Inspiration for Center-Right Bloggers

Yesterday I wrote about the positive experience of meeting RedState’s Erick Erickson. What I forgot to post was a mention of the speech he gave at Samsphere. It’s good food for thought for those of us who blog on the conservative, pro-freedom side.

Better yet, here’s the link to a written version of the speech, with an excerpt to tease your interest:

Too many of us are frozen by inaction today because of our visions of tomorrow. I can’t tell you how many friends I see sitting around, plotting web strategy and how to crush the left online only to sit on their hands or twiddle their thumbs and give up hope because they don’t have the funding or the knowledge or the connections or the skill set or the message hammered out — great ideas on the ash heap of history because they spent so much time taking stock of tomorrow that they never took stock of today.

Even here this weekend, several people have mentioned the money advantage on the left. We have become fixated on the money advantage. I’ve got to point out that 200 plus years ago a rag tag group of Americans using their own rifles and bullets beat the best organized, best funded army the world had ever seen to gain freedom. Online, it’s time for us to do it again. The money, like the French and Spanish did 200 years ago, will come. But first we need to show what we are capable of with our present tools.

Most of the people fretting about the money we don’t have, have something in common with another set of people we know — the ones who are in the conservative movement and think their project is the cause instead of the cause being their project.

These two groups perfectly encapsulates where the right is online right now. We are, as Screwtape wanted, hag-ridden by the Future—haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth. We are perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, ignoring every real gift which is offered us in the Present.

It was truly one of the highlights of the Samsphere experience, not in the least because Erick cited C.S. Lewis and the Patriots of the American Revolution.