When will the right start collaborating?
Posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008
The discussion on the right over the past few weeks, with regards to the state of the center-right movement online, has been fascinating to say the least. The way the Obama team took the most successful offline community organization campaign our country as ever seen and blended it in to a flawless online infrastructure, that in turn translated in to offline political success, has left many on the right scratching their heads.
Often times, especially over the last few years, the right has gotten far too caught up in the ?we’re behind online? chant. In doing so, we’ve completely been ran over by a true collaborative movement that we don’t understand, nor do many of us seem willing to explore.
Last month, while speaking on a panel at AFP Summit in Washington, D.C., I caused a stir with a few friends of mine in political circles by claiming that we aren’t at all behind online. In fact, one could argue that we’re running right alongside the left when it comes to technology and the tools it provides.
Let’s take a look at some of the sites and tools on both sides.
Daily KOS vs. RedState
Daily KOS is still THE MOST read political blog on the web. It’s a diary site where anyone can start a blog and throw their voice in to the mix. Well, RedState not only provides the same platform, RedState provides a BETTER platform.
Indeed, RedState is clean, crisp, well designed, 2.0, and on and on and on. I would argue that apart from traffic, RedState is a much better site than Daily KOS.
Act Blue vs. Slate Card
Act Blue raises millions of dollars for liberal campaigns. Slate Card, a new system, but one that is state-of-the-art with a plethora of features that should be embraced by the entire right online, hasn’t been able to come anywhere close to the level of fundraising currently enjoyed by Act Blue.
Digg.com vs. R-igg.com
Love or hate Digg, you have to admit that liberal eActivists have been able to pass around enormous web influence using Digg.com. If you’ve been on the front page of Digg, and I have, you know that a link there is worth at least 15,000 unique visits within a few hours.
The left has been able to master the art of finding a small liberal blog with 20 or so visitors a day, and almost instantly, using Digg, take that blogger to stardom. I mean, depending on the title, the time of day, and the amount of Diggs, a front page story can result in thousands of new feed subscribers, hundreds of new bookmarks, and tens of thousands of new readers.
And while Digg.com isn’t necessarily ?liberal owned?, the left has dominated the Digg community and the right has done very little as a collaborative effort to respond. When will we realize that we too can be VERY competitive in this realm?
We actually DO have a site on our own site that uses the Digg philosophy of crowd powered news over at R-igg.com. R-igg was developed by a brilliant young mind of the right in Aaron Marks. But there has been no collaborative movement to help it reach critical mass. Why not? How hard can it be for 500 center-right eActivists to collaborate and help this Beta site rise in predominance?
Answer = not hard at all. All it takes is mass collaboration.
There are many, MANY more sites and tools that I could talk about here, but hopefully you get the point. And that point is that we have the technology know how on our side. We understand the tools, we get social media (just look at #dontgo and how it started on Twitter, for example), and we know what our political goal is.
Why can’t we achieve political success as an online movement then?
In my opinion, it is because we fail in the collaboration realm. But before I can explain why I feel that is, let’s look at some efforts from our friends on the left.
Twitter Vote Report
I had the privilege of being on the Google Group as well as the wiki for the Twitter Vote Report Project. Mad props go out to the collaborative effort it took to develop this resource, and being in early on helped me realize just how badly we’ve missed the boat.
About a week before election night, if you were to visit the Twitter Vote Report website you would have seen… wait for it… nothing. It wasn’t there. There were a few people working on putting a blueprint together, but for the most part, it had yet to come in to existence.
Then, all of a sudden, and seemingly out of nowhere, the beta site goes live. The very first design, as it went live, was basic and almost looked like a blank canvass. But, the second this group saw the project and realized the vision behind it, they dropped EVERYTHING and attacked the project like a pack of wolves.
They instantly had a VOLUNTEER team developing code using JSON and the Twitter API, they had developers writing code for the iPhone application, they had coders cleaning up the site framework and streamlining the system, they had graphic designers working to design a visually appealing and professional template, they had organizers building teams of grassroots ?promoters?, and they had groups/organizations coming on as sponsors to help spread the word about the project.
