The great ex-Mormon blogger C. L. Hanson has given me a Thinking Blogger award! (For that, she merits another plug for her book!) Thanks, C.L.!
According to the original, I'm supposed to pass the award onto five bloggers who make me think. The trouble with that idea is that it's mostly bloggers I disagree with who make me think, so I'll have to fight the urge to just give the award to those I like. But fight it I shall!
In no particular order:
- Steve Sailer is a courageous writer and original thinker. Many consider him a racist and, in a sense, he is. I do not believe he dislikes members of any race nor wishes them mistreated, but he does argue that differences exist, and that they matter. Be warned that many of the people who comment on his blog, however, are hateful bigots of the worst kind. His take-down of Malcolm Gladwell, an author and speaker I love, is particularly noteworthy. I especially hope that Mr. Gladwell will take Sailer's criticisms and make even better use of his prodigious talents in the future.
- Half Sigma originally turned me on to Mr. Sailer, I believe. He's basically a fiscally conservative amateur sociologist. He writes a lot about education, class, and economics. Despite thinking that all liberals are exactly like the rich, white Manhattanites he knows, all employers are just like his own, and the upper-class Manhattan lifestyle is the only way to go, he always makes me think.
- Half the time I can't even figure out what Mark from Pseudo-Polymath is talking about because of his theological and philosophical background. When I can decipher him, though, I find he argues positions I oppose better than most people do. So far, I haven't found a single issue we agree on, but I'm sure that one day we'll see ourselves on the same side of something.
- Stephen at Outside the Box is a liberal Christian who probably makes me think more about my positions regarding religion than anyone else out there.
- Finally, I'm going to link to someone I generally agree with: Glenn Greenwald. He writes some of the most intelligent posts I've seen from a liberal Democratic perspective. He consistently articulates positions I believe in much better than I could and he's a great liberal critic of the mainstream media as well.
8 comments:
Congratulations! Well deserved!
It seems to me that Sailer doesn't have anything against blacks, but he does explicitly care more about the well-being of US citizens than non-US citizens, and strongly thinks that other US citizens should to. In practice this leads to hostility towards illegal immigrants, and to some degree towards legal Mexican (or Hispanic?) immigrants. It isn't racism, exactly, but it's something that one could easily imagine could be considered very similar in a world slightly different from ours.
I think that when writing a blog, it may be best to refer to Half Sigma as "fiscal conservative by meatspace standards". He's definitely fiscally conservative compared to most Americans, but by blogsphere standards he looks centrist due to the blogsphere's much-greater-than-real-world radicalization.
Well done JA. You're the best that I know at eliciting responses from all over the political and religious spectrums without having them strangle each other.
Thanks, JA. That's high praise indeed, since I doubt I've ever gotten the better of you in a debate.
I find ex-Mormons and their experiences to be so similar to mine and my peers that it invokes a powerful sense of deja vu. Orthodox Judaism and Mormonism are amazingly similar.
JA,
Thank you very much for the fine compliment and company you place me in. Although I still think that the main reason you can't understand me, is ... the fault of my writing not your reading and thinking. But, to quite Mr Eastwood's movie, "I'll endeavor to persevere".
Hey, what happened to my previous comment? And I gave you the Thinking Blogger award first. Sniff.
FW:
I don't know what happened to your comment. I certainly wouldn't have deleted it!
I'm really sorry I missed your giving me the award until recently (I posted a comment in that post a couple days ago!) I really do read all your posts, but I somehow missed it!
Thanks anyway. :-)
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