FearBush.com Is Down (again), And An Idea

It has come to my attention that one of my favorite sites, FearBush.com, is offline.  I admit that I haven’t been posting there as much as I used to because I’ve spent the majority of my online time working in the realm of the blogosphere. Also, because of my new job, I seem to have less time for this kind of thing in general.

I’ve sent out an email to a dozen FB regulars that I had in my address book to see if they are interested in using my blog as a hangout during the downtime.  If this situation is permanent, I’ve considered the idea of turning the Chamber into a “group” blog (a blog that has several authors).  Group blogs are quite popular, actually.  Most ordinary people have regular jobs, after all, and it’s tough to find the time to run a blog all by yourself and expect the site to be entertaining enough to keep regular readers and commentors.  And let’s face it, there are literally millions of blogs out there, so many of the people that post comments here are “drive bys”.

Most group blogs that are political in nature feature authors who are like-minded individuals and focused on a specific theme (for example, an anti-Hillary blog, or a pro-Brownback blog, or pro-life, etc.).  I’ve long considered something different, however.  My idea would be to open up my blog to authors (who I trust) that are unlike-minded.  The ideal would be a blog that features posts from a diverse range of viewpoints, and topics are debated in the comments sections in a relatively civil manner.  Incidentally, this is sort of the reason that I started the WordPress Political Blogger Alliance and why my blogroll features blogs from all over the political spectrum.  In fact, the reason why I named the blog the “Chamber” was because I had hoped that there would be a certain amount of honorable battling going on here.

I have already granted authorship to several individuals a few months back, but I thought I’d try to expand on it a bit.  I think it would be fun, for example, to feature an author who as a regular on LGF, and another that is a regular on Kos (two blogs that consistently go at each other).  Perhaps I’d feature an author who is part of the 9/11 truth movement, another who is a conservative Christian, another who is Muslim.  I could have someone from Canada, and another from Europe.  The idea would be to make the blog a kind of playground of ideas. 

There are, of course, many political message boards out there that feature an open exchange of ideas.  For blogs, however, I think this sort of diverse group dynamic would be fairly unique.  And blogs have an advantage over message boards, in that they are tapped into the arena of political discourse in the blogosphere. 

Anyway, I thought it would be a cool idea, and since I’ve met many diverse netizens in my travels thus far, I already have a mental list of a few people who I’d like to have on.  I would try to keep the number of authors fairly limited, while having enough to make sure that the site maintained a certain amount of balance.  I think it would result in a pretty entertaining site, and at the same time it might -in some small way- bridge some of the divisions and increase understanding while promoting intellectual honesty and attacking ‘group think’. 

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