johaneriksson.se

I have been challenged by the excellent conservative blogger, and one of my fellow founders of the Swedish right-of-centre blog Kulturrevolution.se, Carl-Robert Lindgren, to write something about why I blog. Since it strikes me as both a deeper question than it might seem, and as a kind of declaration of intent for you — my readers — I thought it worthwhile to share some thoughts on it.

What makes spending time writing these texts worthwhile? I think, several things. The most obvious is that I like to give my opinion on things, and since I also enjoy to write, blogging seems like a good way to do it. It’s almost involuntary: if I sit down to watch the news I can’t help but feel the urge to argue and point things out, as anyone unfortunate enough to watch the news with me is well aware of.

A deeper reason, and perhaps one that might be both pretentious and a bit silly, is a desire to do my part in making the world a slightly better place. Despite my classical liberal values I have a relatively strong sense of duty, and so I feel I have to try and make things better whenever I see a way to do it. I realise that this is a highly idealistic, or perhaps naïve, way of seeing things, but there it is. Combining this with the fact that I find that I’m at least somewhat better at writing than I am at other ways to strive for the same goal, blogging is a good option. I am under no delusions that what I write will have any deeper impact on the world, of course, but since at least a decent number of people seem to come here to read what I write, I hope that I might at least provoke some thoughts and make a few people feel they got something out of it.
A different reason is that I felt my relatively right wing views were not often heard in the Swedish political discussion, and so I thought that an additional voice speaking them might at least bring a small improvement. Thinking that much of what I wrote had some international relevance, combined with simply enjoying writing in English, I decided to do precisely that — at least on the matters that are of international relevance.

Lastly, having discovered I like this — especially when I get feedback from my readers — I’ve realised that this is something I’d like to do as a living. (So if there are any editors of newspapers — Swedish or English — out there, willing to pay me, feel free to send me an e-mail.) Having this blog, and being able to write at Kulturrevolution.se, hopefully sharpen my skills and makes me a better writer.

My aims with this whole venture then would be to promote the classical liberal values of free markets and of allowing people to decide for themselves how to lead their lives. Values beautifully worded in the American Declaration of Independence as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to a fairly large extent values upon which the Western civilisation rests. Therefore focusing on the threats to those values becomes natural, and the biggest threat — in my opinion — has been made most clearly visible in the War on Islamism. This is only in part because of the society the jihadist warriors wishes to impose upon us. They make a credible threat, perhaps even bigger than Communism or Nazism ever posed. What makes this threat so grave is not their military strength or ideological determinance; it is rather our own growing cultural and ethical relativism and lack of preparedness to defend our way of life. Some people might even use a word as strong as decadence. Islamism has brought this weakness into the light, and I feel it is of utmost importance to do what one can to combat it. Naïve as that may seem, that is a big part of why I write.

I appreciate you reading, and commenting, and hope you will continue to do so.

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(Detta inlägg är pingat hos intressant.se)