After three days of very helpful beta testing, it seems that My Left Wing is ready for its Launch.
So here we go, folks. Inspired by my Blogfather, Markos, and his stunningly succesful and fabulous political blog, Daily Kos, My Left Wing is both a spin-off and homage to Daily Kos.
Now, Daily Kos is a Democratic blog, its focus primarily on Democrats and rebuilding the Democratic Party – Reform Democrats has been the recent terminology, and an excellent term it is, too.
My Left Wing is a Liberal blog. While its founder (me, that is – Maryscott O’Connor) is absolutely a Democrat, My Left Wing is intended as a watering hole for all walks of liberal life. Democrats, Greens, Independents, Socialists, Libertarians – anyone who shares even a few of the attributes we have come to call “Liberal Values” – will likely find their niche at My Left Wing.
So… Why another blog? I’ve spent the past 18 months as a contented and fufilled denizen of the Daily Kos community – why the big move?
If I have my history correct, this explosion of the liberal, Democratic, Internet-based call to action began with Jerome Armstrong’s MyDD, which in turn inspired Atrios’s Eschaton and spurred Markos to create Daily Kos. From Daily Kos arose such venerable and excellent blogs as Steve Gilliard’s eponymous blog and Steve Soto’s the left coaster.
And then came others: Rude Pundit, Baghdad Burning, Liberal Street Fighter, The Next Hurrah, Margaret Cho, Juan Cole, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Booman Tribune, European Tribune. And now… My Left Wing.
Nowadays, it seems there is a blog to correspond with every imaginable topic. Heck, the right wingers created their own blog-like forums — albeit pitiful, pallid versions; until the emergence of Red State, a virtual clone of Daily Kos – no criticism of that move, mind you, as My Left Wing is also such a clone. Hey – hats off to Markos. He created what I believe to be the definitive and perfect blog atmosphere and layout. (Of course, Markos did it with Scoop, while I have had the good fortune to create My Left Wing with the cutting edge technology of SoapBlox, created by Daily Kos alumnus pacified.
Parenthetically, Pacified merits a huge round of applause from the blogosphere and all aspiring Blogmasters for creating this devilishly simple blog format — practically all the benefits of Scoop… but no need to hire a designer at $$$ per hour to put it together for you. I cannot recommend this highly enough to anyone wishing to venture into Scoopish bloggage.
…but I digress (as is my wont). Back to why I felt the need, the desire and eventually the inexorable drive to strike out on my own and create My Left Wing.
As noted above, I consider the blogosphere’s capacity for liberal communities virtually infinite (no pun intended). There are millions of us out there in the world, and, like me (as I have discovered to be true), many American liberals have spent the past 5 years feeling as if they wandered in a wilderness, bereft of companionship, solace or sustenance. One having found communities like Daily Kos, we also found our voices again. We discovered that, contrary to the claims of the Vast Right Wing Corporate Propaganda Machine, we liberals are legion.
As I have noted before:
Most people are inherently liberal — but almost half of any given group of people is of below average intelligence (if you subscribe to that paradigm, which unfortunately, I do), and therefore more susceptible to propaganda. The right has the better propaganda machine thus far, and the left is averse to the use of propaganda in extreme measures by virtue of… virtue. It looks like a losing battle, doesn’t it?
Propaganda is not an inherently negative tactic — it’s the only way to reach the masses effectively. In the hands of the right wing (talk about a mixed metaphor), through the use of the vast right wing conspiracy and its puppets — the media — propaganda has been used to convince the masses that the word “liberal” is an epithet. That even though the majority of them are not rich, taxes on the rich are unfairly applied. That although most of them would be the beneficiaries of universal healthcare, they must protect the minority who would lose the money they (the majority) put in their (the minority) pockets. It’s ingenious, really. People will buy anything if it’s repeated often enough and loudly enough by the pretty people on their television screens.
If you accept the premises that the majority of people have their minds made up for them by outside influences (propaganda), that “conservatives” are more adept at using propaganda because they’ll say anything they need to say to make their point, that liberals are hampered by their principles in the use of propaganda (and, yes, it’s all theory, and a lot to swallow whole), then it stands to reason that there is only one way for the liberal side to win in a contest of this sort: We must have principles on our side. We can only feel justified in resorting to propaganda if the propaganda is actually true and right.
Well, hallelujah. We are right, what we are saying is true. Karl Rove is the doppelganger– he is the devil, the Evil Twin. There must be a good twin out there somewhere. We need someone driving our propaganda machine whose relentlessness, dedication to the cause and commitment to winning the hearts and minds of the majority matches that of the right wing. We have the message of truth; we need effective messengers.
“There must be a good twin out there somewhere.” Yes – but what if my theory were just slightly askew? What if our diversity and individuality and refusal to toe a Party line at any cost turned out to be the very embodiment of The Good Twin? What if all our voices, cacophonous as they might sound to the uninitiated, are actually the harmonic, symphonic key to saving democracy, saving the Democratic Party – and by extension, saving our beloved nation and the world from the heretofore deafening and meretricious roar of the Radical Right Wing?
So I say to you now: WE are the messengers of truth. WE hold in our hands the power to change the world. WE hold the high ground, my friends. So we must join together, with all our flaws and foibles, our self-searching and self-doubt, our myriad perspectives – what was once referred to as the “circular firing squad” of the Democratic Party has the potential to become not a Tower of Babel, but a resonant, harmonic chorus of a Liberal Symphony.
With every fiber of my being, with all the enthusiasm and life force within me, I urge you to add your voices to this concert. Raise them, fill the air with your liberal song. Visit My Left Wing and Daily Kos and My DD and Booman Tribune… and, once having found safe haven and inspiration, start your own blog – write another verse.
Thus begins another day in the blogosphere, with the emergence of what will, I hope, become one more diverse and inspiring and brilliant community of liberals gathering to encourage one another.
This is what I consider to be one of the finest statements ever made about what it means to be a Liberal:
“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man’s ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.
I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.
Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies.
What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label “Liberal?” If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.”
But if by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
~~~Rage, rage against the Lying of the Right~~~
