Wednesday, January 23, 2013
I might repost Freedom Democrats posts
I think that all the regular readers of my blog are people whom I met through the (now defunct) Freedom Democrats blog. We had a lot of good writing there, which in now inaccessible to the interwebs. I have copies of most of the posts from my RSS feed from the site. However, I don't have information about who the original author was. Would anyone mind if I post a bunch of the articles here, attributed to Freedom Democrats?
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11 comments:
I'm cool with it.
I find myself, via RSS feeds, in possession of the last 25 posts of Polycentric Order, whose URL seems to have since been colonized by a loathsome spamblog targeting mostly automotive-oriented search terms. I do have the names of the authors (Brainpolice, Philip Hayes and Nathan) Would there be an appropriate place on the web to put this? Or is it probable that some kind of Wayback Machine will pick it up?
Lorraine, I would look at archive.org.
It turns out that they do not have the FreeDem site due to the "robots" settings that were used there. Bummer.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://freedomdemocrats.org
I'm very, very sorry for how FreedomDemocrats ended up with the site. I had always depended on someone else for the management of the website itself, someone who like me got started online as a libertarian-leaning supporter of Howard Dean back in 2003. But he was also more of a tech-savy liberal than actual libertarian or whatever we all tended to be, so as the site progressed he dropped out more and more. When something happened with the site that I couldn't fix, he never responded to my attempts to reach out to him and figure out how to fix things.
Repost away. I'm still lurking out here on the Internet too.
May I never be a rage-quitter. I have my differences with the Freedom Democrats (although I suppose I'll take Libertarian Lite over Republican Lite) but I'd like to think that "finish what you start" is part of my "constitution."
FD, it was probably time for you guys to move on anyway. The blog was lots of fun, but the community wasn't growing. I'm sure you've found other worthwhile uses for your time.
p.s. I'm glad you're still lurking.
Branding it as "Democratic" instead of "left-libertarian" or something more adaptable was the downfall. But back in 2004/2005/2006, who knew where things were heading? And the core group was formed by Deaniacs who felt they were libertarian and Democrats at the same time. Who knew that being socially liberal peaceniks opposed to socialism wasn't going to be enough to keep you on the libertarian end of the spectrum by the time 2010 or 2012 rolled around?
I think something like it will be needed again in 2015/2016/2017/2018 depending on how things go and are going.
"something like it..."
If it would have been "left-lib", then how would it have been different from all the other left-lib blogs? By being an open community blog (like DKos)? By focusing on voting?
Open community with an emphasis on voting and the political process. I still fear like the "Democrat" branding aspect of it alienated some people who might have been more comfortable participating in a "left-lib" open community. Who knows.
i would posit that the anarchist, "anti-politics" tenor of my writing didn't help with the target audience. An ostensibly political website that features contributors openly disdainful of politics becomes sort of an untenable contradiction. And "left-libertarianism" is simply not a traffic magnet for any community, including "american libertarianism." it is just not a "popular" tradition...
I think that the DKos front-page promotion system is important, since it allows for active discussion in the background but still allows the administrators to define the overall tone of the website. Of course, this requires an active group of contributors who will keep new, on-topic posts on the front page.
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