Yesterday, I linked to Jim Henley's introduction to The Art of the Possible blog. Today, I had the opportunity to play around a little bit at that site, and immediately started screaming the above line from Pigman in PCU. Indeed, the fact that it took me over a month to find this site, which was founded in part by Mona from Henley's Unqualified Offerings (one of my favorite sites, libertarian or otherwise), is a bit disturbing.
In any event, The Art of the Possible describes its mission thusly:
The Bush administration has been extreme enough in its authoritarianism, flagrant law breaking, and flouting of basic human rights norms to cause fractures in the old GOP coalition. There is now the possibility of new political alliances forming. Speaking broadly, it may be that many of the factions in the Democratic Party, and some of the factions that call themselves “libertarian,” collectively represent a kind of loose anti-authoritarian coalition, or rather, the possibility of one. This site aims to facilitate
conversation among those factions.
So here we have a site that attempts to "facilitate conversation" between liberals and libertarians. My regular readers will be aware that although I do not consider myself a "left-libertarian," I tend to have a stronger relationship with the left side of the blogosphere than the right side. So that's one big point for the Art of the Possible.
Then of course there is the fact that whenever possible I try to weave in themes about coalition building and Madisonian shifting coalitions. So score another big point for the Art of the Possible.
Next comes the fact that the Art of the Possible is geared towards the idea of creating something resembling a political realignment. Of course, I've written repeatedly about the possibility/likelihood of such a realignment occuring in the coming years (although it now seems that a split in the Dem Party caused by the Obama/Hillary fiasco is more likely than a split in the GOP now that the GOP has nominated the one candidate I thought could hold the coalition together). So that's three big points.
Finally, the Art of the Possible features two of my favorite bloggers around: Mona and, now, Jim Henley, both of Unqualified Offerings reknown. In other words: as far as I'm concerned, The Art of the Possible may be the World's Greatest Blog.
(Added bonus: In his follow-up, Mr. Henley throws in a totally gratuitous recommendation of this humble blog....many thanks are in order for that! He also raises a number of other points that are worthy of their own post on my part; alas, 'tis a bit late for that right now)
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