They built this all for FREE. Then, they let us all use it… for FREE!
Mass collaboration designed, developed, and marketed a major web activism project in less than a week, with no cost attached.
Now I know the argument many on the right will provide because I’ve heard it time and time again. ?But I don’t work for free… I have to put food on the table?. No offense to my friends on the right who do this for a living, but that sort of thinking is archaic and outdated. A dying frame of mind, if you will.
Just because you work for free does not mean you don’t get paid. As a Capitalist, I’m all about making money, but I believe the financial reward is there when I least expect it.
Let’s look at a recent post by Seth Godin, a guy whom I’ve studied for years and have great respect for in the marketing world.
Make money: not by building an internet company, but by using the net as a tool to create value and get paid. Use the internet as a tool, not as an end. Do it when you are part of a big organization or do it as a soloist. The dramatic leverage of the net more than overcomes the downs of the current economy.
The essence is this: connect.
But is it really that simple? YES! In fact, I actually HIRED a guy who was working on some coding for the collaborative project mentioned above to help me code a script last week. I never would have known he existed, nor would I have seen his work had I not watched him work to build a powerful FREE tool for the online community.
Connect the disconnected to each other and you create value.
* Connect advertisers to people who want to be advertised to.
* Connect job hunters with jobs.
* Connect information seekers with information.
* Connect teams to each other.
* Connect those seeking similar.
* Connect to partners and those that can leverage your work.
* Connect people who are proximate geographically.
* Connect organizations spending money with ways to save money.
* Connect like-minded people into a movement.
* Connect people buying with people who are selling.
Connect people and you create value. Did you catch that?
It used to be that if a piece of software costs $500.00, it MUST have value, right? But now FREE software is becoming some of the best software available. Wordpress anyone?
But… but, how can the folks behind Wordpress make money by giving away their product for FREE??? They create value.
And because of that value, because of their ability to organize a collaborative effort to create a powerful tool for free, they’ve been given MILLIONS of dollars to work on other projects.
Back to the right’s inability to collaborate
Now, back to our current state of the right when it comes to building online infrastructure. I can tell you from personal experience that almost every highly skilled tech guy on the right will respond one way when I ask for help with something related to tech… “what’s your budget?”
I’ll tell you what my budget it… ZERO. I’m not an organization. I don’t have donors, and thanks to extremely high taxes, I have very little money. How on earth can I afford $10,000 to have a massive social media community developed?
I can’t.
In fact, the #dontgo Movement is an all volunteer movement. We have no money. Heck… I’m now about $700 out of pocket to get the site you’re reading and the other various projects of #dontgo up and running.
Fortunately for us, there are guys like Allen Fuller of Flat Creek Strategies and Aaron Marks of Three Group, LLC who get this and are helping us in every way they can, but most on the right instantly send me a financial “proposal” when I ask for help.
So the first problem we have is that the people on our side who get and understand the technology and tools, aren’t willing to blend minds in a collaborative effort to help build community style networks and social media tools.
Like I said, it isn’t that we don’t understand the technology of the internet; Rather, it’s that we don’t understand what needs to happen in order to make it truly succeed.
Our second problem, which also involves collaboration, is the pride in taking credit for online success. The elites of the right online are so caught up in getting credit for online political success that they would rather not see success than to see someone else get credit for it.
There is an intense level of “I didn’t think of this so I won’t be working with it” going on in the right. I’m not going to mention names because I’m not writing this to start a fight, but trust me… it’s out there. And it’s a BIG problem.
At some point, we on the right, myself included, have GOT to stop bickering and “competing” with each other. It’s past time we move our pride out of the way and come together with wide open minds and start with a clean slate… a fresh drawing board if you will.
And last, but certainly not least, we need to knock it off with the “messaging is king” junk. No, it isn’t. Messaging is KEY, but in no way is it KING.
