Once more into the ghetto dear friends ...

I saw this and thought of you dear reader ( :-d ).

Conservapedia brands itself on its main page as "a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American."

. Which is an interesting reaction, given that if that's how they feel, they can actually rework the material and there are mechanisms for mediating long-running battles over content and even the possibility in genuinely contested areas to present both viewpoints. What this seems, to me, to really represent is a discomfort on the part of some conservatives with the fact that their view of the world is contested, and that imposing authority is not always the way to resolve dispute and disagreement. It seems to be a rather petulant reaction to the fact that not everyone is wowed or convinced by their arguments. The insularity of some USAmerican opinion is also on display, I think. For so long the internet has been dominated by the economics of digital access hardware that many Yanquis seem to have forgotten that there really is another world out there and that when other people get to write the scripts, the cowboys ain't always the heroes. So some of this reactions seems like the fit of pique involved in taking your bat and ball home when you can't use the power of ownership any longer to cajole others into playing by your rules.

Personally, I think that this reaction shows that the impetus behind this brand of conservatism is that which drives bullying, and like most bullies, when their power-base is threatened they retreat and create a ghetto. Understandable, but sad that they don't feel able to truly work by civilised values. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh but this morning that's how I feel. Perhaps as I think about it more I'll get a bit mellower.

Technorati Tags: conservatism, wikipedia, bullying, internet, globalisation