas seem to be a direct evolution of Albert Jay Nock’s philosophy. It’s hard to find people these days that think like Nock, so when I find them, I tend to latch on and read voraciously until there’s nothing left. Then it takes me awhile to digest that information, and as it percolates, I tend to go back and forth on what it all means.
The main argument at UR is that democracy is deeply flawed in many ways. The high level summary of the problem is that it inherently leads to socialism – it is a slippery slope that is inevitable and unstoppable. The root cause of this is two-fold.
First, dividing power amongst a large group of people results in subsets of that group coming together to grab as much power as they can in order to prey on other subsets of the larger group. Democracy inherently creates an incentive to this behavior.
Second, even though we say that democracy puts power in the hands of the populace, the reality is that a large fraction of the populace doesn’t care enough to wield this power in a responsible fashion. They are very susceptible to arguments from authority, and thus those in authority wield an exceptionally large amount of power in a democracy. As the author of UR puts it, in a democracy, universities manufacture policy and journalists manufacture consent. Everyone wants to be smart and hip, so they agree with the guys in the ivory tower that are by definition the smartest guys in the room. They have letters after their names, you know. But again, the problem is that the ivory tower guys have every incentive to manufacture policy that benefits themselves – such as central economic planning, a massive edifice of state-directed education, global warming and other pseudo-scientific hysteria, etc. What was ivory tower theory 25 years ago is now part of our common societal knowledge. Ideas inevitably flow from Harvard to Main Street, with the New York Times and CNN pounding them into our heads day after day. Thus, ever leftward we go.
Sadly, I can’t argue with any of this. Democracy IS deeply flawed, and I think he’s pegged the core of the issue.
The next main argument at UR is that monarchy is substantially preferable to democracy.
Uhhhhh….. what?
Yes, monarchy. The author calls himself a Jacobite and a reactionary, terms coined back in the day when democracy was an upstart movement against the established monarchies of Europe. His argument is that a small, powerful government like a monarchy is greatly preferable to the large, sprawling, capricious government one gets with democracy.
That much is true, but I think he mischaracterizes monarchy. The best monarchy is better than a bad democracy, for sure. But what happens when the monarch dies, the inbred moronic son takes the crown, and suddenly left-handers and red-heads are enemies of the state?
Democracy can be arbitrary and capricious, but it is usually moderated by the law of averages. Monarchy is also arbitrary and capricious, but it has little to stop its excesses. The populace is at the mercy of one person and the willingness of that person’s agents to carry out their will. How is that better? At least democracy is more-or-less predictable.
The author of UR declares conservatives to be well-intentioned but fundamentally misguided. He says that we believe in democracy but ignore the fact that it will always, without exception, degrade into socialism. Basically, we ask the mob to act as it would under a libertarian monarchy and are constantly surprised when they refuse to cooperate.
I don’t quite see it that way. We want a “good” democracy, in the same way that he wants a “good” monarchy. The way I see it though, a good monarchy is one fish bone away from a bad monarchy. I once heard a Russian proverb – the best possible government is a good tsar, the worst possible government is a bad tsar. I see no way to keep a bad monarch from power, short of armed insurrection. And even with a good monarch, absolute power corrupts.
A good democracy may be guaranteed to degrade, but it won’t do so overnight. We know we will wake up tomorrow under more-or-less the same conditions of today. It took two hundred years for our democracy to degrade into socialism. The fact that it happened doesn’t automatically mean that monarchy is better, only that it’s time for a reset.
Regardless, UR is fascinating reading, particularly in all of the primary historical source material that he links. I wish I had time to read it all. Just be careful not to fall into the trap of accepting theory as reality, the same logical flaw that many scientific-minded libertarians (including myself) have fallen into at one time or another.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Arlen Specter
...is switching parties. That gives the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
We are good and truly screwed.
In 1994, the filibuster saved us from a huge mistake, and paved the way for 12 years of Republican dominance. Not that those 12 years were entirely rosy, but when you look at them with nationalized health care on both ends, they look pretty damn good.
Now, there’s nothing in the way. We’re looking FDR levels of political power in the face, and I have no illusions that the Supreme Court will issue even a peep in protest.
I hope for a revolt in 2010 similar to that in 1994, but I don’t know if we’ll get it. And even so, much irreversible damage can be done between now and then.
Hang on to your hats, it’s going to be a wild ride.
Tea Parties
I’ve been trying to understand my gut feeling toward tea parties for quite awhile now, and I think I’ve finally figured it out. I feel the same way about them as Nock did about women’s suffrage – I don’t see how it’ll do any harm, but I don’t think it’ll do any good either. Being a fundamentally lazy person, I’m not inclined to put any effort into something that I don’t think will do any good.
