This question surfaced during an email exchange with the always interesting Dan Tdaxp (here is his blog). We can only guess at the answer, but I believe blogs provide a valuable service for America — one that we will need in the difficult times ahead.
Blogs have many roles, but most importantly as a 21st century version of conversations at the local pub. Great things have grown from such beginnings (the New York Stock Exchange met at the Tontine Coffee House until 1817). Blogs expand the community discussion to global scale, but the subjects remain the same: gossip, war, politics, sports, business, and so forth. While the audience is global, the numbers remain like those of a local pub (blogs like this and Zenpundit have three or four hundred visitors per day).
Blogs circulate information and insights, helping us see and understand our rapidly changing world. Our news largely comes from giant organizations (e.g., corporations, governments, foundations, universities). Insights come from the big names (in 4GW, people like Martin van Creveld, Chet Richards, John Robb, etc). Blogs help us digest all this, combining information and insights in different permutations — allowing us to see things from different perspectives.
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Comment on a thread at the DNI blog:
“IMHO, the United States is so far down this path that - absent some deus ex machina - its political / economic decline seems to be inevitable and irreversible. Under these circumstances, our efforts should not be to seek to stem or to reverse this process but rather to seek means to carve out islands of civility and/or excellence notwithstanding general political decay. Eg. the Spain of Philip IV, with its imperial decline, was nevertheless also the Spain of Velasquez.”
These sentiments are widespread already. As times darken such views will become more so. They raise two important issues. First, why be an American if one has no faith in the American people? How can you believe in democracy without that faith? The second concerns the gravity of the threats we face.
Perhaps as a result of the long summer of America, the post-WWII era of prosperity and peace (relatively speaking), many folks see any serious threat as Armageddon. But consider our problems vs. those of our European ancestors. Did they surrender?
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Believe me when I say that we have a difficult time ahead of us.
But if we are to be prepared for it, we must first shed our fear of it.
I stand before you now, truthfully, unafraid.
Because I believe something you do not?
No!
I stand here because I remember.
I remember that I am here not because the path that lies before me, but because of the path that lies behind me.
Morpheus speaking to the people of Zion, from the film The Matrix Reloaded
As we start a New Year I find it useful to review my core beliefs. It is easy to lose sight of those amidst the clatter of daily events. Here is my list:
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We are a people with a great past.
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The challenges ahead are no greater than those behind us.
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The American people can surmount these challenges if we work together.
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We will be what we wish to be, if we but make the necessary effort.
Articles explaining about the perils before us
Articles explaining why we need not be afraid
Looking at the problems looming before us, it is easy to forget those of equal or greater danger that we have surmounted in the past. My previous post, Washington’s Gift, described one such. Here is another…
As America’s revolutionary war drew to a successful close, many critical problems remained unsolved. Among them was the pay and pensions due the Army. Congress seemed unwilling to pass the necessary legislation; the States seemed unwilling to pay. From Chapter One of FM 1 (one of the Army’s two capstone field manuals):
Following victory at Yorktown in 1781, the Continental Army moved into quarters near Newburgh, New York, to await peace. The national situation was grim. The Continental Congress could not raise the funds to provide pay or pensions to the Soldiers, some of whom had not been paid for several years. Many officers feared that Congress would disband the Army and renege on its promises. By the winter of 1782-83, tension had reached a dangerous level. The future of the Republic was in doubt.
A group of officers determined to use the threat of military action to compel Congress to settle its debts. They attempted to enlist their commander, General George Washington, to lead the plot. He refused every appeal, and the rebellious officers prepared to act without him. On 15 March 1783, Washington entered an officers assembly and warned them of the grave danger inherent in their scheme. He was having little effect until he took a pair of spectacles from his pocket to read.
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I strongly recommend to you this article by the author Thomas Fleming, published today on the Opinion Page of the Wall Street Journal: Washington’s Gift . Here is the opening:
There is a Christmas story at the birth of this country that very few Americans know. It involves a single act by George Washington — his refusal to take absolute power — that affirms our own deepest beliefs about self-government, and still has profound meaning in today’s world. To appreciate its significance, however, we must revisit a dark period at the end of America’s eight-year struggle for independence.
The story begins with Gen. Washington’s arrival in Annapolis, Md., on December 19, 1783. The country was finally at peace — just a few weeks earlier the last British army on American soil had sailed out of New York harbor. But the previous eight months had been a time of terrible turmoil and anguish for General Washington, outwardly always so composed. His army had been discharged and sent home, unpaid, by a bankrupt Congress — without a victory parade or even a statement of thanks for their years of sacrifices and sufferings.
Instead, not a few congressmen and their allies in the press had waged a vitriolic smear campaign against the soldiers — especially the officers, because they supposedly demanded too much money for back pay and pensions. …
Fleming’s latest book is The Perils of Peace: America’s Struggle for Survival After Yorktown.
Other posts on this topic