The REAL king of online political success that translates in to offline political victory is COMMUNITY.
How many times have we on the right watched a $40,000 website go live, only to fall flat on its face a few months later? The problem is the assumption of community.
In the past we’ve built our web properties on a foundation made of tools and technology. We need to start building our web properties on foundations made of PEOPLE. You know… bloggers, activists, donors, and voters.
People need to be given a say at the very beginning of web projects. We need to be given OWNERSHIP… our own little “I did this part” to take pride in. When people have a personal investment in something, they want to see it succeed.
We need to stop thinking “I need to make my project succeed”, and we need to start thinking “we need to make our project succeed”.
It’s all about community… and it’s all about collaboration. We can talk about the party, the message, the narrative, the tools, the players and the movers all day long, but until we get in to a collaborative/community based frame of mind, we’re not going to win.
That’s my rant for the day…
-Eric Odom
Screw R-igg. Conservatives should be flooding Digg! Another echo chamber isn’t going to help us; we need to treat Digg like a battleground and contest it.
Tacitus, “screw R-igg” is not really the opinion I share. R-igg is in very early stages and has potential. I mean, look at Instapundit… with the right design and community minded foundation, R-igg can become a fantastic place for center-right activists to thrive and share content.
That being said, I agree on the Digg portion of your comment. We can certainly get in to Digg and level the playing field, but it’s going to take a tremendous amount of work and collaboration.
Very good article, Eric, and very true.
I won’t name names, but many people who are currently jumping on the bandwagon and creating websites in order to revitalize the party seem to be doing so only to get publicity for themselves.
That’s the absolute wrong reason.
Look, the reason DailyKos became successful is a number of people put aside their personal aggrandizement and worked together to make it work. Oh sure, a couple of people are always touted as the creators, but the people who are the gears behind it are looking for their views to spread, not for kudos to be bestowed upon them by the media.
We need to do the same on the right, and turn our activism into the new wikipedias - places where we all feel like we are contributing. Then, we can actually surge ahead like I know we can and reverse what happened in elections since 2006.
@David… your comment is spot on.
BTW, I highly recommend you read the book “Wikinomics” if you haven’t done so already. Very profound glimpse in to the mass collaboration concept.
http://www.wikinomics.com/book/
Honestly, this was the first time I had heard of R-igg. This points out another flaw of our strategy - alternatives to ‘mainstream’ apps will not garner the same traffic as those apps, but even so, those alternatives need to be communicated to the general populace.
How many Republicans read R-igg, Conservapedia (alternative to Wikipedia), etc.? How many know they even exist?
I notice, for example, Free Republic not mentioned in the comparisons, but I believe I saw a chart that said Free Republic is probably the highest trafficked site on the right. But, how many younger people even know it exists?
In addition to community, marketing goes hand-in-hand in many cases, which is my point. Tech-wise, we may even be superior to the Left, but if no one knows about the tools, they aren’t going to be used.
I agree that the specific technologies are not the critical piece. Though I disagree that RedState is “better” than Kos. Unfortunately RedState’s performance has been awful throughout the election cycle for some strange reason.
But I also wonder about our demographics. Are the left net efforts more effective because their demographic is younger, tech-oriented people where ours is an older demographic?
@Joel
RedState just moved to a new system using a completely different script to power the site. I view RedState as being in “beta” at the moment, which is why it’s having some issues.
I know Erick Erickson quite well though, and I promise you’re only seeing the beginning of things to come for RedState. They have a lot of things planned for community development and site enhancements.
One step at a time… RedState is a big site with a lot of traffic, so drastic changes all at once are difficult to perform.
I”ve seen some numbers recently that suggest the right is loaded with young talent. Ali Akbar, Aaron Marks, Allen Fuller, Patrick Ruffini, David All, Jon Henke, Caleb Howe, Jesse Thomas, Katie Harbath (might have spelled that wrong) just to name a few. ALL fairly young and energetic.
