Friday, October 31, 2008

Getting things going

Like anything anyone writes, and especially blogs, I don't know if anyone will ever read this or think it is interesting. I might not even find it interesting and I might give up after one post.

Nevertheless . . .

I've wanted to try this out for a while. I purposely waited until the end of the election season because campaigns get nasty and rhetoric gets conflated and feelings get hurt and I wanted to avoid the bulk of that. That said, I hope this doesn't just turn into a political blog because I think most people find those a little too heavy and pedantic. I certainly am not trying to politicize religion, mine or anyone else's, nor to religious-ize politics. But Mormons are a political people, I believe, and creating a place to talk about politics, culture, and religion from a left-leaning point of view could be helpful, even to those who disagree.

I think no topic is off limits and that we should be open to listening to every possible point of view, respect the person, and then make informed opinions of our own without having to bring anyone else down. That means being open and honest about topics as disparate as war, human rights, abortion, homosexuality, scripture, families, and anything else you can think of.

I will not claim that this is an original undertaking. There are plenty of liberal Mormon bloggers out there who have been at this for a while and who are very good at it. Once I figure this thing out I'll provide some links.

I'm going to enlist my wife, who has quite a substantial network of friends online, to advertise this little blog to anyone interested and we'll see if we can't get a little dialogue going.