Blog Family Tree

Politburo Diktat is putting together a Blog Family Tree, a list of blogs showing an arrangement of sites based on "the one blog that, more than any other, inspired you to start blogging...what I'm doing here is tracking intellectual heritages, or just strong influences. If the idea of blogging came to you fully-formed and no other blogger influenced you, I do not object. But I'm tracking lineages here."

Not scientific, of course, but interesting. I left Hoot's Place listed as the first entry for Stephen DenBeste and I see others have followed. I failed to identify myself as "left, right or other" and by default got listed as "Right!" Go figure.

(I don't really care. I live in an area that inhales the same air as the Sons of Confederate Vets, John Birch Society, and Newt Gingrich. Local radio talk shows are the usual stable, from Limbaugh and Boortz to Michael Savage. And every time I turn around I hear yet another screed vilifying "Liberals...wingnuts...bed-wetters...sickos...left-wing whores" accusing the Left of intollerance! I got over it years ago. I overlook such ranting in the same way that I drive past mobile home parks, truck with gunracks, oversized wheels and noisy motorcycles. I sometimes feel like a nineteenth-century expat living in a primitive place where natives go naked and are led by witch-doctors.)

There are supposed to be tens of thousands of blogs out there, but msot of them are into navel-gazing or showing pictures of their pets. This exercise and the Miers Nomination collection reveals an interesting picture of one dimension of the blogosphere that appears to be, like talk radio, overwhelmingly of one mind.

I am reminded of an observation that a friend of years ago made during the hippie era. He came in from having a cup of coffee at a local grill and said "I just met two identical unique individuals." He was referring, of course, to the need of the day to dress in bizarre colors, tassles and feathers, wrinkled shirts and sandals or bare feet...speak the popular slang...listen to the same music...you get the picture. I remember seeing pre-adolescent kids coming into town from suburbia to imitate the older pre-adolescents who were in their twenties. You could pick them out because their feet were clean as they padded bare-footed along the sidewalk in tie-died shirts and headbands. Today's children of the Right are not very different.

My cyber-buddy Jim Gilbert posed an interesting question at one of my posts inspired by the Harriet Miers nomination. So, how come you're a Progressive, slightly to the Left, and I'm a NeoCon, way to the Right? Are we Hatfield & McCoy (whom my family knew), with the feud settled by Christ (Eph. 2:14-15)?

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace...

I can't answer the question very well. I simply cannot explain. I can only report that whenever faith and politics intersect in my life, my spirit tells me one thing and my mind says something else. When pressed to take a stand -- the Miers nomination is a good example -- I find myself abandoning reason and listening to a signal from the heart. Same is true when I think about war, capital punishment or any number of issues that marginalize me in the minds of my peers. I cannot bring myself to reconcile a spirit/political conflict by going with a political position which is ultimately based on reason instead of faith. It is easier for me to look foolish because I am unrealistic than to advance a logical argument that does injury to my spirit.