Protests in general seem to be a way for the masses to express themselves. Dare I say that civilized people don’t stand on street corners with hand-made signs, chanting slogans? I’ve gotten the impression that these tea parties have had an above average share of decent people in attendance, but they’ve had their share of freaks and idiots too.
My parents attended a local tea party. They reported back that there were several people there open-carrying in violation of state law, and wearing t-shirts that basically dared the police to arrest them. I’ve gotten the impression that that sort of over-the-top behavior was not at all uncommon as these tea parties. Add in the fact that the Ron Paul nutter crowd seems to have come out in force, and you’ve got a mass movement of decent people mixed in with a bunch of weirdos.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, and mass movements are right once in awhile too. This mass movement is right on most issues, but participating in it still feels icky to me. Let the masses have their fun, I can think of worse ways to express themselves. Arson and vandalism, for example, which is the usual result of this many leftists congregating in one place.
I think the right in this country is in a dangerous place right now. The moderates are still in love with Obama. The mid-right has no leadership. The far-right is recognizing that there is no true opposition party in this country, and they’re becoming disillusioned by the faux opposition that the Republicans have been providing. The tea parties are the far-right reminding both parties that they still exist, and that they won’t be ignored. But now that the fifteen minutes of fame is over, the Democrats are still going to ram health care “reform” through without debate. Nothing has changed.
So…. What now? The best plan I’ve come up with is to make some popcorn, watch the fireworks from a distance, and bury gold coins in the back yard. It’s not the most satisfying plan, but the tsunami that is the will of the masses will not be denied. They turned out in droves to elect a socialist, and now they’re getting exactly what they asked for. If I knew of an effective way to oppose them, I’d do it. In the meantime, I’ll go back to training the horses and tending the orchard.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Appomattox
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of traveling to a friend’s wedding in Virginia. I had never really spent any time in the state before, having only been there twice before on business, both times very briefly. I love visiting new places, just observing the flora, fauna, geology, etc. But places like Virginia, places steeped in history, are even more fascinating.
As I was planning my route from Richmond to Lynchburg, I found two routes that were about equally long. Then, I saw it.
One of the routes went through Appomattox.
I’m a history junkie. Places like that have a special power to me – they are tangible reminders of people and events that shape who we are today. Yes, I would go out of my way to travel through Appomattox, if necessary.
The trip went smoothly, and I approached the area with anticipation. I didn’t expect to get out and explore after my long journey, just being there and knowing the historical significance of the place was enough for me.
Right outside of town, I saw a sign – a large picture of Grant and Lee, extending their hands to one another, with the caption “Welcome to Appomattox, Where Our Nation Was Reunited.”
My jaw dropped. Reunited?
They sanitized it. They sanitized it!
I drove further, and my dismay increased. “Turn here to buy cheap plastic souvenirs!”
GAH! They turned it into a tourist trap!
Then suddenly I realized – I should have known. I should have expected it. And why not? There’s money to be made!
I had to spend some time thinking before I could decide exactly what it was that irritated me so much about this whole thing, the sign in particular.
To many people, the Civil War is a simple good vs evil morality play. I can’t quite look at it that way anymore, as the north was not wholly good, nor was the south wholly evil.
Some in the northern armies fought to free the slaves. Others fought because they were conscripted. Many were as racist as those in the south.
Some in the southern armies fought to protect their right to keep slaves. However, only 25 % of the white population owned slaves in the first place. So what were the other 75% fighting for? Presumably to defend their homes and their honor, and to preserve their right to self-determination.
I have very mixed feelings about the south. I admire antebellum southern culture greatly, in its rural, genteel, cultured way, everything that I want to be as an American Farmer. Then of course there is the inkblot of slavery that taints it all.
I heard the civil war described in the following manner – the north was morally in the right, but the south was legally in the right. At the time, the United States was still a group of united states, governed by a central federal government in Washington DC, but still existing as independent entities choosing to be part of a larger whole. What is to be done when one of those entities no longer chooses to be a part of the whole? Legally, I don’t see how it can be justified that force should be used to prevent the separation. Thus, the south was legally in the right.
Even so, the north was right to end slavery, even if it meant going to war to do it. What is right trumps what is legal.
“Where Our Nation Was Reunited”, with two men shaking hands, glosses over the fact this was a war in which half a million people died. This was not where the nation was reunited, this was where one half of the nation formalized the brutal conquest of the other half. Appomattox was not a picnic or a business agreement, this was the end of the line for a proud army that outfought the north at almost every turn. I have great respect for them and their martial prowess, even as I am glad that they were defeated.