We’ve got a ton of young minds on our side… we’re just missing the “teamwork” mentality needed to get some serious action in swing.
IMHO
[...] » I read a post this morning on the #dontgo Movement’s website which asked “When will the right start collaborating?” One specific point which got my attention was this: Love or hate Digg, you have to admit [...]
Our server problems have been a huge pain in the butt.
Long story short: we left the Kos platform (Scoop) two years ago for Drupal. Drupal improved a number of problems, but caused a lot of instability.
We left Drupal earlier this year. I love the redesigned look and the new tools for the site, but our developer made a lot of commitments they failed to live up to and we’ve been working ever since to get things straightened out.
We should be all better on or around December 1st.
Eric, I agree with your analysis of RedState. It was just frustrating during the election.
I just finished reading Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals which emphasizes this idea you are talking about regarding “collaborating”. His term was alliances. At some point of time, as a Party we got the idea that you have to agree with me on everything in order to be OK attitude. The left has made a common enemy of the right (they personalized it in the person of George Bush) and so they are willing to band together even though they don’t even agree with each other.
I don’t think we necessarily “personalize” the enemy, but we do have to realize that we must band together even with people who we don’t agree with 100%.
Wasn’t that Reagan’s 11th commandment?
I’m on the ‘edge’ when it comes to age. Part of that is due to my slow crawl through college, so I graduated in a class with a different mentality than the group I entered college at.
But Joel does have a point…many Republicans are older. They only know of sites like Drudge Report when they do go to the web. They don’t even think of things we are beginning to take for granted, like Facebook or Wikipedia. When I look up my high school classmates on Facebook, I see maybe 2 dozen, and I had 250+ people in my graduating class.
This is also why the ‘old guard’ is so squeamish about the Internet. Read some of what Michael Turk has stated were the issues he ran into, then multiply them by at least 50 for the state parties.
But, I really do think, once educated about what not only #dontgo is doing, but other sites as well, they’ll change their tune. Getting one’s rear handed to you because of the web is going to wake people up once they get out of the ‘woe is me’ funk they are currently in.
Great post Eric I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The right side of the net resembles Simon and Garfunkel’s “I am a rock I am an island”
Conservatives don’t play well together, it’s sad but true.
I can’t even count how many times I’ve told someone about some cool thing being done on the right side of the net and the person had no idea it even existed.
There are thousands of great sites out there that people don’t even know exist, people need to be connected with the tools that already exist.
It’s all about the C’s
Connect, Collaborate, Communicate, Conquer,
Okay, Eric. In my completely non-scientifically weighted and polled obsevation, I don’t have time to go to half a dozen different places. If it doesn’t fit on my aggrtegator (Netvibes), I’m not going to read it. Digg? Waste of time. R-igg? Why chase after someone else’s left overs? Have some self respect. Twitter? You mean I have to go to yet ANOTHER web site? Remeber another password…? The great thing about BHO’s web presence is that it was all centralized (no jokes about Central Planning, although I’m tempted). In the end, “form follows function”. I can’t rearrange my life to conform to a communications delivery system. It’s got to conform to me or I won’t use it. I want it on my desktop in my current aggregator. This has really been driving me nuts lately. I bought a car and people kept handing me little pieces of imporatnt papers. I paid my sons tuition, and the same thing happened. Then I bough a new gun. Again, a stack of individual disparate papers. I’m constantly being given handfuls of important but small pieces of paper that I have no place to put, no way to keep them together, but it’s viatlly important that I don’t lose track of any of them. It’s the same thing with the information you’re trying to deliver to people. I want it easily accessible in one place, I want it on my computer, I want it on my cell. If anything, what I want is a conservative aggregator where I can plug in the widgets of my choice.
Digg it: http://digg.com/political_opinion/When_will_the_right_start_collaborating
R-Igg it: http://www.r-igg.com/Republicans/dontgo-movement—-blog-archive—–when-will-the-right-start-collaborating/
You know, adding to what Eric said, I think there are those on the right who do play well together and those who do not. I see this all too often and am constantly disappointed by it.
