Are there any decent conservative blogs? for Questionland Seattle

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Are there any decent conservative blogs?

I'm a lefty, but am attempting to avoid the echo chamber effect by reading some more moderate or right leaning blogs. I'd be very interested in reading more about conservative fiscal ideas, but I'm not willing to overlook racist/ homophobic articles. I've been looking for 2 days, and can't find a new site that doesn't offend me. I already read Andrew Sullivan, and love him. Anything else like that?

annesmith41 asked in News & Politics over 2 years ago | Report

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vooodooo84

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Given your desire to avoid racism and homophobia, and your interest in rightist economics, Libertarian blogs might be a more fertile hunting ground. Many of these sites should be familiar if you folow the links from The Daily Dish.

Volokh Conspiracy is a right-libertarian blog with a focus on law. Not really as reasonable as Sullivan, but rarely as doctrinaire as National Review Online. One caveat is that some of the contributors are better than others. Orin Kerr > David Bernstein

The League of Ordinary Gentlemen is another libertarian blog, but much more in the mode of The Daily Dish, though with more intellectual airs. They too seem fairly fed up with the contemporary right.

Unqualified Offerings is more of a left libertarian blog. They tend to focus more on libertarian objections to civil liberties violations and the pernicious influence of defense contractors.

If you are looking for blogs that are actually conservative, here are some in a more moderate vein.

David Frum was recently "expelled" from the conservative movement for criticizing the Republican's response to the healthcare reform bill in a widely discussed article on his blog. Frum was a speech-writer for George W. Bush for one year, and coined the phrase "Axis-of-Evil." Previously he had been a rather conventional Republican pundit, recently he has swung towards the left, earning the ire of movement conservatives.

Ross Douthat a former colleague of Andrew Sullivan's at The Atlantic, is now a columnist at the New York Times and has a blog where he pontificates about the pontiff. Basically, Douthat is arch-conservative catholic posing as the "liberal's conservative" role that David Brooks has been filling for a while.

Capital Gains and Games is a conservative blog that focuses on economic issues. One of their contributors is Bruce Bartlett who like Frum was kicked out of the conservative movement for writting a book that was very critical of Pres. Bush's record on the economy and the deficit.

Some blogs that aren't moderate, but still tend to avoid racist/homophobic stuff:

Greg Mankiw was an economist with the Bush administration and is best described as a conservative Paul Krugman, a professor of economics at Harvard who uses economic theory to push a partisan ideological agenda.

Rod Dreher is an Orthodox Christian blogger who focuses on religion.

That said, some of the core blogs of the conservative movement are no going to oppose homophobia, and will only nominally oppose racism. To get an accurate view you will have to look into the abyss a bit.

The Corner is the premier group blog of the conservative movement. There are occasional sane contributors such as Jim Manzi, but the vast majority are like Jonah Goldberg, dense, semi-literate, and intentionally lacking an understanding of the meaning of socialist/nazi.

Townhall amounts to basically a clearinghouse of conservative op-ed columns. This is where the sub-par members of the conservative cognoscenti go when they aren't being picked up by reputable newspapers anymore.

American Conservative founded by Pat Buchannan, it has begun to shed the anti-semetic views of its founder, and has been stridently anti-war in recent years. Not really a part of the conservative mainstream, but it is still anti-immigrant.

If you want some examples of the most wingnutty of the wingnuts try these: (for a complete list check the links at Sadly, No)

Confederate Yankee is a neo-confederate sympathizer, who just about blew a gasket when Obama was elected. He has been stockpiling ammo for the last year, and hopefully will restrain himself to a suicide, rather than taking anyone else with him.

Atlas Shrugs is a blog by Pamela Geller who shriekingly denounces all Muslims as terrorists, and supports racist dutch politician Gert Wilbers. She is at the forefront of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy movement.

Federal Way Conservative is a local Mormon blogger who seems to be immune to logic or reason. Seems to believe that all governmental action is unconstitutional, and yet seems to be able to square that with militarized drug prohibition and gay marriage bans. One contributor to his blog is a man who appeared on the Daily Show because he was trying to get his children's high school to ban "An Inconvenient Truth" and provided one of the most unhinged interviews in their history.

Remember to be heartened when reading these, the more people read them the more liberals are going to succeed.

vooodooo84 answered in News & Politics over 2 years ago | Report

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Replacing the echo chamber with a ping pong table doesn't get you anywhere. Most of these partisans are mirror images of each other -- a quick search and replace of a few key words will turn any left wingnut blog into a right wingnut blog.

I'd go with the foreign press, like The Economist and the London newspapers, if you want some balance and realism.

And Sullivan? Sullivan's a conservative, religious tool who happens to hold a few progressive opinions about things that he would never have cared about if he were straight. He's just as willing to attack the morality and patriotism of those who disagree with his hawkish, chauvinist fantasies as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

elenchos answered in News & Politics over 2 years ago | Report

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There's David Frum's FrumForum . I don't read it regularly, but the occasional article I have read has been well-written and somewhat reasonable. You know, for a conservative blog.

e.strange answered in News & Politics over 2 years ago | Report

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As far as newspaper websites go, the Christian Science Monitor is probably one of the most unbiased, and their forums and blogs tend to be populated with more reasonable, less partisan, posters.

Geni answered in News & Politics over 2 years ago | Report

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http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/ could probably be classified as libertarian and is generally interesting.

Another Andrew answered in News & Politics over 2 years ago | Report

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The Economist is a good idea, as is the Wall Street Journal (the main paper, not the rabid editorial section) or Financial Times. Also, read the Money sections of standard newspapers. IME, you'll find fewer wingnuts in most newspapers than in a blog. Blogs are supposed to be controversial--that's how they get hits and hits mean money to the bloggers.

CleverScreenName answered in News & Politics over 2 years ago | Report

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More Financial than political (but the two are joined at the hip, IMO):

I like Bill Fleckenstein

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/ContrarianChronicles/why-contrarian-investors-have-an-edge.aspx

While not terribly rightwing, he's wildly right of the typical left-of-left tie-dyed-in-the-wool Seattle liberal.

If nothing else, it's refreshing to hear a true moderate voice talking in an otherwise us vs them cowmanure-throwing arena.

Rev.Enant answered in News & Politics over 2 years ago | Report

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Thomas Sowell is a Hoover Institution institution. His thoughts on race and economic difference might drive you crazy but they are well-argued and eloquent...usually.

I don't know that he has a blog per se. He writes columns in a bunch of places, however, and churns out books and papers at such a prolific rate it is difficult for progressive academicians to refute one work before the next is published.

http://www.tsowell.com/

capicola answered in News & Politics over 2 years ago | Report

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