Our fellow blogger Todd Epp amuses himself and his readers over Professor David Newquist's last in a long series of blogs against blogging. Here is a bit from Newquist's post:
First of all, I blog. I think blogs have a potential. But that potential has been taken over by the base, the malevolent, the devotees of self-fellation, and those who cannot get their words registered in the more sentient and literate forums. Blogs provide anyone who can click a mouse and manipulate a keyboard to express their attitudes and thoughts. And by the same token, they provide evidence of how many people lead lives of ignorance, resentment, and petty malevolence. People who value the best that is thought and said by humans necessarily avoid blogs.
Now I don't think that there is any contradiction in the fact that David blogs about the flaws of blogging, anymore than there would be in an editorialist who writes about the decline of newspaper editorials. It's just that, like Todd, I think its a bit amusing. I also think that a comparison of Epp's SDWatch, and the Northern Valley Beacon is instructive. Both Epp and Newquist obviously care about politics, but Epp's blog falls into a type we might call the Joker. He is mostly amused by the political scene, and shares the joke with his readers. The NVB belongs to the tribe of scowlers, and writes to scowl at "the base, the malevolent, the devotees of self-fellation, and those who cannot get their words registered in the more sentient and literate forums." This is itself a respectable literary form, though I admit that I prefer more humor.
I do think that David has more than one good point. Anyone who looks at the list of blogs that appears on almost any major blog will realize that there are far too many to sample and that it can be very hard to tell the excellent from the mediocre or atrocious examples. I also think it is unfortunate that blogs give voice and provides networks to the worst kind of political activist. David says:
I have nothing against blogging. I do have a revulsion toward willful ignorance and human malice. Blogging permits people who are driven by those qualities to assert themselves. I prefer to avoid such assertions. And so do many people who want humankind to stay in control of its technology, not be controlled by it.
James Madison, writing in Federalist 10, thought that a chief advantage of a large and diverse republic was that the more extreme elements would be unable to discover and coordinate with one another. At first glance, blogging seems to have changed that, and I think Professor Newquist is right to express concern.
On the other hand, the sheer number of blogs in the very large and diverse virtual republic of letters may tend to submerge and even fragment the more extreme elements in the body politic. Extremist avoid compromise by definition, and so tend to segregate themselves into smaller and smaller groups over time. While major conservative and liberal blogs with hundreds of thousands of readers, like Powerline and the Daily KOS, seem to be extremists to each other and their respective audiences, I see moderating influences at both. Maybe Madison was right to be confident.
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