6/08/2022

Where Has The Time Gone? Twenty Years Of Blogging

It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since my Dear Brother started this blog. There have been well over 6000 posts over that 20 years, most of them written by yours truly. (My brother had started another blog dealing with his literary pursuits, so he veered away from this one to do so.) There have been over a million blog views in that 20 years, almost 700,000 of them here on Blogger alone. (Nope, I am nowhere near Instapundit or GraniteGrok or any of the other high volume blogs out there, but that’s okay. I’m not doing it for the numbers.)

It started here at Blogger, moved to another host for a few years, then to yet another host (Thanks, Skip!) when that host went defunct. (I also posted at the ‘backup’ blog site, the resurrected Blogger site). Finally I ended up back here at Blogger as the primary.

I’ve posted on all kinds of topics, be it politics, human nature, technology, history, and a host of other topics. I have gone through cycles where I’ve posted every day, just on weekends, and in between those two extremes.

I admit that there are times when I look through the archives to remind myself of things we’ve written in the past. On more than a few occasions I was surprised to read something and find out that I had written it rather than my Dear Brother. Frankly, I have never believed I was that wise. Heck, at times I even sounded ‘wicked smaht’. It also surprised and saddened me how some topics from 20 years ago are still relevant today. Some were prophetic. Some were absolutely and completely wron….worng….incorrect, though that hasn’t happen too often. (Note: I do have a niece who would disagree with that statement.)

One of my posts that is still relevant today was my fourth post, posted back on June 18th, 2002. Here it is in its entirety (minus an embedded link which is now dead):

Freedom of Speech…But Only if you Agree with Us.

Despite what David Horowitz wrote in his article, he has overlooked one salient point about the radical left taking over our university and college campuses— The First Amendment doesn’t exist when someone disagrees with them.

How many times on how many campuses around the U.S. have conservative (or even moderate) campus newspapers been confiscated and destroyed by the radical left in the name of ‘Free Speech’? How many times have learned and erudite speakers invited to campuses been heckled and shouted down by the radical left, in effect silencing them because they hold a viewpoint different from the leftists?

Too many times.

What can be done to stem the tide of leftist-think in such situations? The answer is quite simple.

Prosecute them.

Haul them before a court for civil rights violations. Their right to free speech ends where someone else’s begins. This is something that they seem to forget. We should do it before the radical left uses more draconian measures to silence the critics. Think ‘gulag’ or ‘brain hemorrhage’ of the 9mm variety, or a ‘mental hospital' where psyche-destroying pharmaceuticals are used on the poor deluded souls having the audacity to speak out.

What has changed since that post 20 years ago? Those trying to silence free speech have gotten louder, more confrontational, and in more than a few cases, violent.

This has made me think I should go through the Official Weekend Pundit Archives and repost some old posts with some updates every now and then. I have done so in the past every now and then, but not on a regular basis. That I have 20 years of posts to draw from should make it easier to do so. Who knows, it might even be fun.

Twenty years down. Plenty more to go.