Happy Anniversary to Us

Four years ago today, in a modest office on an obscure campus in a downscale neighborhood in a medium city in an overlooked part of the country, a blog was born. And the rest, as they say, is unnoticed history.

We celebrate the SWNIDish fourth anniversary by reminding gentle readers why and how we blog. As to why, we do it for our own amusement and stimulation. We are, of course, delighted if others are amused and stimulated, but even if Sitemeter and Google Analytics tells us that no one is reading, we'll keep our output going at its present, inconsistent pace. Nevertheless, we are grateful for those who step into this labrynth with us and especially express our thanks to those who tell us they enjoy our logorrheic indulgences.

As to how, we blog according to our view of the world and our preferred mode of communication. As to the view, we say it is Christian, in the tradition of Tory conservatives politically, and contrarian tempermentally. To explicate our view of the world:

• By Christian, we mean guided by biblical theology as apprehended by the church historically. We think that the world is God's, that humans bear God's image, that they rebel against him inevitably (except for one) but not necessarily, that they are redeemed by the human Jesus who is God incarnate and specifically by his self-giving death and triumphant resurrection that showers them with underserved favor and turns ordinary life upside down, and so are on a mission to reclaim humanity for its Creator and Redeemer, such redemption being accomplished only partly at present but fully at some indeterminate point in the future.
• By Tory conservative, we mean that we are pessimistic about political solutions to the human dilemma and so only endorse those political programs that fully reckon with the universal weakness of human nature. We love capitalism because it imperfectly harnesses human greed for the common good. Affirming that liberty is the natural and best condition for humans and that the state must both respect and preserve liberty while at the same time restraining the human penchant to harm other humans, we go further than our libertarian friends in affirming that the state must also reinforce those weak impulses toward virtue that continue to manifest themselves among the fallen. Can the government legislate morality? No in the sense that it cannot compel it; yes in the sense that it must encourage it. To do otherwise is immoral.
  
• By contrarian, we mean that our natural bent is to disagree with whatever most people think at any given moment. We think the world is both better and worse than people think, that people have more and less potential than most acknowledge, that life is funnier and more tragic than most admit. Our default assessment of just about anything is love/hate, though not with the same outcome, we hope, as Robert Mitchum's immortal character in The Night of the Hunter. Our favored amusement is a playful argument with thoughtful people, something that we do with the utmost seriousness and a wide smile. Attention Daniel Webster, we are the Devil's Advocate, and this time you are going down!

To explicate our mode of communication, we are deliberately verbose, pompous, sardonic, sarcastic and satirical. We first make fun of ourself (N.B. that this ungrammatical pronoun is an example of such, as is our use of an antiquated, Latinate abbreviation to begin this parenthesis), then of everyone and everything else. We strive to be an equal opportunity offender, short of blasphemy.

For a history of such matters, we refer gentle readers to our inaugural posting, which also contains background on the now-iconic name of this blog. One unexpected blessing of our initial direction is that the acronym SWNID was heretofore unappropriated on the internet. Thus, one can use any search engine to find us in as little as five letters. We own that unpronounceable acronym! If in the nascent economic recovery some startup company wants to use those letters for their NASDAQ listing, they'll have a serious lawsuit on their hands.

So . . . if asked on our anniversary, "What is the SWNIDish assessment of life, the universe and everything at present?" we say today, "Pleasantly optimistic." We couldn't be more pleased that our national and global flirtation with the left seems to be coming to a quicker end than most had imagined possible. Such lessons must be relearned, it seems by every generation, perhaps more often as the pace of change quickens and attenion spans and memories shorten. But we think the lesson is being learned rather quickly . . . doubtless with precious little influence from this URL.

So . . . Happy Anniversary to Us! And to our benighted human race, blessings!