While the latest post on Right Wing of the Gods doesn’t outright say they are shutting down the blog, they strongly suggest it.  “More of us will redirect our efforts elsewhere. See you later.”  This saddens me deeply.  Many times, I considered spreading the word about their site and just never got around to it.  I never put it in my blogroll or told more than one or two folks about it.  I considered writing a review about their blog, but never “got around to it.”  I just took for granted that they would be around a long time.  Truth be told, my “liberal bias” assuredly played a role.

It’s not a big secret that I am not, nor ever have been, a conservative.  I used to be as radically liberal as they come.  Surprisingly, though, my exploration of paganism has actually tempered my political views — pushed me towards the right, so that now I am only moderately liberal.  I think what paganism really did for me was help me break free of the whole liberal/conservative dichotomy altogether and think outside that simple paradigm.  In some ways that made me more conservative.  In others it made me… something all together different.  But enough about me.

While I don’t always agree with RWOTG, their arguments tend to be well reasoned.  While they are conservative, they obviously don’t just mindlessly pull the “party line.”  They offer a third point of view in what often gets simplified into a two sided debate.  For example, in an article about Iraq, the writer gives a well reasoned argument for an option that hasn’t been really discussed: allowing Iraq to become several separate sovereign countries.  My opinion is that theirs is a reasonable conservative solution that will not be considered by the current administration for a pretty simple reason: it would make it too hard to get the oil.

In another article about “children gulags,” I couldn’t agree with them more. (Except that I do insist on my son saying “sir” and ma’am” to me and to all adults.) That is one issue I fall on the “conservative” side about.  I think our permissive attitudes about raising children, all the fluffy feel-good self-esteem crap, has done immense harm.

Unfortunately, I visited their site too infrequently to notice the decline in regular posting.  They went from about a post every day back in December, to about one every other day or so in February, to a sharp decline in March, during which they had a shake-up in writers.  After that, the site was updated once, maybe twice a month.  I know how hard it is to keep blogging when it feels like nobody is reading and nobody cares, but I sincerely hope they decide to stick it out and keep up their work.

Whether you are on the “right” or the “left”, RWOTG gives a pagan some meat to chew over.  They are a worthy opponent in the “clash of ideas” — one that just might win a few and cause us to reconsider some of our cherished but less rigorously examined ideas. This is my pledge to the folks at Right Wing of the Gods:  if you keep writing, I’ll do my part to spread the word about you, and I will blogroll you guys.  You represent a minority voice in the pagan community, and one that needs to be heard and considered.