What do today’s bloggers have in common with the political thinkers of America’s revolutionary era? Plenty.
That’s the view of Scott Johnson. He’s the Power Line blogger who delivered the keynote speech at Carolina FreedomNet 2006, the John Locke Foundation’s first statewide blogging conference.
Johnson shared the story of his blog’s role in exposing the phony Air National Guard documents used to discredit President Bush. Once the documents were discredited instead, heads rolled at CBS News.
Johnson also compared bloggers to revolutionary-era pamphleteers. He expanded on the theme afterward in an interview that will air soon on Carolina Journal Radio.
People of all different backgrounds availed themselves of the medium of pamphlets to get out their words, to make their arguments, and to take up arguments in other pamphlets — to rebut or add onto. …
Working out arguments — the successive approximation to the truth that you can get to through blogs and additional commentary, comments on blogs, blogs commenting on other bloggers. That’s also another way of saying what happened with respect to this CBS story, and I think that is a function that the blogosphere performs that’s very much like these pamphlets, where in the course of observing knowledgeable people arguing back and forth on a given subject, there’s something like a successive approximation of the truth over time — that a person can size up for himself or herself with his own eyes. And that’s really what I’m looking for in the blogosphere.
Like the pamphleteers, Johnson says bloggers help contribute to the survival of the constitutional system of the United States.
Stay tuned to the Locker Room. We’ll post some video clips later from panelists who participated in Carolina FreedomNet 2006.
