Mike’s encounter with the new world of the collective blog-brain can be read here. Thanks for helping. I particularly admire this observation:
What floored me was not just the volume and speed of the feedback but its seriousness and sophistication. Sure, there were some simpletons and some name-calling nasties echoing rote-learned propaganda. But we get those in letters to the editor. What we don’t get, nearly as much, is smart and sincere intellectual engagement — mostly from people who are not intellectuals by profession — with obscure and tedious, but important, issues.
Yep. You guys are the real stars of the blogosphere – the interlocutors and readers and writers who were once consigned to relative silence, but now have a medium all your own. The bloggers are conduits, forums, niches, designed to unleash the broader wisdom of the online crowds. That’s one reason a Hayek-Oakeshott Tory like me loves the blogosphere so much. Not so much spontaneous order as the endless pursuit of a million intimations – a constant conversation, with peaks and lulls, discourtesies and jokes, outbursts and rants, meditations and quips, and all going nowhere in particular. And in the end, some truths do emerge, if you have the balls to acknowledge them. It’s the purest form of democratic discussion yet devised. It’s a big fucking deal. But if you’re reading this, you probably know that.
ALI’S BOMBSHELL: Ali quits the Iraq The Model blog, with dark warnings about his shift of political agenda:
My stand regarding America has never changed. I still love America and feel grateful to all those who helped us get our freedom and are still helping us establishing democracy in our country. But it’s the act of some Americans that made me feel I’m on the wrong side here. I will expose these people in public very soon and I won’t lack the mean to do this, but I won’t do it here as this is not my blog.
Troubling. But having spent the last few days immersed in the various official government reports on the conduct of some U.S. personnel in Iraq, I cannot say I’m terribly surprised.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “This is the disheartening tale of a noble people ignobly led. The Administration is both author and protagonist of that tale, and to the Administraiton must be read this indictment and this prophesy:
You have deceived once: now you must deceive again, for to tell the truth would be to admit having deceived. If your better judgment leads you near the road of rational policy, your critics will raise the ghost of your own deception, convict you out of your own mouth as appeaser and traitor, and stop you in your tracks…” – a critic of George W. Bush? Nope. Oxblog reveals the author.
The Dish 