I was glad to get some interesting comments from both the civic nationalist and dissident right perspectives during the last few days.\u00a0 And I\u2019m especially glad that the writers were level headed and thoughtful individuals.\u00a0 I visit various sites with all kinds of commentors who don\u2019t always react to each other with, let us say, tolerant open mindedness.\u00a0 And I understand that verbal combat may be more of a feature than a bug at some of these sites but truthfully, I seldom learn anything useful from the sort of mental arm wrestling that goes on during these exchanges.\u00a0 So, kudos to all involved.\u00a0 We\u2019ve raised the level of internet discussion by several orders of magnitude.\u00a0 Bravo.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m especially glad about this situation because I\u2019m personally located somewhere on the border between the civic nationalist and dissident right factions.\u00a0 While I consider myself a civ-nat I recognize that for whatever reason my political cohort has been guilty of incredible gullibility for decades and I\u2019m tired of being part of a conspiracy of the ignorant.\u00a0 So, I\u2019ve been listening in on what goes on at the cool kids\u2019 table and learning their lingo.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not afraid to admit that they\u2019ve got a lot of things figured out.\u00a0 But I also know that I\u2019ll never be cool enough to sit at their table.\u00a0 I just believe too deeply in the decency of most people when they\u2019re all treated fairly.\u00a0 I feel that if we run the game fairly, we can get people, all kinds of people, from the dumbest to the smartest and from the meanest to the most na\u00efve to at least act decent.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s why I\u2019d like to have the discussion with people whose hearts are in the right place.\u00a0 If you ever see the comments section of a Fox News article it\u2019s remarkable.\u00a0 There are some thoughtful comments.\u00a0 But they\u2019re drowned out by a flood of rage-aholics.\u00a0 You could say that any site that has the traffic that a large outlet like Fox gets is bound to attract a goodly number of deranged individuals but from my point of view it renders the comments almost useless as a venue for the exchange of ideas.\u00a0 So that is why I\u2019ve been trying to find people who straddle that same line on the political spectrum and set up a dialog.\u00a0 Because that political border is where I think the reality of our future lies.<\/p>\n
We need to toughen up the civic nationalists to where they won\u2019t let themselves be rolled by the progressives, while at the same time lure the dissidents back from the fringe where things get pretty dark.\u00a0 My dream would be to have a space where a guy as tough minded as the ZMan would be willing to have a good faith conversation with civ-nats like Michael Anton or Chris Rufo.<\/p>\n
Now this might be terribly mistaken.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve said many times, people must be allowed to select their own enemies and it\u2019s ridiculously presumptuous of me to think I can judge whose interests are served by discussion and with whom.\u00a0 These are all grownups and they get to decide which playground to play in.<\/p>\n
So, let\u2019s not use those names.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just use regular folks who inhabit the internet and try to see if the information flow serves any purpose.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard lots of interesting perspectives.\u00a0 And all of the talk has been quite cordial, which makes my life easier.\u00a0 So, keep up the good work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was glad to get some interesting comments from both the civic nationalist and dissident right perspectives during the last few days.\u00a0 And I\u2019m especially<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1859,61,455,157],"class_list":["post-26631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-civic-nationalism","tag-debate","tag-dissident-right","tag-ocf"],"yoast_head":"\n