I think it is up to those who do play well together to grow their size. And at some point, we have to realize that instead of just another website, there are some pre-existing tools and sites out there to be used.
Likewise, I’m always a big squeamish by the right segregating itself off from general new media.
This seems oddly familiar to a statement in which I made last night at the local Republican meeting. Sometimes you have to break down in order to build back up. Societies as a whole need to futher enhance our communications amongst interactive youth. Take for example the past… We had many organizations geared toward this exact principle Elks, VFW, American Legion, ect… We as “the people” tend to get cought up in the fast paced online cyber world and often forget to invite our neighbor over for dinner.
Excellent article..
The left are obsessed with the organizing, they do it very well. Sometimes the right are not so active and although the join websites, go to the community meetings, email and message people, the herd mentality doesn’t always appeal to them.. This herding is what get the left momentum. They all love to type comments on YouTube and others sites and get up to go to a protest at a moments notice. We tend to be homebodies and work and have quality time with family.. Activism defines many Democrats and they wear it like a badge of honor. They are very proud of their activists and those who make the most noise, get the attention, the media coverage..
I think we need more people to get engaged like you have proposed.. I don’t think they have the upper hand either. I’m glad you are doing what you are and with your help, and others, we can get more of those on the right to see not only how profitable your plan is, but how affective it could be to fight against the liberal army.
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Personality conflicts and self-serving interests are the defining characteristics which seperatate the left from the right. The word liberal does not fully encompass the individuals we are “zeroing in on.” We need innovation not stagnation. Ofcourse, its kinda hard to feed the world with only one bowl of rice; or simply a bowl for that matter.
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@sun tzu: When this country was founded, it took men and women who share our ideas of being individuals who could come out in to the town squares and meet as one to fight the good fight.
The founding of this country was, indeed, a collaborative effort between a group of people who had many disagreements, but one common agreement that crowd powered action was vital in obtaining freedom.
I love your article and I appreciate what you are doing in the dontgo movement.
We have to realized that bringing an online community together takes time. What happened this last election started 12 to 16 years ago. It is not just a matter of youth vs aged or tech savvy vs not. However, like dontgo, the online movement started for the left many years ago. It was formed and grew and no one paid any attention until now. That is the main difference. Now that the vote has gone so far one direction everyone is now paying attention to what happened. The Dems have been very focused on getting control for a long time and knew they needed to work harder and so were more focused, where possibly those on the Reps side just assumed the powers that be would take care of things.
What we have heard is that we cannot rely on any one organization like the RNC to pull off what needs to be done. They dropped the ball big time this time around and I am not so sure they didn’t do so on purpose. (jmho)
I don’t have the answers any more so than anyone else, but I know you are on the right track. If we let monetary compensation rule our desire to participate, then we will not have a voice in how our country is run. What if people refused to vote unless they were paid! How ridiculous! When people have the backbone to stand up for their beliefs and their values we will see change happen across all mediums. We will infiltrate every spectrum of society. But the people have to take a stand and they have to let their voices be heard. This is why the Dems won this time. Enough of them demanded to have their voices heard while too many others just sat back and said let someone else take care of it.
I quote Nikki Starr, “The world belongs to the bold”! We must be bold and we must be heard everywhere and we must be loud and strong and united!
Great Post. Have faith in the fact that it is a message and sentiment shared by at least a few others . . .
Be patient. The fuel that powered the leftroots was hatred of Bush and all things related. Being out of power united the left. It freed them from the compromises and “trimming” that actual governing imposes (not to mention the corruption that it encourages). They were able to assume the “perfect virtue of the powerless.”
Now is the honeymoon for them, and meanwhile conservatives and Repubs still have the habits of mind of a party in power. Both those will quickly change. Dems are nothing more than a coalition of disparate looters, and once in power they begin to eat their young. The extreme liberalness of the prez and congress will inspire hatred and zealoutry on the right, while also pissing off and/or confusing ordinary people and the middle class.
