The Dialectical Playa

Baruch Spinoza. A professional lens grinder who moonlighted as one of Europe’s greatest philosophers.

I started reading – actually I need to update my reading list since I finished Manichaeism – Sacred Causes by Michael Burleigh several days ago. While his argument is brilliant, it’s his writing that I find compelling. I was instantly drawn to the sublime flow of his sentences and the powerful torrent of his prose as they cascaded across the pages. There is nothing better than great writing, unless it’s great sex, and combining the two ironically devolves into something that’s not too great: Penthouse Letters. Gag.

Anyway, while reading Sacred Causes last night, something clicked. I hurried to my computer and scanned through Mona Charen’s writings and Charles Krauthammer’s editorials. I glanced over Christopher Hitchens’ (who for all intents and purposes should come out of the conservative/libertarian closet), Jonah Goldberg’s, and Rich Lowry’s opinion pieces. And then I perused the sacred texts – though I’ve disagreed with him lately (see here and here) over his ObamaCare ™ induced pessimism – of The Great Steyn. And I came to the conclusion that Conservative opinion writers are crossing the finish line while their liberal opponents are still preening at the starting line in the meaningful race of ideas.

But it doesn’t stop there. My insignificant little blog is now slightly over a year old (yea me!) and in surfing the web, bouncing from one blog – conservative, libertarian, and liberal – to another in order to gain different insights into various issues, I’ve noticed the same patterns in the blogging world: conservative/libertarian bloggers are incredibly more adept, more literate, more intelligent, and vastly more interesting (and humorous) than their liberal antagonists.

As far as content and readability, I have become a big fan of Michelle Malkin’s blog. Dueling Barstools, Instapunk, Sweetness & Light, Atlas Shrugs and The Volokh Conspiracy (just going off the top of my head) are also exceptional blogs with equally exceptional content. And The Hyacinth Girl has lately become one of my favorite blogs because, like Michael Burleigh, she is captivating in her phrasing, nuanced in her prose, and a grammatical wizard with her syntax. In short, she’s an exceptional writer. Words mean things. And words written well mean great things.

In the short time I’ve been blogging, and as my posts have evolved from links and blurbs to actual content, I have developed a tremendous amount of respect for people like Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg, and Mark Steyn (and even those who I vigorously disagree with, like E.J. Dionne, Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman, Eugene Robinson, et al.) who are required to write lengthy opinion pieces on a regular basis as part of their job. My job is physically challenging, but I’ve found it to be less challenging then the intellectual and emotional demands generated by writing.

But while I greatly admire such professional writers, I admire the people – like Ryan of Dueling Barstools and April of The Hyacinth Girl – whose passionate writing and blogging are the extensions of themselves after a 10-12 hour day spent working for someone else more. These are the 21st Century Spinozas, brilliant people who are deeply concerned about where we as a nation are headed and take the time after a long day to share their thoughts, opinions, experiences, and emotions in a great conversation held across time zones and state lines.

The more people like them find their voice and start convincing others of the truth; the more they start to rip away the deceitful mask of liberalism. After a century of freeing the world of tyranny and oppression, America now needs to free itself of the same. So if the Iron Curtain could fall in 1991, there is no reason – if we work hard enough – for liberalism’s Candy Curtain not to fall in 2021.

- the dialectical playa