It seems to me that the south no longer has pride in itself, not the unhealthy racist pride or “the south shall rise again” pride, but pride as a distinct culture with much to its credit. It appears that because of the legacy of slavery, the entire culture has been thrown out, the baby with the bathwater. In my time there, it almost seemed that this culture had been eroded down to nothing, surely in part by homogenization and blandness brought by the influx of northerners to warmer climates. So it’s entirely possible that much of the current population doesn’t even have any idea what they have lost.
The civil war was clearly a triumph for the good guys. Slavery was ended. However, we must remember what was lost in the process, for some important things were in fact lost. Primarily, we started down the path to big centralized government the minute we decided that we are no longer a voluntary collection of states bound together in our mutual interests. The movement didn’t really take off until 50 years later, but the stage was set, and the result became inevitable. This is how history progresses, in fits and starts, with unintended consequences that show up decades later.
I’m glad to have driven through Appomattox, as my experience there will likely play into how much effort I put into visiting historical sites in the future. To stand at the site of a great event, surrounded by a circus and by people who don’t care to remember, is nearly sacrilegious to me. Perhaps in the future I will stay home and read another book instead.
Back
I’m back. Sort of.
The problem with blogging is that after awhile, one feels obligated to do it. After stressing for two weeks about not having the time to blog, I finally asked myself why I was letting this voluntary thing cause so much anxiety in my life. Thus, the abrupt shutdown of the blog.
I’ve gotten a bit more of a handle on things at the moment. Well, not really, given that it is now the beginning of summer and farm duties are ramping up. But what I do have is a different perspective on blogging. I’m going to write when I feel like it. It could be months between posts. It probably will be at times.
In other words, this is an essay repository, not something where I expect to have regular readers. Bluntly, it’s for me, not you. You are more than welcome to read, comment, etc, but for my own sanity, I have to prevent a feeling of obligation.
So with that in mind, here we go again.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Apology
I didn’t intend to let this blog lapse over the holidays. It just happened.
Now that I’m back to work, with school back in session and my wife due in a month, finding the time and energy to devote to writing just does not seem to be happening. If anyone is still checking in, a month after the last post, I appreciate your faith in me, but I have to say that I’m not sure when I will post again.
I hope Nock becomes an inspiration to other people in the same way that he is to me, but I am afraid that this is not the right time for me to be actively working toward that end. Now is the time for me to be looking more inward, to my family, seeing to their needs and educating them. Hopefully at some point in the future, when my kids are older and more independent, I can take up this mantle again and do a better job of it.
One final comment for now: I bought myself a Christmas present, The Forgotten Man by Amity Shales. It is a history of the Great Depression, written without the FDR rah-rah. I think except for a couple minor cases, the author did a good job of presenting facts rather than opinion, and that she did not go out of her way to bash FDR when it was unwarranted. His actions speak for themselves. My intent in reading it was to better understand the Great Depression in the context of our newly elected president and our current recession, with the hopes of predicting where we are going economically. While I am convinced that Obama took much of his political strategy straight from FDR’s playbook, I am no longer concerned that he will be driving us off a cliff into another depression. That feat required monumentally stupid trade barriers being erected, as well as actions by the Federal Reserve that were exactly opposite what was necessary to preserve economic health. Trade barriers are a possibility, but my experience has been that while the Fed is not always on the side of the angels, neither is their grasp of macro-economics as superficial as it was in the 1930s. We are in for rough times, certainly. But not Great Depression rough. This book was a valuable history lesson for me, and a fascinating study in the evolution of the modern progressive movement. I highly recommend it.
Thank you for reading.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Superfluous (Chapter 3)
The art of aristocrats, the art of enriching life.
