Closet Conservative Meets Kindred Spirits

Conservatives living in Progressive enclaves all learn one lesson: you can have all the friends you want, as long as you don't tell them what you are really thinking. 

Keeping one's political thoughts under lock and key is an exhausting enterprise, to say the least, so, a little more than a year ago, I set about the task of changing my fate. I got online to search for Conservative groups somewhere in my area. No such luck. I easily located more than 100 local groups devoted to a wide variety of interests. But groups for Conservatives? Nada.

Finally I came across a blog posting about my very own little corner of Progressive Paradise. It was called, A Place Where Only Liberal Speech Is Protected, and it was written by William A. Jacobson. In it, he observed:

I often joke that the directions to my house in Ithaca  read as follows:  Take a right at the fifth Obama sign, a left at the third "Impeach Bush" placard, bear right at the "Support Our Troops, End the War" poster, and we are the house just after the "There's a Village in Texas Missing its Idiot" banner.

The joke was, of course, that every house in Ithaca could be reached by following similar directions. One visit to Jacobson's blog, and I was hooked. Legal Insurrection, filled with Jacobson's incisive observations, became my port in the Progressive storm, and that storm certainly was raging. In Ithaca, Conservatives became officially recognized as the city's only unprotected minority:

On October 1, 2008, the Ithaca, NY, Common Council declared Ithaca a "Community of Sanctuary" for protestors against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but denied sanctuary status to supporters of the wars. 

Gradually, it came to me that I no longer needed to keep my own observations prisoner: I could start a blog of my own. One day I published a post, in which I made my intentions clear:

Times being what they are, I am casting this small loaf upon the waters of the Internet, in the certain knowledge that there are many other conservatives like myself with few kindred spirits at hand with whom to have what Ben Franklin's sister Jenny referred to as "suitable conversation." 

Miracle of miracles, the next time I looked in on Legal Insurrection--one year ago today--I found that William Jacobson had written about my new little blog: "Another fed-up, closet conservative has started a blog, Bread Upon The Waters. Check it out."

That started it, and I have since benefitted enormously from "suitable conversation" with, and inspiring reading of, incredibly smart, kind, and good people. Grateful thanks to Yukio Ngaby at Critical Narrative, Mad Minerva, Constant Conservative, How's That Obama Vote Working Out for You???, Gathering of Eagles: NY, snaggletoothie of the Loyal Opposition, There's My Two Cents, Nickie Goomba and the rest of the Mob, Pat at And So it Goes in Shreveport, Wax Lips, Pundit and Pundette, Jo-Joe Politico, and AJ at The Strata-Sphere. More grateful thanks to a welcome from new friends, whom I'll introduce tomorrow.

No one could have better company than that!
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