Digby

Blogging is a great way to participate in the marketplace of ideas without having to physically put yourself in that marketplace. Since you can always be tracked down and hounded it isn't exactly a cowardly way to participate, but there is one prominent blogger who has always made a point of keeping her privacy, as even her online name plays genderless, or even shades male.

This past week, at the Take Back America Conference, Digby came out.

It turns out she's a she from Santa Monica and besides having one of the finest voices in the liberal blogosphere, she revealed herself as a hell of a speaker. You can read the text of her remarks here, or watch the video here.

She does a great job of providing context for the leftist blogging revolution we're currently experiencing, lists some of the key bloggers writing today, points out how diverse the group is, and then sums up what brings us together. An excerpt:

All of us who blog in the progressive blogosphere, have a common goal. It's the same goal of virtually everyone in this room tonight. We want to begin a new era of progressive politics and take back America.

We may argue about tactics and strategy or the extent to which we are partisans vs ideologues--and believe me, we do. But there is no disagreement among us that the modern conservative movement Of Newt and Grover and Karl and Rush has proven to be a dangerous cultural and political cancer on the body politic.

You will not find anyone amongst us who believes that the Bush administration's executive power grab and flagrant partisan use of the federal government is anything less than an assault on the constitution. We stand together against the dissolution of habeas corpus and the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. We all agree that Islamic terrorism is a threat, but one which we cannot meet with military power alone.

She sat for an interview at the conference which reveals a little more about her in an informal setting. With an eyes-wide-open appreciation of this moment borne of having lived through the later 1960's progressive apex (and subsequent undermining), I couldn't agree more with her conclusion:

I actually feel very confident about it because there is this new political debate going on that is allowing us to make arguments that have not been made in a very long time. I don't think people have heard the progressive argument explicitly in a long time, not filtered through the right wing and the conventions of their media and interpreted by the mainstream media. I think as a lot of people are going directly into the blogosphere people are going to be hearing our arguments again. Now, whether we make them all and whether they are effective you never know; I don't think there are any guarantees there. But I think there is a new political debate that has opened up at a very propitious time for us as a result of the unfortunate failure of the conservative project under George W. Bush, and let's just say there will never be another time like this one.

Only time will tell if the current progressive blogging end up being considered a golden age or not, but if it is it wouldn't be unjust to consider Digby a middle-aged, female, publicity shy Thomas Paine of our time.