Cultivating our fenceless garden

At MyDD, the famed 2004 presidential web hound Matt Stoller opines on The Future of Blogs and Campaigns.

His effusive excitement about the democratic impetus lying within fledgling blogger culture reminds me of my own digital fantasies in high school: the web would renew American civic society, and indeed the world. Access to the web would place a low-cost bull-horn into the hands of average voters, thrilling them with their newfound public voice and generating a world of ideas. The new modern renaissance of meritocracy produced would be so cogent that its conclusions and solutions, mete by millions of minds, would reverberate outside the blogosphere, into the world of politics, policies, the real-world.

It is only unfortunate that Stiller's exceptional voice is also indicative of an unusually high level of involvement and commitment to the web. But visionaries make history, at least those with the diligence to act and act again. As Stoller writes in encouraging Everyman campaign blogging:

It's going to be unpleasant, you will lose most of the internal battles in the campaign, and you're going to be second-fiddle to the traditional communications and press operation. But it's worth it, because the internet is now so big that it simply cannot be ignored. And you my friend cannot ignore the rest of the political world, and seeing politics from the inside makes this oh-so-clear.

He sees the ripening of poliblogs nearly as a panacea, at least for the greatest ills that most irk me: the natural reformation of campaign finance, forced coalition-building by political parties, greater transparency of the political process, the development of true, direct discourse between politicians and citizens. May I live to see the day...

I don't know if Stoller is right, but I'd like him to be. And if I can't choose that, I can at least make the choice so many other bloggers have in joining the multitude ranks of self-appointed talking heads. The blogosphere, like a social revolution, is more than the sum of its parts. But let us each take a step and become one part, shall we?