The Company You Keep

Well originally it was going to be a different post on the same subject, I was concerned because BBW is an ardent social conservative. But having seen that under one day of launching her site she had garnered a fair cross section of political blogs from all sides of Canadian politics, conservative, liberal, left , right and seperatist (the latter of course are rare as hens teeth in English Canadian blogosphere as they are politically). So it changed to support.

Am I concerned about the company I keep, sometimes, actually it was approrpriate since I thought it was pretty good company, a real cross section of opinions.

I think it will fair well actually as have other such political blog aggregators such as Canada Blog Exchange and Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.

One thing I have noted about the Canadian policial blogosphere is that there is a broad acceptance of each other in aggregators, that is we all want to shout out our opinions. And so one of the things that makes us different than the American political blogs is that we tend to yell at each other and not just about each other. We read each others blogs, regardless of our political positions, or perhaps because of it. I read Blogging Tories, American Libertarian blogs, Liberal , Democratic, liberal, right wing, blogs etc.etc. I criticize a wide assortment of Party Hacks, etc.

Right wing bloggers regularly comment ( some attack me) on my blog, as much a progressives and the left do so its not just internal like minded commenting as found in many partisan blogs and blog aggregators. 

I think that the Canadian Political Blogosphere is truly a reflection of classical liberalism regardless of political identity or party partisanship a libertarian ethic prevades of I may not agree with you but I agree with your right to blog. And that all bloggers are equal. Professional bloggers are no more important than DIY bloggers. The reason for this is that there are few pro bloggers or bloggers of renouwn, so in the past three years the rest of us have had a fair shot at getting read, and being read by the pro MSM community. As I think I can attest to here, with the success of my rumour story about Peter MacKay and Condi Rice.

And I think that is why the success of political blog aggregators which to give credit where credit is due began with the 2004 election creation of Blogs Canada/Political Blogs Canada which a link to can be found in the sidebar of my blog.

Wow I did not think this reply was going to be this long or detailed, so thanks for asking the obvious question that deserved an anwser.