As our first guest writer, Olaf from The Prairie Wrangler blog writes about political blogging in Canada…

“I would describe Canadian political blogging as a massive ocean, fully saturated with fish and containing three clearly discernable whirlpools. Now, I’m not much of a poet, as you will soon find out, so try to bear with me on this analogy.

There’s a left wing pool, a centrist pool, and a right wing pool that all connect at their edges. A vast majority of bloggers swim towards the pool they find most comfortable, and often get sucked down into the depths of that dark void, never to return again, and never to see beyond it.

They become more and more confident that their pool is superior as they sink deeper and deeper, and convene only with the like-minded. Together, all arrogantly smirk at those who have, through moral deviancy or intellectual dishonesty, chose a pool different from their own. They no longer need to swim; they merely rest near the bottom of their pool, drinking the party “kool-aid”, chatting amongst themselves, and going around in circles.

Then there are some swimmers who gravitate to the area between the three pools. These are the strongest swimmers, and must constantly fight the whirlpools of their ideological home, however comfortable it may be, and must constantly swim towards the outer edge. They are able to converse with the other pools without derision, and make arguments by challenging their arguments, with an underlying respect, instead of contempt. It is these bloggers who prevent the blogosphere from degenerating completely into tri-polar, mutually exclusive pools. They are able to contribute constructively to political discourse, because they have to keep swimming to stay where they are.

Although there are quite a few edge-swimmers from each whirlpool, in my opinion, the top two from each are:

Right-wing swimmers:
Andrew at BoundByGravity
Greg at Political Staples

Centrist swimmers:
Bart at Calgary Grit
Peter at Paper Dynamite

Left-wing swimmers:
The Idealistic Pragmatist
John at Dymaxion World”

Thanks, Olaf!

We will be looking for more people to write guest articles in the future, so if you are interested send us an e-mail.