Last month I questioned the existence of a quality, regularly updated, local, non-institutional semi-political blog of the Left. You'd think with that wide of a focus I'd have no trouble finding my mark. But, alas, my search proved to be futile.
Yes, there are people doing some interesting personal journal level stuff. And there are lots of folks expressing their wishful paranoia about evil Republican oppression and feeling that their lives are profoundly meaningful because they're not just living an ordinary and boring post college Uptown life, no they're fighting for a great and just cause. And there are plenty of guys on the Left doing daily obscene rants under the impression it's sophisticated social commentary.
But the liberal correlative to any of the blogs in the vaunted Northern Alliance? I defy anyone to show it to me, because it aint out there. Some have speculated that City Pages Babelogue bogs are the proper match. But, in my mind they don't count. No matter how amateur some of them may appear and read, their big corporate media, big advertising revenue ties immediately disqualify them from any comparison to the fiercely independent, entirely local Northern Alliance blogs.
However, as of last week, there is a new player in the game that may emerge as the bizarro world Northern Alliance. In the tradition of Al Franken's radio Air America, it was conceived and designed by committee as a counter weight to the influence of a medium dominated by organically developed and wildly popular conservative voices. These reactionaries have banded together to create a group blog, with contributions from some names you may recognize.
Together they are the New Patriot.
According to inside sources, the crack legal team at AM1280, the Patriot are now looking into a potential copyright infringement lawsuit. Or at the very least, the need to change their own tagline to AM1280, the Old Patriot.
I'm not entirely sure what the New Patriotism is, but some of the founding members of the movement have listed their inspirations on their own personal blogs. From Mark Desrosiers at Cheek:
The battle has been joined. Let the Fraters Libertas and the Powerline conjure the old and tired patriotic tropes, while this new patriotic battalion forms and fires...
Not a lot of help there, but I appreciate the violent imagery. Maybe some insight from the always charming JasonC at The Game:
A new death star is born. Chuck Olsen and friends have started what will no doubt be an awesome new Minnesota lefty blog; our answer to the Fraters dicks.
For the record, let me state that whatever questions the "Fraters dicks" are asking, an "awesome new Minnesota Lefty blog" is definitely not the answer.
Maybe some info from the first post at the New Patriot will help us understand:
I started thinking about a "new patriotism" not long after September 11, 2001. Patriotism, it seemed, was hijacked by rabid nationalistic flag-wavers who railed against any criticism of our government. This rigid, frightening and angry patriotism rears its ugly head still today, as seen at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
With the first words of their debut post, the New Patriots are criticizing the practice of flag waving. I'm not sure John Kerry and Max Cleland would approve of such rhetoric. Or is the flag waving by those gentlemen sufficiently passive and somehow not really in support of the nation that flag represents? Or perhaps some rabid flag burning is more consistent with the New Patriot ethic?
I honestly don't know, this New Patriotism is all so new to me. In any regard, we welcome them to the scene and wish them the best. There's always room on the Internet for another group of people who love America. That has something to do with the New Patriotism, right?
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