In short, their energy source is no longer growing and will eventually be consumed, and that of the right will grow. As it does all the shortcomings and failings you cite will diminish.
PS. In my previous comment I described the natural cycle of two-party politics and power. Here’s a more important issue for you to engage, Eric Odom, and all those who would restore limited government: What is the point of playing out another round of the same cycle that generated the bipartisan replacement of limited government by an ever-growing welfare state. So much of your energy is directed at returning Repubs to power - to what end?
The real problem is that an inbred, self-serving, self-perpetuating political class has supplanted representative government. An endless cycle of getting one party or another to profess the right views when out of power only to abandon them when they’ve regained control won’t save our republic. Parties are about power, not ideas, so looking to one for renewal is looking in all the wrong places.
What’s needed is a movement that, like the Progressives in their time, captures the public’s imagination by defining a new dimension in U.S. politics: Not Republican vs. Democrat, conservative vs. liberal, or populist vs. capitalist, but the people vs. a political and government class that no longer represents them.
I urge you to re-align your efforts along this dimension, bringing your tremendous abilities, knowledge and skill - and all the tools you reference in this post - to bear in raising raise the public’s consciousness regarding this fundamental but little understood people-vs.-political/government class divide.
In the late 19th century the Progressive movement captured the public’s imagination and shifted the dimension along which politics occurred from one of Red political patronage machine vs. Blue political patronage machine, to one that served their goals.
As with that movement, guided by this people vs. political class model will be different in kind than just working to get the usual suspects – or a new crew of usual suspects – into office in 2010 or 2012. If that’s all you’re doing you should ask yourself, what’s the point?
I agree with Eric on collaboration. We’ve got to collaborate on the #dontgo sites as well as learn to network it all in with the other “friendly” sites. Now I’m gonna shut up and get back to work.
Jack, I would concur. When an irresistible force meets and immovable body, a merger usually fallows. Most people have opinions about a wide ranger of issues. As we just discussed, people’s opinions are based in their knowledge and underlying values and are shaped by socialization. Oppinions however do not exhist in isolation. Freedom of Assembly and Association are also of great value.
Ronald Reagan directed his adminstration by voicing general goals and letting his subordinates wour out the details. During his first term, he employed a well-organized staff structure based on a “Troika.” We must remain enthusiastic, determined, and discaplined. Congressional Policy Oversight is important because the complexity of many issues which confront us as today.
I agree, Eric. One thing I see on the right is that everyone wants to run their own faction and isn’t willing to collaborate with anyone else to get anything accomplished. It’s all well and good that we all have our own networks, but we have to get them together to make them effective.
There are also a few too many people jumping on the 2012 POTUS train already. We’ve got a big job to do for 2010 first.
We fight ONE thing that the left does not have to fight. Ourselves. It is sad that we don’t do “join” well. Our very point to being a conservative is a leave-me-alone attitude or the famed rugged individualist ideal. On the other hand, the left is a hive mentality. They have much less interest in individualism.
Unfortunately, we fight each other as hard as we fight the enemy and it often results in the “no true scotsman” fallacy. We are so concerned about conservative purity that no one else in the world fits the bill as a “real” conservative. This causes us to stay loners all too often and hampers our ability to create coalitions.
Eric, I still do not think the internet played a major role in how Democrats won. They have been organizing for years on the internet with MoveOn and Obama started his campaign very early. This helped build organization and lead to a great online present which could further assist in raising money and connecting people.
Contrast this to what was happening on the right.
Conservatives favored the Iraq War but Senator Chuck Hagel attacked the effort.
Conservatives favored a crack down on immigration but Senator McCain wanted comprehensive immigration reform.
Conservatives opposed bailouts, stimulus packages and government seizure of the economy, but President Bush did the opposite.
