The DK business brings up the issue of anonymous blogging, one's working life and open political action, and how these things can rub against each other.
I write under a nom de plume, and have done so to keep a separation between my blogging views and my working life. Using a pseudonym has a long and honourable tradition in political writing, and there is a certain freedom or licence that the mask of anonymity allows that no doubt influences how I write. I have always been aware that the government/police/SIS could track me down in a matter of seconds if they wished to.
However, there is a big step from the blogging world to actual involvement in political action, and whereas denouncing liberal judges as scat-munching paedo-enablers is run-of-the-mill round these parts, I fear that it may be a barrier to doing what really needs doing, which is engaging in the necessary action to drive such judges from their positions of power and attempting to institute the reforms of the law that this country, which I love, requires.
As 1 Corinthians 13 says;
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
Also Matthew 5:30;
"And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
These quotes remind me that there is a time to move on, and that we can become too attached to things, not in themselves bad, but to the extent that the attachment becomes a barrier to what we really ought be doing, and perhaps DK has made a decision along these lines.
I ask myself; are there things I regret writing in these pages, or perceive could come back to haunt me? I reckon not. Although sometimes my language leaves something to be desired, the targets of my most vociferous outpourings have all deserved it, I think.
So maybe the issue that people such as DK must grapple with is; how to keep hold of this great weapon of ours - the bloggosphere - keep it pointed at the enemy without recoiling in our faces, and how to develop other tools and weapons alongside it that can push forward the political agenda that libertarians believe in. Leg-Iron is right: we must never apologise. Take a step back and compare a little bad language with some of the felonies that have been committed by the political establishment. Suddenly, calling Justice Collins a 'fucking piece of rancid shit' disappears into dust, when you consider the use of depleted uranium, secret torture facilities, the looting of public finances etc.
The political establishment would love to destroy the bloggosphere, because they cannot control it. They want to belittle it and pose on some moral highground, as if they don't have foul-mouthed writers and comedians of their own, to peddle their world view. It is not the language or the passion that they object to, but the underlying message.
If some kind of firewall is needed to separate the franc-tireurs of the blogging world from other political activity, so be it. We need the latter, blogging ain't enough, but this, the bloggosphere, is our manor, and we'd be crazy to throw it away.
I write under a nom de plume, and have done so to keep a separation between my blogging views and my working life. Using a pseudonym has a long and honourable tradition in political writing, and there is a certain freedom or licence that the mask of anonymity allows that no doubt influences how I write. I have always been aware that the government/police/SIS could track me down in a matter of seconds if they wished to.
However, there is a big step from the blogging world to actual involvement in political action, and whereas denouncing liberal judges as scat-munching paedo-enablers is run-of-the-mill round these parts, I fear that it may be a barrier to doing what really needs doing, which is engaging in the necessary action to drive such judges from their positions of power and attempting to institute the reforms of the law that this country, which I love, requires.
As 1 Corinthians 13 says;
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
Also Matthew 5:30;
"And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
These quotes remind me that there is a time to move on, and that we can become too attached to things, not in themselves bad, but to the extent that the attachment becomes a barrier to what we really ought be doing, and perhaps DK has made a decision along these lines.
I ask myself; are there things I regret writing in these pages, or perceive could come back to haunt me? I reckon not. Although sometimes my language leaves something to be desired, the targets of my most vociferous outpourings have all deserved it, I think.
So maybe the issue that people such as DK must grapple with is; how to keep hold of this great weapon of ours - the bloggosphere - keep it pointed at the enemy without recoiling in our faces, and how to develop other tools and weapons alongside it that can push forward the political agenda that libertarians believe in. Leg-Iron is right: we must never apologise. Take a step back and compare a little bad language with some of the felonies that have been committed by the political establishment. Suddenly, calling Justice Collins a 'fucking piece of rancid shit' disappears into dust, when you consider the use of depleted uranium, secret torture facilities, the looting of public finances etc.
The political establishment would love to destroy the bloggosphere, because they cannot control it. They want to belittle it and pose on some moral highground, as if they don't have foul-mouthed writers and comedians of their own, to peddle their world view. It is not the language or the passion that they object to, but the underlying message.
If some kind of firewall is needed to separate the franc-tireurs of the blogging world from other political activity, so be it. We need the latter, blogging ain't enough, but this, the bloggosphere, is our manor, and we'd be crazy to throw it away.
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