All emphases are my own.
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MY LEFT WING IS A VERY UNUSUAL BLOG. Highly original, bewildering in its offerings, a little dislocated at times due to its tremendous desire to be of service, this site is utterly democratic, receives warmly everyone who's battling in an honest way the forces of cruelty and injustice, and posts an equally impressive range of opinion on the issues of the day, yesterday and tomorrow.
The site reflects the generous temperament of Maryscott O'Connor, its founder and producer, who (not surprisingly) also happens to be a fighter for the liberation of animals and nature from human tyranny. Put MLW on your "must-visit" list. You won't be disappointed.
I post this not only because my overweening vanity demands it (though of course that is partially the rationale), but mostly because it is the greatest compliment I think I've ever received for the entirety of this community. The aggregate of talent and compassion and passion and intelligence and critical thinking skills and intelligent discourse -- what do they call it, the signal to noise ratio -- is astonishing and a wondrous miracle, as far as I'm concerned.
It is truly a testament to the community's character and talent and heart that people of this caliber take the time to write, take the time to write a review and post it in their Recommended Links section. Sure, I can and do take credit for the atmosphere of openness -- what the reviewer describes as " utterly democratic," and the "tremendous desire to be of service" could NOT be more on point, right down to its verbatim phrasing (even if, as is likely, an unintentional quote) from the 12th step of most 12 step programs. After all, my policies do guide things along here -- though god knows I've fumbled the fucking ball more than a few times.
Yes, I'll gladly take credit for the tone, the sense of freedom to speak one's mind you get here (unless what's on your mind is cruel, vicious epithets and harassment and berating of other denizens of our little Eden. Then, yeah, I get a little snippy.)
But the bulk of the credit for spurring the impulse in people to sit down and write emails, reviews and blurbs, to post links to MLW in their blogrolls -- that belongs to the aggregate of talent, passion, intelligence, compassion and sheer LOVE that gathers here daily in the form of the expanding core group known as the "regulars."
Those prolific, profound, perspicacious, peripatetic, passionate and perceptive, brilliant, bold, bright, burning and beautiful writers you read so voraciously on the Front Page and in the Community Essays section of My Left Wing are responsible for letters like the ones I get every day, praising me -- well, I'll take credit for gathering them in one place, for luring them onto our Front Page...
And the prolific, passionate people who fill our pages with insight and astonishing creativity and critical thinking in the form of comments that are, on and of themselves, often worthy of taking the essay form. THESE members are also responsible. For what good is a community blog with hundreds of posts but no discussions thereof?
And coming from a site the likes of CJO, the compliment is highest praise, in my estimation. Check out this site:
• Harold Pinter's Art, Truth & Politics, his Nobel acceptance speech, is reprinted here
• Bush Silences A Dangerous Witness, is Robert Parry's take on Saddam's hanging
• Saddam's Execution Was A Gargantuan PR Disaster -- Matt Taibbi offers his own view of same
• Here Come the Armani Democrats -- Joe Mowrey might well have titled this "Meet the New Boss...
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So, yeah -- that's definitely going down as one of the high points, thus far, in the life of this little blog. The BBB may not acknowledge our existence, but lest we forget, there are bigger boys out there than the Big Boys of Blogging.
And I daresay, we'll become our own kind of Big Boy if we we keep going on this path of excellence and commitment to values and principles, to ethics, morals, standards and liberal ideas. If we simply (it's simple -- not easy) remain true to those commitments, rather than joining the centrist herd as they move ever further right in their furtive attempts to compromise, compromise, compromise, thinking it the winning strategy -- forgetting that when the centre compromises with the right, it moves... to the right, and what do we win, when that happens? -- we find, as time passes and the centrists lose touch with everything for which they once thought they stood, we will come to define the "left blogosphere" and they will rightly be defined as the "centrist blogosphere."
NO shame in that, by the way; the shame is in their having been tagged as "left" or, even more laughable, "leftist," when they're so obviously not. And they'd be the first to tell you so.
Politics in this country needs a right, left and centre. The problem as it stands now is that it has only a right and a centre. NO one speaks for the left, no one stands for the left in this political system. Don't try to tell me the Democrats speak for the left -- I'll have to hunt you down so I can laugh in your face. This country needs a goddamned third party to make its existing political system work. Well -- that's oxymoronic; the existing political system doesn't work; it needs to be reformed, with two major changes: a third party and instand runoff voting. Oh, boy -- I feel a "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" moment coming on. Let's leave it at two major changes, even though I could name at least three others now I've got started...
So. As usual I began this piece meaning it as a short mentino of a neat recognition by CJO, and turning it into a longish diatribe on a variety of subjects. C'est la vie.
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