Pamphleteers and Bloggers

One of the books I am reading right now uses a quote that appealed right away:

"The indispensible catalyst is the word, the explanatory idea. More than petards or stilettos, therefore, words — uncontrolled words, circulating freely, underground, rebelliously, not gotten up in dress uniforms, uncertified — frighten tyrants"

The reference given is Ryszard Kapuscinski's Shah of Shahs, which is a book about the fall of the Shah Reza Pahlavi in Iran at the hands of the Khomeini revolutionists. And while I recognize that that story is one of a tyrant being overthrown by another tyrant, one whose venom is even still, a quarter of a century later, poisoning the world, the quote has resonance here in the United States in the election year that we have just finished. Several of those who are smug, self-satisfied, and elitist have been toppled by the modern-day pamphleteers, the bloggers. What a refreshing development that the preening anchor and management at CBS and the nominee of the Democrat party and the Republican former Senate majority leader have found, to their cost, the power of free speech and the Internet. I have put links to a couple of my favorites, Instapundit and Power Line, in the list to the lower right. Even now blogs are being used to document the electoral standoff in Ukraine and in the unfolding Oil for Food scandal at the UN. We live in interesting times and, for once, that is not meant as a curse: Sometimes the good guys win!