- Mary M. Colum
From the book:
Another reason why good literature was more readily accessible [in Nock’s youth] than now is that the proportion of literacy in our population was much lower, and publishers were not under such heavy economic pressure to block up the access to good literature with trash. In Massachusetts, where literacy would be presumably highest, there were nearly a hundred thousand persons unable to read or write. Things were no better in Connecticut, where one-tenth of the child-population got no schooling at all; and it would be fair to suppose that in the more newly-settled regions of the country the level of literacy would be very considerably lower. One might assume that as the level of literacy rose, the level of general intelligence would rise with it, and consequently that the economic demand for good literature would also rise. This, roughly, was Mr. Jefferson’s idea, and indeed it has always been at the root of our system of free public instruction for everyone. It has, however, somehow failed to work out according to expectation. The level of literacy has been pushed up very nearly to the practicable limit, but the level of general intelligence seems not to have risen appreciably, and the economic demand for good literature is apparently no greater in relation to a population of a hundred and thirty million than it was to one that was going on sixty million; in fact, one would say it is much less. The reason for this is plain enough; there is nothing recondite about it. In his view of literacy, Mr. Jefferson, was only half right. He was obviously right in premising that no illiterate person can read; but he was guilty of a thundering non distributio medii in his tacit conclusion that any literate person can read. On the contrary, as I discovered as long ago as my undergraduate days, very few literate persons are able to read, very few indeed. This can be proven by observation and experiment of the simplest kind. I do not mean that the great majority are unable to read intelligently; I mean that they are unable to read at all – unable, that is, to carry away from a piece of printed matter anything like a correct idea of its content. They are more or less adept at passing printed matter through their minds, after a fashion, especially such matter as is addressed to mere sensation, (and knowledge of this fact is nine-tenths of a propagandist’s equipment), but this is not reading. Reading implies the use of the reflective faculty, and very few have that faculty developed much beyond the anthropoid stage, let alone processing it at a stage of development which makes reading practicable.
This is a long excerpt, but I feel it is important to quote to whole thing to get a good grasp of what Nock is saying. There are quite a few times in Nock’s writings where he uses a very familiar word in a rather unconventional way. In this case, “reading” and “literacy” are words that he uses in his own way, and then makes his definition more explicit later on.
Universal literacy has been held up as a baseline goal for a civilized society for a couple hundred years. We’ve pretty much reached that goal now, with the exception of a few people that fall through the cracks, and a few other people that are physically or mentally handicapped.
Nock is the first person I’ve ever seen to stop and ask – why is universal literacy assumed to be a good thing, and do the experimental results bear out the presuppositions?
The simple act of asking this question proves that Nock is approaching the issue from an entirely different point of view than what we do today. Even though many of us reject progressive political theory, we are unaware exactly how much progressive sociological thought we have absorbed and take for granted. In my case, at least, this is one of those situations.
Progressive sociological thought puts forth the notion that all men are improvable, and that society, through public or private educational systems, should have a hand in improving them. Being literate is a prerequisite to having the ability to learn other things and to be educated, so universal literacy should be a primary goal of any society.
Nock’s contention is that the ability to read has no bearing whatsoever on the ability to think, and that without the ability to think, the ability to read is at best pointless and at worst detrimental to individuals. Also implicit in his statements is that the ability to think is not something of which all men are capable. Expecting everyone to be improvable to the point of being truly literate, sentient beings is folly.
This idea was initially hard for me to accept, given that I know quite a few literate, intelligent people. However, with time I began to realize that Nock is holding people to a higher standard. Being “smart” today means one has gone to school, one has a degree in some impressive field or another, etc. I think about all of the people I know that get classified as “smart”, and start to look at them from Nock’s perspective. How many have an interest in thinking, as opposed to simply memorizing things and applying algorithms? This I think is commonly substituted for intelligence today. One person’s knowledge base of field-specific trivia is larger than another’s, so that person is defined to be “smarter”. The ability to critically analyze that information and draw true, useful conclusions from it is largely ignored. By Nock’s criteria, I know very few literate, intelligent people. I also come away from this exercise fully agreeing with him that the majority of people are incapable of or uninterested in this sort of thought.
Nock’s examples of the downsides of universal literacy are the increasing rarity of good literature as publishing houses begin to cater to the tastes of the masses, increased advertisements everywhere as companies begin to use a new form of communication to influence the weak-minded, and an increased danger from propagandists who see a similar opportunity to that of advertisers.
I did a quick check to see how far this trend as come. City Journal has a circulation of about 10,000 issues, quarterly. National Review’s circulation is about 150,000 issues, bi-weekly. Cosmopolitan has a circulation of about 3,000,000 issues, monthly. Maxim has a circulation of about 2,500,000 issues, monthly. That’s right, two percent of the entire population of the country reads either Cosmo or Maxim every month. City Journal readers are barely a blip on the radar.
This is what universal literacy has brought us. Billboards along highways, an audience for the Huffington Post, and “What men think about SEX” in grocery store checkout lanes so you can get the birds and the bees conversation with your kids out of the way early. Universal literacy has its economic upsides - certainly our economy wouldn’t be where it is today without the ability of the average Joe to read and follow basic instructions. Culturally, universal literacy has increased the speed at which we race to the lowest cultural denominator.
