Bloggasm

Mike Hendrix: I’m not a pundit, not a journalist, not a politician, not a lawyer — nor do I have any ambition to be any of those things. What I am is a pretty ordinary guy who doesn’t like the direction in which the Left has taken this country since the Vietnam era, and who finally figured out a way he could shout to high heaven about it and maybe at the same time connect with like-minded souls who love their country but hate how it’s been taken for granted, insulted, used, and abused.

9/11 was what I saw as the final straw. As soon as I saw the first of the Twin Towers fall, I knew what was coming: a lot of smug, sanctimonious “I told you so”-ing from those on the Left who, despite their false claims of horror and sympathy, truly felt we had it coming because of an entire litany of supposed offenses committed by the US against the wider world. I had friends and family in the military, and I already knew the Left’s usual assumption that our soldiers were all either A) babykilling, bloodthirsty monsters, B) poor, undereducated, duped victims of our evil system, or C) some rank combo of both, was patently untrue. I’d been politically aware (and quite the little campus Leftist, too) myself since back in my college days, but as of the first Gulf War my politics took a dramatic turn away from the collectivist/antiwar/anti-capitalist/anti-American “imperialism” stance of so many of my friends as I saw them advocate for leaving Kuwait to the less-than-tender mercies of a clearly rapacious dictator simply because an American President was proposing to undo the result of his unrestrained aggression. Such obstructionism and knee-jerk oppositionism (for lack of a better word) just didn’t make a lot of sense to me, either legally or morally.

And as I examined my previous assumptions more carefully in light of my painful awakening, I found that few indeed of them made much sense. How could America be considered a villain when so many of its people did so much to make the world a better place, when so many around me were so generous and open, when our national wealth was so eagerly shared with so much of the world in every natural disaster or other crisis? How could I self-righteously assume that suburban Americans were all soulless dullards when I knew so many of them to be decent, fun-loving, upstanding folks? How had I come to so unquestioningly view my own country as not the solution to much of what ailed the world, but the source of much of its woes? Could my Left-leaning professors really have been wrong — given that so much of what I was now seeing with my own eyes directly contradicted their overheated classroom rhetoric?

Turns out, they could at that.

So I came up with the domain name (Coldfury.com) and registered it on 9/14, without really knowing precisely what I was going to do with it. I had long been a fan of Andrew Sullivan’s passionate political writing, ever since running across his stuff back when I was living in NYC in the 90’s. I was completely unfamiliar with the world of blogging and didn’t even know of its existence, and remained ignorant of what was really going on (a state some would say is pretty normal for me) even after seeing Sullivan mention odd names like Instapundit and Vodkapundit and a few others (I wasn’t often following those links back then). I just kept posting little news tidbits on a daily or near-daily basis and commenting on them myself, with a special emphasis on hacking away at journalists and other denizens of the Left as they complained about the sudden re-emergence of American flags on bumpers and lapels; as they sought to convince us all that a military response to the atrocious act of war that had been perpetrated against us was
inappropriate, unjustified, and doomed to failure; as they sought desperately and without the faintest hint of shame to return us all to their 9/10 false consciousness.

And eventually, people started coming around as I got linked here and there by other, bigger players — coming around, reading, and responding. Nowadays my readership is around 1500-2000 unique individuals daily, which may not seem like a ton (and, really, isn’t) but is pretty remarkable to me, considering I’ve scarcely done one damned thing to promote the site since I started it. In the halcyon days preceding the 2004 elections I was up around 3000 unique page views daily, but traffic has since stabilized at the current pre-election average. Whatever recognition the site has gotten since the beginning has been completely spontaneous and not chased after by me in any way. I haven’t tried to turn the site into a cash cow, although I do have a PayPal button to help defray hosting costs. I sell ads via Blogads, but I keep the rates very low in order to encourage other fledgling bloggers who deserve the recognition to buy them and maybe help themselves to whatever little exposure I can provide them. I’m a lot busier with work these days than I was back in the beginning and often must ignore the site for days in a row, and so decided to bring a couple of other folks aboard who had been regular commenters and who I knew had plenty to say, and the skills to say it well.

And the thing just keeps right on rolling along. I continue to do it now because it’s fun, and I enjoy the give and take with the regulars, and frankly because I can’t imagine not doing it. But in the end, I still do it for the same reason I started in the first place: because I know bullshit when I see it, and the one thing I’ve never been able to do is sit back quietly when somebody is trying to sell it to me as filet mignon.

