He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not,
but rejoices in what he has.
Epictetus
Retrospective
Having just celebrated our tenth blogiversary nearly 7 months back, it's still astonishing I've managed to publish 4000 posts. I don't log my hours in preparing content, but even in the case of video content, I screen more videos than I embed and some of my original essays or rants are written over multiple days. So there's probably over 10,000 man-hours invested in the history of the blog.Although readership has sagged some days to the point I could probably fit readers in a large SUV (and other days I attract a few hundred impressions). Quality doesn't necessarily attract views; case in point: I've recently written 2 rants on immigration and nationalism vs conservatism and viewership barely broke double digits. You can never tell what will attract eyeballs; I wrote a standalone tweet mocking the arrest of a pro football owner over solicitation in Florida--not even responding to any trending hashtag--and the last time I checked, it had over 470 impressions. On the other hand, I wrote a compelling quote on the nature of socialism, and to date it's gotten impressions of maybe a third of my followers.
Have I evolved politically over these 4000 posts? Yes. In 2008, I championed John McCain, not Ron Paul. I think a lot of it had to do with his "no spin" reputation and a reputation for bipartisan reconciliation, his critique of Bush's military policy in Iraq. But he made some bonehead mistakes during his campaign, e.g., the suspension of his campaign over TARP, not riding the opposition to TARP given his populist leanings, the self-inflicted choice of Palin (which he seemed to enjoy for swerving the media at the expense of his own experience argument against Obama). In subsequent years, McCain lapsed into predictable soundbites and seemed eager to intervene militarily at the drop of a hat.
If I had to do it over again based on my current perspective, would I have supported Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012? Of course. Would he have been elected if nominated? Of course not.
Now begins the road to 5000, which based on recent trends might happen in the latter half of 2021. The last couple of years I've published at least 430 posts. Any changes? I'm thinking of spinning off my social media digest in its own quasi-regular format. I may also do a more direct libertarian content series, including in a Thomistic or "Ask Ron Paul" type format. Maybe a 2020 election series. A Catholic libertarian series. A political humor series. I could go on and on. Of course, I'll continue my daily miscellany posts.
Ron Paul on NATO
Tom Woods on "Progressive" Misconceptions of Spontaneous Order
Choose Life
Political Cartoon
I'll probably take a break from covering FreedomTunes.
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| Courtesy of the original artist via YAL on FB |
