“We are choked with news and starved of history” – Will Durant

There are a ton of blogs in the world, so why should I add one more? The short answer is that I probably shouldn’t, but I’ve failed to find the kind of blog that I want to exist. So, one reason is to create the kind of blog I want.

The bigger reason, however, is that by writing it I hope to learn something about topics in which I am interested. After all, the ancient Romans knew that the best way to learn is to teach. See the latin “Docendo discimus” (“by teaching, we learn”). Which, by the way, is something I learned while writing this entry.

In case anyone is curious about my qualifications to write such a blog, I don’t have any. So you’ll just have to judge the results themselves.

What do I want?

So much political and informative content today is a slave either to the terrible urgency of the now or it is partisan to only one tribe (or, more often, both of these at once).

I want some content that isn’t tribal and is willing to see both sides, where both sides are being reasonable (which is not always the case). Read long enough, and I am bound to argue against you on something.

My biggest motivation is to have a platform that inspires me to learn more about things that I think are interesting and record them for my future reference. If others find interest in it as well, that will be a bonus.

About Me

The big question here is something along the lines of “What are my qualifications and why should anyone listen to me?”

The short answer is, I don’t have any and you shouldn’t.

I have a bachelor’s in Philosophy and I’m mostly politically moderate, living in a deep red state. That being said, judge me by what I have to say. If it doesn’t hold any interest, don’t read it.

About the Blog

I mentioned some of this above, but I’d like to lay out the goals for the blog explicitly.

This will help set expectations, but mostly this is something to which I can refer as I write.

Depth

Various topics demand differing depths. I would like a mix of quick-hit articles that provide a succinct explanation of relatively simple concepts as well as longer articles that provide a better examination of more complicated issues.

One of my big goals is to have blog entries that are valuable long after they are written. That means that, for the most part, I’ll try to avoid writing about current events.

Honest Perspective

Obviously I intend to be honest instead of deceptive, but what I really mean here is that I would like to avoid the opposing vices of “tribalism” and “balance”. Most sources today seem very tribal, always finding their side correct and the other side wrong. Traditional news tries to report with balance, presenting both sides of an argument with equal weight even when the argument of one side is spurious.

I want to provide a perspective wherein I do not always side with one side, but I am willing to say when I think one side is clearly correct on an issue.

Clarity

Here I don’t just mean that I hope my blog is clear (though, of course, I do). I mean that I want to specifically make a clear distinction between statements of fact (for which I will provide attendant evidence) and statements of opinion (for which I will supply support).

Topics

I mentioned above that I want to go into some depth on some topics, but on others I want to provide only a brief introduction as those are topics that are best covered elsewhere.

Brief Topics

These are topics that I want to remind readers (and myself) about and to which I can have a link that I can trust on my site (because I’ll maintain the page). On these topics, I intend only a brief coverage and I’ll link elsewhere for more in-depth coverage.

• Fallacies
• Biases
• Constitutional
• Psychological

Longer Topics

These are topics on which I will want to expand my coverage a bit.

• Book Reviews
• Countries
• Historical
• Issues, Factual
• Issues, Political

That’s it! Hopefully I’ll learn a good deal by writing this and perhaps I can share some of that learning with others as well.