Facebook Activism

From watching various sites and being sent links to join them, it would seem that the prevailing trend in methods of voicing displeasure online has moved away from the free, online petition towards the Facebook group.

I can't help but wonder, however, whether the Facebook group method is any more effective than the free, online petition method — which seemed to have an effectiveness rating of 0%.

I suppose it all comes down to: do people actually do things with these groups?  (e.g. Arrange campaigns/schedule events and actually follow through.)  Or is it just largely composed of people who either join and bitch/swap conspiracy theories on the group wall and or who join as a method of voicing their displeasure and never do anything else?

If it's the former, then good on them for finding a way of adapting the Internet to suit more widely-distributed participants.  If it's the latter, which the pessimist in me thinks that it is, then they serve little more point than slapping a ribbon magnet on one's car and never doing another thing — feel-good actions that assuage one's conscience about doing something without the effort of actually doing anything.

The New Yorker & The GOP

The New Yorker ran a column a few weeks ago called The Fall of Conservatism: Have the Republicans run out of ideas?.  I'm of the opinion that it's an interesting read, regardless of whether one agrees with the author's overall conclusion that American conservatism as a movement is dying and can't survive in its present form.

Particularly, his thesis is that the American conservative movement as exemplified by the Republican party, has primarily fallen afoul of two items: the obvious first being the collapse of the Soviet Union and the associated loss of one the major raison d'êtres of the movement.  The second merely being the passage of time and failure to adapt since Nixon's wins, as explained by the following quote from former Bush-speechwriter David Frum:

"Republicans have been reprising Nixon's 1972 campaign against McGovern for a third of a century. As the excesses of the 1960s have dwindled into history, however, the 1972 campaign has worked less and less well. […] How many more elections can conservatives win by campaigning against Abbie Hoffman and Bobby Seale? Voters want solutions to the problems of today."

It's a bit of a long read, I'll admit, but I feel it's worth it.  The author posted some responses to it in a later blog entry, but for the most part I don't really think that they're substantial enough to comment on, save to say: if Michelle jihadists-under-the-bed Malkin represents the future of the American conservative movement, then the movement as it exists may as well start shopping around for a nice cemetery plot.

(This entry also acts as a test of the "new" server hardware.  Things should hopefully be slightly snappier.)