Guess Who's Back? (Blogclass Filter 3.0)

Have you ever read a novel and wondered how you ever lived your life never having read it? You wonder why it took you so long to read it. Surely your friend had told you to read it a thousand times. But it took you awhile to finally read it, it changed the way you think about literature.

The Daou Report has that effect on me. I wonder how I ever considered a blog without considering this blog. It is a fantastic read.

In Socrates' well known dialogue Phaedrus, Plato discusses the necessity to have a dialogue rather than a lecture. In Socrates' time, famous lecturers would walk between towns delivering rousing speeches on issues. Socrates says "the only way to know truth is to not know truth, and therein find truth embedded in conversings with others." Most bloggers believe they know the truth already, and spout it constantly from their overly fattened, drunk on fame, heads. They are the idiotic lecturers Socrates discusses. They do not further any truth.

However, The Daou Report is more of a conversation. For it is not one lucid opinion on a matter, but a hundred different lucid opinions. It is a marketplace of ideas, and not some trolls agreeing with each other and swearing if they don't. The Daou Report is quick, easy to read and insightful. It offers an amazing array of opinions that a reader can easily peruse through and make up their own mind. Propaganda does not live at The Daou Report; ideas do.

Take for example, the current scooter craze out of Washington (personally I use a scooter to glide through the halls of work, but that's a different matter). The Daou Report has some insightful opinions for both sides regarding this matter. The double column effect creates a virtual debate feeling, as if the two sides were conversing at this point. Some excellent back and forth dialogue is happening on this page:
"And they’re supposed to be the national security party. If you want ethics in government, don’t vote Republican. If you want to trust your government not to leak classified information to journalists for political gain, certainly don’t vote for Republicans.... " (Oliver Willis, left)
"Scooter Libby has been indicted on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. That sounds bad, but compared to what White House insiders had feared, it’s really no big deal. Libby has resigned. The indictments do not play into Joe Wilson’s outsized ego as the “leaking the name of an undercover agent” isn’t covered under the indictment. Simply put, there was no crime there." (Ankle Biting Pundits, right)

I'm excited by The Daou Report because it argues in a fantastic manner. It is not some journalistic hack who needs to yell and scream about stuff, it's a well composed and thought out process, which gives equal measure to any opinions. If only more blogs followed this model.