The raging political battles that have been going on since the November election would seem to be a smorgasbord for political junkies and partisan organizations. As for me, I am finding it to be exhausting. It seems like everyday there is a new headline, a new controversy, or a new item for socialist and free market proponents to argue about. Several times I have started to write about something in the news, only to have it supplanted by something new before I was done with the blog.

Trying to keep up with this hurricane of activity, while trying to verify information takes too much time for a part time blogger like myself. I enjoy blogging and sharing my thoughts on political events, and I try to be objective and thorough with my writing. But I have a regular job to go to, a family to care for, and the day to day task of living which takes a lot of time. Keeping up with the professional bloggers, and trying to add a little extra to the topics that are being discussed has been a challenge with the fast past of recent events. It makes me thankful for the bloggers who do have the time to keep us all informed on what it going on in the world.

With all of this information and opinions flooding the Internet the one thing that I think is really missing is a balanced thoughtful approach to the problems we have today. Many blogs are just political rants without any meat to their arguments. They are good for rallying the troops but I don't believe they help us as a democratic society make the choices that we need to make. My political bent is definitely conservative, but I am not a Fundamentalist Christian or a laisse fare Libertarian. Even though my opinions may differ from more mainstream conservatives, they are a lot more closely aligned to conservatism than they are with the Progressive, Marxist, Liberals.

Now for the most part, I have felt that partisanship in the new media is OK as long as you acknowledge that you are writing from a particular perspective. This is unlike the main stream media (MSM) who pretends to be neutral but have proven themselves to have an extremely liberal bias in their reporting. I am now wondering if that approach really works. In most cases it seems to just be adding fuel to the fire rather than providing thoughtful arguments in favor of the cause.

I try to read different points of view in order to get a broader look at the issues of the day, but when I go to an ultra liberal web site such as the Huffington Post, I find it painful to read their articles which are so diametrically opposed to my own views. Now when I go to the conservative blogs, I have no problem reading what they have to say even if I do not agree with everything in their article. This is what I referred to as the perspective trap in an earlier blog. These sites really are not helping us come together politically. They seem to be doing the exact opposite.

It would be nice to have a place to go where you could read the merits of liberal ideas and then the merits of the conservative ideas. A place where the ideas are put forward in a logical debate rather than in ideological name calling. Or the endless finger pointing and sniping that has taken the place of political discourse in the country. In this regard the decline of the MSM is a shame. At one time they were considered a trusted source of information. As a conservative I have come to learn that they cannot be trusted. Perhaps it is true that newspapers never really were as honest and trustworthy as we once thought. But it would be nice to have a well researched site that was clear of partisanship, and presented the news in way to educate people, provide both sides of the story instead of partisan sound bites, and help the American people to decide for themselves which way to go. I would buy that paper, I would subscribe to that website. And I think a lot of people in the country would too.

Is anyone listening?

- Thomas Paine 2

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