This has lead to numerous conservative movements unable to connect with the Republican Party.
There are many conservatives who are convinced party politics won’t work. The only way to change this is to nominate and elect conservative leadership.
Eric, you’ve made some good points about collaboration. I would add that the right-wingers online actually probably are good at collaboration (in our own special way - lol), but that there simply aren’t enough of us online. The demographics online do not even come close to representing the population.
In my own efforts to recruit activists to incorporate Web 2.0 into their efforts, the overwhelming response that I get can be summed up as, “The internet is a trashy, dangerous place, and I try to avoid it at all costs - the last time I went there something bad happened (I got a virus, I saw people had trashed me online, etc..).”
I sincerely hope Jack McHugh is right (above), and that conservatives will eventually warm to the web. I just hope that by the time they do, it won’t be too little too late. Actually, I supposed the argument could be made that it is already too late, but I refuse to give up.
Great post and thought provoking as well. I’ll be honest and say that as a market conservative, I too have wondered why do all the work for free? Collaboration for Republicans may have to work a bit different than for Democrats. Someone at the top of some of these sites will make some money, they will make a lot more if they include those putting in the collaboration in the rewards.
I’m betting Daily Kos profits are controlled from the top, and they laugh regularly at those putting in all the collaborative work for free.
re: Citizen Centered Solutions & Freedom Driven Prosperity
The belief in limited government only works with a healthy and active civil society. When Alex de Tocquivelle visited our country in the 1840s/50, he said the thing that is most characteristic about Americans in the their associations. Where a bureacrat would be in charging of a problem in France, he observed Americans would just get together and solve their problems themselves.
The right needs to collaborate- and the collaboration/citizen centered mindset must be in form and in content. Our mission must be BOTH to call for limited, government AND to demonstrate, that we have SOLUTIONS to real problems through non-government means (like market based solutions for healthcare etc. OR the expansion of non-profit community and faith-based (not government) solutions to homelessness etc)
The irony of the left is that they are activists and empowered…. but there goal is to take power so they can control/ push their agenda on the population. We must collaborate and our goal must be to maximize individual freedom and to solve problems using collaboration, civil society nd the market.
So we must collaborate… to the end of promoting freedom and citizen (not government) centered solutions. Collaborating to return to power or limit government alone just does NOT have enough juice.
I think dm60462 hit the nail on the head. At some level there needs to be an aggregator of the disparate communities that are (re-)springing up right now.
I’ve been sketching out some features and goals for such a project (I have a web dev / startup background), but, much like during the campaign, I have had a little trouble finding other folks with whom to collaborate. Help?
Contrast this with the Obama folks, who were able to get a pretty slick iPhone app together in record time. (BTW, they are planning on version 2.0, and it will be good.) Simple, in-hand tools can be powerful, especially for those of us behind “enemy lines” who could use a little backup!
I’m also a little skeptical of an essentially segregated vehicle like R-igg as a sole focus, but that could have great value for those working to crosspost / promote articles on the mainstream source, so the idea warrants attention. Think “enhance” rather than “replace.”
I don’t entirely believe that people on the right are being selfish. I think the reason that people haven’t pulled together on this blog is partially apathy, and perhaps that the word hasn’t reached all of the conservative bloggers yet.
That said, I’m not a blogger, but I appreciate the fact that you guys are out there. I’ve posted the link to this article in another spot to get the word out about Digg and that other site. Hopefully some good will come of it.
Someone deleted my comments?
Gary, if anyone would be deleting comments, it would be me. And I can assure that I can’t remember the last time I actually deleted a comment.
Not sure what happened, but your comment certainly wasn’t deleted.
Yo Odom, you hit the nail square on its head.
Winning comes from trusting and supporting one another, and the people, building community, acting in concert, starting mass movements.
This has a heavy overlay of what Jeff Bell called “Populism and Elitism” — there are conservative as well as progressive elitists, you know.
Best,
Ralph
Dudical hashtag, bro!