As usual, Nock does not make any recommendations or prescribe any remedies. He just points out facts. The rest is left as an exercise to the reader.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Farewell
I am, at heart, a scientist. Having even one intellectual hair out of place nags at me until I fix it. Sometimes fixing that one little nagging thing results in one’s entire intellectual edifice crashing down.
I found Kim’s site long ago, maybe a year or so after Kim started blogging. I had entered corporate America, and much to my chagrin, I discovered that it was mind-numbing boring ninety percent of the time. Luckily, they provided me with this magic box and a connection to the rest of the world, so I could simultaneously entertain myself and pretend to be working.
As I explored the internet looking for something to read, I ran across Rachel Lucas’ blog. I remember having to look up “blog” on an on-line dictionary, just to figure out what it was I was reading. Ah, we were so innocent then…..
One thing led to another, and I ended up reading Kim’s site. Then Connie’s site.
Then one day I responded to a cryptic blog post asking for resumes for a secret project. I figured, what the heck? Nothing to lose, everything to gain.
And that’s how I got to know Kim and Connie.
Unfortunately, the project never got off the ground, but I still remember the hope and optimism I had for those few months. An end to the drudgery of corporate America! A work environment that respects the importance I place on homeschooling! It sounded like heaven on earth. As it stands, I’m still chained to my desk. But even having the hope of escape for a few months is a precious memory for me.
At the time, I was a pretty doctrinaire libertarian. I had a theoretical construct built in my mind as to how the world should work, and it would work great if everyone were just like me. And that’s the part that bothered me – libertarianism seemed like a great theory that fails the reality test. Start putting real people, with real foibles and quirks, into that theory, and all of a sudden the theory starts to fall apart. The theoretical scientist in me wasn’t bothered by such trivialities. The practical part of me, luckily, the dominant part, had been bothered by this fact for a long time.
I knew that Kim and Connie put forth a lot of libertarian-sounding ideas, but they did not consider themselves libertarian. On a whim, hoping that maybe their ideas would help me fix this hair that was out of place, I asked Connie to elaborate a bit more on her political and philosophical beliefs.
The following three months were probably the most exciting three months in my intellectual life. There’s nothing quite like pitching everything you ever knew into the garbage can and starting over from scratch, to get your blood pumping.
It’s hard to describe exactly how I changed. It’s not something simple and superficial, like deciding you’re tired of supporting this sports team, and now I’m going to support a different one. One’s ethos should not be chosen on a whim. If all goes well, one chooses it because it is right, and because through much thought and reflection, one has convinced one’s self of it’s rightness. I was led to water, I drank, and I realized that everything I knew was wrong.
Fundamentally, I grew up. Intellectually, emotionally, and philosophically, I grew up. Doors were opened to me that had previously been closed. Things that I had been told were important but had never been shown why they were important, took on a whole new meaning and urgency. I had spent the first couple decades of my life wasting time, merely skirting issues of importance. It wasn’t my fault, really, since I had never had someone to explain to me the importance of history or literature. It was all just trivia, fact accumulation, stamp collection. It could be fun, but in the end it was meaningless. Now, with a new understanding of why these things are important, I’ve been trying re-educate myself, learning all over again all that I knew, in a new intellectual context. At this point, I’m grateful for what I do know, and I’m humbled by what I don’t. There’s so much more out there….
Kim and Connie have said that they want to change the world, one person at a time. That’s the idea behind the Nation of Rifleman, Literate Nation, and virtually every other project they’ve ever embarked upon. I suspect they realize this, but every individual they touch that is changed results in an exponential ripple effect that they may or may not see. I have changed dramatically, and as a result, my family is changed, some of my friends and acquaintances are changed, even my California liberal in-laws are changing in subtle ways. And Kim and Connie are the root cause of all of this. They have many friends, hundreds of commenters, thousands of readers, and very likely, tens or even hundreds of thousands of people that they have positively influenced during their tenure in the blogosphere. I suspect they know this at some level, but I think they need to be reminded just how much of an impact they have truly made. It’s nothing less than heroic.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Kim and Connie for everything they have done for me personally, for the conservative movement in general, and for the world. You two have been a positive influence on so many people in so many ways that it is impossible to enumerate them all. You’ve sacrificed much, endured hardships, put up with attacks on your lifestyle and integrity, and have come through it all with grace and dignity. You are truly talented people, and an example for us all.
Two great lights in the blogosphere go out today, but only after shining so brightly for so long. Enjoy your blog retirements. You’ve certainly earned it.
