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"America has two great dominant strands of political thought - conservatism, which, at its very best, draws lines that should not be crossed; and progressivism, which, at its very best, breaks down barriers that should never have been erected." -- Bill Clinton, Dedication of the Clinton Presidential Library, November 2004

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Thursday, May 25, 2006

 

A gallant experiment ends

posted by Aziz P. at Thursday, May 25, 2006 permalink View blog reactions
Josh Trevino is leaving SwordsCrossed. I think that's terrible news. SC was a great experiment in genuine dialog and respectful debate. Regular Dean's World commentator TallDave will be one of the new writers there, and I wish him well. However with Trevino's departure I think that the diversity of disagreement is diminished - something is now lost that can't be regained.

For what it's worth, I think that Obsidian Wings is still a good source of respectful cross-partisan conversing. Charles Bird in particular is a man I respect and who I'd even invited to guest post at Dean Nation on occassion. And John Cole's Balloon Juice is a duet, with John as the moderate conservative and his friend Tim as the moderate liberal. However, none of these sites quite fill the void left by SwordsCrossed - an actual debate on chosen topics, with responses in turn.

I salute Armando and Trevino and hope that SC finds a life of its own. But I also hope that we see more experiments like SC in the future.

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About Nation-Building

Nation-Building was founded by Aziz Poonawalla in August 2002 under the name Dean Nation. Dean Nation was the very first weblog devoted to a presidential candidate, Howard Dean, and became the vanguard of the Dean netroot phenomenon, raising over $40,000 for the Dean campaign, pioneering the use of Meetup, and enjoying the attention of the campaign itself, with Joe Trippi a regular reader (and sometime commentor). Howard Dean himself even left a comment once. Dean Nation was a group weblog effort and counts among its alumni many of the progressive blogsphere's leading talent including Jerome Armstrong, Matthew Yglesias, and Ezra Klein. After the election in 2004, the blog refocused onto the theme of "purple politics", formally changing its name to Nation-Building in June 2006. The primary focus of the blog is on articulating purple-state policy at home and pragmatic liberal interventionism abroad.