20 Recent Front Page

• Preaching to the Choir
• And Another Thing
• Almost Last Words
• Happy Thanksgiving
• Cooking
• Eating History
• AIDS Cure Found in Dolphin Livers
• Apologies
• The Small Stuff
• Snow Job
• Bliss
• Ammo Day
• From the Closet
• Satire
• The United States of America:  The Miniseries
• Intellectual Curiosity
• Fifteen to a Boat
• Oh, Good Grief
• Strawman
• Conservative Principle

Frontpage Calendar

Mrs. du Toit Weblog

This site is inactive as of November 30, 2008.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Preaching to the Choir

This will be my last post and comments will go silent at midnight, at which time the entire site goes into archive/posterity mode until someone forgets to pay the hosting bill and the site disappears into oblivion.

If I were to sum up what I’ve done during my on-and-off blogging history, the title of this post would most accurately describe it.  Preaching to the choir is, as we know, a cliché we use to describe talking to a group that already has our ear, our agreement, and our attention. 

Why not preach to the choir?  After all, they’re the ones who have to get to church early, attend rehearsals during the week, and give up the solitude of sitting in the pews for the enjoyment of those who do.  Shouldn’t their service to the church and their sacrifices involve a little pay back sometimes?  They shouldn’t always have to see only the back of our head and their attendance taken for granted.

We shouldn’t take the choir for granted, as they’re the ones who are willing to devote their time to make life a little better, and enjoyable, for everyone else.

Even those who sing in the choir can get a touch of the blues, and need a little shoring up now and again. 

I’ve never cared much about the folks sitting in the pews or those who don’t agree with the philosophy of conservatism.  They’re either stupid or evil, and you can’t fix stupid, nor can you change evil to good.  What you can do, and what I’ve tried to do, is to keep those who do get it from straying from the gospel of political conservatism, and shared my life’s trials and tribulations so that folks know there’s a real person posting here.

Folks would complain that we wouldn’t allow “differing opinions” on our sites.  What they failed to realize is that the opinions that differed weren’t opinions.  They were failed ideas, shown through the light of history to be dangerous or flawed.  Kim and I referred to them as “settled matters” because we know that capitalism is better than communism, that a strong defense is better than weakness, that freedom is better than tyranny, that caution is better than recklessness, that a civil society is better than an immoral one, that teaching a man to fish is better than giving him fish, even if that means a few people might starve who refuse to learn.  We weren’t interested in hearing the same old arguments about how socialism might work or rogues and libertines acceptable, if given a different set of clothing. 

Over the years I’ve had a few different mottoes on the site.  The one that remain is still my favorite and explains my philosophy, in general:

When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
--Lucuis Cary, Viscount Falkland

That doesn’t sum up my entire philosophy.  This one does:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
--Edmund Burke

Blogging has been a very positive thing for me (most of the time).  Although hearing the same arguments and complaints (usually from members of the nut set) gets tiring, having to build cohesive arguments (at least the first time) forced me to think through my commitments and opinions.  Some of my views changed over the years.  This was mainly due to the acceptance of reality, of understanding that some things were beyond compromise or reconciliation.  Those are things that may never be settled, not that they couldn’t be, but because some people have a kind of personal investment in them (and refuse to reconsider it).  In other arenas and issues, I became more resolute in my opinions.  Additional research didn’t change my opinion; on the contrary, my opinions were enriched.

I’ve never been interested in making “converts” to conservatism.  Folks will either figure it out on their own, or they won’t.  What I’ve been about is making sure that those who already subscribe to the philosophy don’t waiver, don’t lose it, and know they aren’t alone in their views.

We know, from similar statistics, that it takes a lot more time (and money) to make a convert than it does to keep your customers, or those who are considering becoming your customers.  In fact, it is just about impossible to convert someone from an extreme. In the marketing biz, converting a Coke drinker to a Pepsi drinker is impossible.  If we want to increase our sales, we just have to get the Pepsi drinkers to drink MORE Pepsi, and ignore the Coke customers completely.  In order to get a Coke drinker to drink Pepsi, we have to give it to them for free, and even then they’re likely to give it out to their friends, while still drinking Coke on their own.

A lot of folks didn’t get that.  They didn’t get that about Kim or me.  We’ve never been about recruitment.  We’ve always been about retention and making those we retain more committed and involved… increasing the sales among our existing customers, rather than trying to increase sales among a group we have no ability to reach or convert.

That’s meant that what we’ve written about has never made us popular, and we never cared about that.  We’ve refused calls to be “leaders” because it demeans others who are capable of leading themselves.  Kim and I have enough experience in a variety of fields to know how we could have had popular and (therefore) lucrative websites (if we’d been interested in popularity over principles), or developed a clique. 

There are things more important than money, and far too many who know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.

None of this means that we’re retiring from the world entirely or that we won’t continue to read and comment in the blogosphere.  There are other ways to fulfill your obligations as citizens, as people, and as neighbors.  We’re simply stepping off the soapbox.

There comes a time when that older voice in the choir needs to step down, to make a place for a younger, stronger voice.  Sure, that old guy might still make all the rehearsals and show up come Sunday, ready to do what he has always done, but his voice isn’t as sweet as it once was, nor his stamina as long as it used to be.  He may still love to sing, but for the sake of the whole choir, and those sitting in the pews, it is time to step aside. 

Maybe, when he does step down, he’ll have time to make a bit more money or save the money he spent getting to all those rehearsals--money he’ll use to help his kids a little more, or save for his retirement years, but the main reason he stepped aside wasn’t because of that. 

To everything there is a season, and our time for blogging has reached winter.  We’ll still be delighting in the choir’s performance and cheering them on as we always have, but we’ll be mouthing the words to the old hymns from the pews, mostly in silence from now on. 

I’ll be spending most of my time observing the world, watching the sailing ships go by, and the sun coming up and setting in (mostly) quiet contemplation.

The baton has been passed and I have complete faith that others will find it and carry it forward.

My best to all and to all a good night,
“The Mrs”

Latest from:

American Farmer

by American Farmer

American Farmer may now be read on his own domain:
americanfarmerBLOG.com

Blogroll

Blogroll Archive (Zipped)

From the U.S. Constitution...