WatchBlog: 2004 Election News, Opinion and Commentary

“WatchBlog is a multiple-editor weblog broken up into three major political affiliations, each with its own blog: the Democrats, the Republicans and the Third Party (covering everything outside the two major parties).” —WatchBlog: 2004 Election News, Opinion and Commentary (WatchBlog)

This looks interesting — a three-column blog — Democrat on the left side, Republican on the right. So far, so good. But covering third-party issues in the center column? I can’t really think of any third-party issues that are centrist. Some will be far left, some will be far right; and some times the extremes share a totalitarian vision of enforcement of their ideals, and sometimes the extremes share a libertarian vision of minimal government interference in the lives of its citizens. The one-dimensional layout of the perspectives on this page doesn’t match my vision of the political landscape, since it gives so much recognition to third-party voices (compared to the effect the third-party voices actually have on governance).

Of course, that’s probably the point of the website, to encourage people to challenge their own perspective, and that is of course a good thing. And, untill we have three-dimensional computer interfaces, no I can’t really think of a better way to dispay the ideas… unless you have four columns, but then the fringe views would get even more attention.

Hmm… that reminds me of a political quiz that ranks you on a left-right-libertarian-authoritarian scale.

Update: I found and blogged the political quiz.