Simon Owens: Many conservative bloggers and pundits alike regularly attack the ACLU and use statistics that show that the majority of Americans don’t support their causes. But doesn’t the very definition of the ACLU (civil liberties) make these statistics useless, considering that their entire point is taking on unpopular cases?

MH: Well, the stats are useless anyway in the immediate practical sense, because they’re not going convince anybody of anything. The ACLU, to me, represents one of several common and pretty telling fault lines along which you can interpret where a particular individual’s political affiliation and ideology is going to break. I think there are plenty of things to argue with regarding the ACLU without resorting to statistics. As a guide to who’s right and who’s wrong, statistics almost always make pretty good red herrings — and very little else.

SO: The recent findings with Katrina victims (for instance, the claim that they were disproportionally poor or black turning out not to be as drastic as some believed) shows how easy it is for skewered information to spread quickly and be accepted as fact. Many blame this on the noise machines of the left and right (pundits and bloggers). What do you think pundits should do about this? Can there be any kind of nonpartisan watchdog blog to kind of moderate the two?

MH: There could be, I suppose, but there won’t, or at least not one with any real standing among the organizations being policed. The mainstream media is in an awful position nowadays, and although they don’t seem to know it, it’s mostly their own fault. Their smug arrogance would never allow for any sort of truly independent auditor, and least of all one
with any connection to the blogging world, which they fear and hate in equal measure, for the same reasons, and quite rightly too.

SO: As a conservative blogger, which liberal blogs do you think create the most spin? If you had to pick a liberal blogger as a worthy adversary, which would it be?

MH: Well, honestly, I don’t often read liberal blogs. I tried keeping up with Oliver Willis and Josh Marshall a while back, but just couldn’t do it. Life is too short, frankly, and being a classic hothead my blood pressure stays high enough as it is. But we do have a regular resident gadfly at CF who calls himself Zorro, and who blogs at DKos. Although I don’t agree with him on much, I do pay attention to what he has to say in response to our posts, because he’s someone who has lived abroad, is a bit older than your typical know-it-all college-boy type liberal, and has had a fairly broad life experience. He’s also a damned smart guy, and although he does fall into some of the typical more-underhanded debate tactics the Left is enamored of now and then, I consider him a respectable guy overall and a worthy foil. He also has something almost unheard of among liberals, which is a good sense of humor and the ability to back away from politics and sort of ruefully shake his head over the whole thing.

Over the years there have been occasional Lefty types who come by and respond to things I’ve written, and some of those guys are people I know quite well I could hang out with and have a beer and enjoy talking to, like Bryant Durrell at PopOne, say, or Armed Liberal at WindsOf Change.net. But the truth is, liberals seem to take all of this a bit too seriously, and are unable to detach themselves from ideological discussion and forceful debate; it seems to make up so much of their personality that they’re simply unable to respect other viewpoints and deal on a personal level with those who don’t agree with them. I can’t recall ever having lost a Right-leaning friend (yes, I did have some) back when I was a loudmouthed Left-wing anarchist punk-rock kid, but I can tell you right now that I’ve lost plenty of so-called “liberal” friends once they’ve found out about the CF site. Some of those were people I was quite close to, or thought I was, and that always hurts. But I figure if they’re that small-minded then I was bound to offend them sooner or later anyway.

SO: What are the five blogs everyone should be reading (besides your own)?

MH: 1) Ace of Spades. Almost nobody’ sharper, except maybe the very much missed Allahpundit, and he lurks around there quite a bit anyway.

2) Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom. Funny too, but a lot more than that. Smart, erudite, eloquent. Probably the best all-around blog going these days.

3) Daily Pundit. Covers a lot of ground, pulls no punches, and the comments section is always good.

4) Blame Bush. Liberal Larry skewers the Left with their own carefully-honed rapier.

5) I’ll fudge this one a bit and say any of the milblogs - Blackfive, Greyhawk’s Mudville Gazette, Jason Van Steenwyk’s Iraq Now, or LT Smash; and any of the Iraqi blogs like Iraq the Model, the Mesopotamian, or Free Iraq. Nothing like getting the scoop straight from those who are actually there. If you read any three of the above, you’ll have a far better handle on what’s going on than you’ll ever manage from the New York Times.

You can find Cold Fury over here