Whither Jon Swift?

Although I have often said that a conservative never apologizes, I'm afraid I must break this rule on this one occasion to apologize to my dear readers for my recent unexplained absence from the blogosphere. I hope you will find it in your hearts to forgive me for worrying some of you needlessly.

I started this modest blog more than two years ago for the same reason everyone starts a blog: to become fabulously wealthy. But I also intended it to be a voice for the rarely heard reasonable conservative point of view. Recently, however, I had begun to wonder if I am entirely too reasonable for the blogosphere. It seems that the blogosphere has become more unreasonable than ever and I began to despair that I was having any effect at all.

On the left side of the blogosphere Obama partisans and Hillary partisans are at each other's throats, saying things about each other that are even nastier than the things they used to say about conservatives back when they used to attack conservatives instead of each other. (Although it could have been much worse if Chris Dodd had not dropped out of the race since his supporters were the most vicious of all.) I have always prided myself on having friends on both sides of the aisle despite the fact that I believe some of my friends are going to Hell or might be better off in Guantanamo. But it seems that many of my liberal friends cannot even be friendly to each other anymore. I wish these Obama and Hillary fanatics would stop fighting for just a moment and face the facts: Both of your candidates would be equally dangerous for the country! So what are you fighting about?

On the right side of the blogosphere the situation is no better. Some conservative bloggers feel no compunction about attacking our President in a manner that we all once agreed was tantamount to treason or at least was a sign of derangement. And now many conservatives now seem to be suffering from an acute case of McCain Derangement Syndrome because he has not pandered to us sufficiently by reversing himself on enough issues quickly enough. Of course, like most conservatives I dislike McCain, too, but there is still plenty of time for him to back down from all of his principles and completely capitulate to our agenda. One of the ways the right side of the blogosphere has always been different from the left is that we always defend Republicans no matter how incompetent, hypocritical or ideologically questionable they are and save our attacks for the other side or blame the liberal media. Conservative bloggers have always been dependable water carriers for the Republicans, yet it appears that many bloggers on the right believe they have suddenly developed the ability to think independently. We need to strive much harder to see the good side of being extremely old and out of touch, emotionally unstable and a flip flopper and I'm sure we can all agree that we want to stay in Iraq as long as possible. Do we really want to be like Democrats who believe that it is more important to feel good about the person you are voting for than it is to win? Since when did conservatives believe actually liking a candidate or believing he is fit for office is an appropriate criterion for voting?

Seeing my despair, Mrs. Swift became very worried about me and decided it was time for an intervention. She showed me an article in the New York Times about blogging that worried her. The article likened some bloggers to workers in a sweatshop, which the writer thought was a bad thing, though I was very impressed that some bloggers actually get paid $10 per post! But the article also pointed out that never leaving the computer might actually be bad for one's health. She also mentioned that although our household is doing reasonably well financially with the Google ads from my blog and her three jobs, my blog has not quite been the cash machine the colorful blog brochures had promised. And so she suggested that I take a brief hiatus from the blogosphere to get some perspective and perhaps even look for some ways to supplement our income.

At first, I must say, this extreme deblogification was difficult. I didn't know what to do with myself. I did spend some time on Craigslist looking for other writing opportunities though I was unable to find anything that called for the unique abilities of a reasonable conservative and frankly there is nothing quite so satisfying as getting paid little or nothing for one's work. However, I soon realized that I had a lot more time to do some important things I had been neglecting in my life since I started my blog. I began watching a lot more television and playing more videogames, some of which were quite challenging. I became active in local community issues such as fighting to stop bilingual Esperanto education in our schools instead of forcing Esperantos to learn English. Some days I even went outside of the house and drove to the park to watch people exercising. And most important, I spent some quality time with my daughter Schlafly and my son Spiro, though not actually in the same room since they never seemed to be around the house. But I did have more time to text message them about how they are ruining their lives and how they are so much luckier than I was when I was growing up, which I think has made us closer.

And so what I had intended to be a brief respite stretched on and on. Not only did I stop posting to my blog, I stopped reading my email and other blogs as well and so I had no idea that my disappearance had caused some consternation among my readers. It wasn't until Melissa McEwan of Shakesville cleverly tracked me down and got a message to me that I realized that I had self-indulgently caused some people to bevome concerned about my well-being, which made me feel terrible, like I was Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer abandoning my blog to Dustin Hoffman to take care of.

I had no idea that some bloggers, worried about my absence, had even organized online search parties to find out what happened to me. In the last few days I have been catching up on some of the speculation about the reasons for my disappearance. ZenYenta worried that something had happened to me but hoped I had gotten a book contract. From your lips to Simon & Schuster's ears, I thought when I read that. Of course, most New York publishing houses are run by liberals and the only publisher I know of that publishes conservative books is Regency, which I believe is one of those fly-by-night vanity presses. Saskboy speculated that my disappearance could be due to "blackmail, or death. It's an international mystery!"

I am still trying to sort though the 3,000 email messages I got during my absence and the hundreds of comments people left on my blog. It will take me a little while to catch up on these messages and reconnect with the issues that are so very important in the blogosphere (though nowhere else, I discovered). I'm still not up to snuff on every time Obama has gotten a date or geographical location wrong, how many times Hillary has slipped racial innuendo into seemingly innocent remarks or campaign ads, or figured out how to spin all of McCain's flaws into virtues, so please bear with me. I feel terrible about all the worry I caused and humbled by the affection you have shown me, so let me thank each and every one of you for your thoughts and good wishes. I must say, however, that Bukko in Australia, has a point: "Don't you people have lives, coming back day after day to a site that any sensible conservative would have given up for dead?"

Unlike some blogs, this blog has not had any great accomplishments to point to like getting someone fired from a job or thrown in jail, so I am genuinely stunned to discover that some people think this blog is important. But I guess if this blog can make even one person's pathetic existence just a little more bearable, then maybe that is enough. In these difficult times people will cling to anything that gives them hope, even a modest little blog. And perhaps I am wrong about being entirely too reasonable for the blogosphere. Maybe the blogosphere needs a reasonable conservative now more than ever.

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