A Portrait of the Website as a Young Blog

Holiday Blogging, if any, to be Light

With Christmas preparations and about a week out of town ahead of me, I will be blogging sporadically at best until the new year. Since there won't be much (if any) new material here until 2005, I thought it best to step back and take a look at how the blog is doing at the tender age of about three months. This will also: (1) give the holiday passer-by an idea of what the blog is about, and (2) serve me as a snapshot for comparison with next year.

This being a year-end retrospective, it makes sense to make a list of my favorite posts.

Gus Van Horn's Year-End Top Five

Oh! You want a top ten? I have been at this less than three months and have had limited time. Five will have to do this year!

1. Two New Phrases for the Political Lexicon -- I introduce two clever phrases that deserve to catch on and offer my critique of some Democratic party post-election soul-searching. This post garnered my first link from a complete stranger.

2. A Thanksgiving Revue -- Though I usually air my political views here, this blog is also partly an online diary. From time to time, I'll record certain memorable events, like this trip to Chicago.

3. Who is Gus Van Horn? -- I like my first post, which is apparently a rarity among bloggers. If you want to find out why I blog, and the origin of my nom de plume, read this.

4. In Deregulation: New Media 1, Old Media 0 -- I haven't heard very much about what is probably Ronald Reagan's greatest legacy as President: the fact that he deregulated telecommunications. Freedom of speech is our most precious right because our ability to fight the war of ideas depends upon its being protected. I like this post for what it points out.

5. Two Fronts on the War against your Mind -- In my ongoing ruminations on the meaning of the culture wars, I have posted quite a bit lately on the subject, specifically on the issue of academic freedom and how academia will not really be free until it is privatized. This post does the best job so far at showing that the religious Right and nihilistic Left are false alternatives and that we need to get the government out of the business of spreading ideas.

The State of the Blog

As I mention in my very first post (third on the above list) and later on, I blog to practice my writing, to explore whether I might want to become a columnist, and to establish myself as a writer.

As a means of introspection-by-doing, the blog has been a success. I have found that I enjoy writing. Also, as someone whose work environment affords few opportunities to discuss ideas on any meaningful level, I have found blogging somewhat therapeutic. Not that I worked myself into a lather on a daily basis before I began to blog, but I have noticed that my overall stress level seems to be lower since I started writing. One thing I was curious about before I started was this: would I run out of things to say? Not in the least, it turns out. If anything, the fact that I now have a place to record my thoughts has allowed me to revisit them and make further connections where I might not have otherwise.

As a means of establishing myself as a writer, the blog has been a mixed success. I am now more sure that I want to write, which was important for me to learn. I have been getting daily practice at writing. I have become better at researching stories on the internet and have picked up lots of valuable knowledge on blogging techniques. Now that I know I'd like to take my writing up to a higher level, I need to make some effort to expand my readership. (This would serve two purposes: provide a broad mixture of feedback and perhaps get the attention of editors or more established writers.) As other bloggers and a good friend (and fellow blogger) who often visits this blog point out, this will take some time. (And thus it may be a tad unfair of me to rate my blog's success as "mixed," but I tend to judge things conservatively.) Nevertheless, I plan to hasten the process by following advice like this and by using this handy manual pinger.

So I am happy overall with the blog, though I'll have to work against my solitary grain a bit to make it better known to others in the blogosphere and elsewhere. How is the blog doing by conventional measures? I'll post a few measurements by some of the more common yardsticks. Remember: the blog is not even quite three months old. I include these here mainly because I expect it will be fun to look back at these ratings a year from now.

Sitemeter Traffic Prediction by Visits this Past Week: 130 Visits/Month
Technorati Rank: 780,679
TTLB Ecosystem Rank: 14,889 (Wiggly Worm -- higher than I thought I'd be)
Blogshares Valuation: B$ 1,000.00

As an aid to increasing readership, I'll need to create an FAQ and other non-blog pages. This means that there will be some kind of "Gus Van Horn" web site down the road. (I need this to host photos anyway.) For now, though, that's on hold. I'll offer a small pseudo-FAQ here. It's pseudo, because I'm anticipating the questions based on what I've seen on similar pages by other bloggers. I imagine I'll link to this page from the blog template at some point so it can serve this purpose until some additional questions pop up.

The Gus Van Horn Pseudo-FAQ

Why don't you write under your real name?

I started out with some ambivalence about becoming a blogger and an opinion writer and decided that using a pen name would give me an easy way to back out. As of this writing, I suspect that I'll be plying my craft for quite a while. Nevertheless, though I am not well-known, I have learned that there are other benefits to the cloak of anonymity. The main one is that with the ease of searching the internet, it would be extremely easy for people I don't necessarily want reading my blog to find it. There are some other advantages that I choose not to elaborate upon, but there is one other fact that N.Z. Bear points out: Once I reveal my actual name, there's no going back.

One day, you're attacking the religious Right and the next, you're ripping the Democrats a new "deal." Why are you so inconsistent?

I am actually quite consistent. It is the Republicans, who want you to keep your money, but forfeit your mind to religion, who are inconsistent. And the Democrats, who want you to have a few personal liberties, but no property, and very little else.

Oh! So you're a Libertarian?

Not with a capital L. That party is hardly a friend of liberty, given that their lack of a coherent philosophical approach makes them unable even to define the term. Peter Schwartz wrote a devastating critique of Libertarianism in a tract called Libertarianism: the Perversion of Liberty some time ago. As far as I can tell, the article is unavailable from the Internet, except for purchase. I'd like to recommend it as it does a good job of showing the practical consequences of what the Libertarians try to do. They want pretend that a concept as sophisticated and controversial as freedom is whatever anyone, no matter how mindless, wants it to be. The nearest I get to addressing that sort of problem is in this post on a "secularist" organization.

What are you, then?

I consider myself an Objectivist, but have no official connection with ARI. As Ayn Rand put it when asked whether she could describe her philosophy while standing on one foot, this philosophy takes the following positions in each of its four branches: metaphysics: objective reality, epistemology: reason, ethics: self-interest, and politics: capitalism.

In normal conversation, I've variously described my politics with the following imperfect shorthand terms: small-L libertarian, secular Republican, fiscal conservative/social liberal, and laissez-faire capitalist.

What right have you to mock the Houston Atheist Society or insult a nice man like Michael Medved?

Freedom of speech.

On a less flippant note, I will not hesitate to point out major philosophical errors that threaten to cloud further the already muddied waters of intellectual discourse. In the case of the HAS, we have an organization that holds itself out as pro-secularist, but undercuts the cause by (1) running an unprofessional web site that potentially insults random Christians who might actually favor separation of church and state, and (2) advocates all kinds of positions that really have nothing to do with keeping our government out of religious affairs. In the case of Michael Medved, he not only insulted atheists by implying that they all agree with Michael Moore, he did the truth a disservice in doing so. If man is, as Aristotle says, the "rational animal" and Medved argues as if he has been lobotomized, then he surely deserves the scare quotes I used in this post. Truth and justice demanded them, too.

What policies do you have for your blog?

Well, I'm still sorting that out. I have already posted some ideas here. The biggest change I'll probably make after the holidays will be to substantially liberalize my linking/blogrolling policy after reading a post that discusses this issue in terms of a "gift economy."

Well, that's it for today. Expect little or no blogging until January 4, 2005. In the meantime ....

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

-- CAV

Updates:

1-7-05 (1) Added link at which Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty is available. Hat tip to Martin Lindeskog.
(2) Corrected typo in remarks about Michael Medved.