About Brad Warthen's Blog

For three years, I've been unable to get that "About Brad Warthen's Blog" link in the upper left-hand corner to work. The folks at TypePad have been no help.

This is an attempt to force the thing to work by turning it into a link to this post. Here's what I want to say about my blog:

This blog is about civil discourse on an infinite array of topics, but we will return, like a compass needle toward magnetic North, to South Carolina politics. It is my fervent wish that we engage our political questions with open minds and an eye to what works, without cant and party lines. There are rules, but I'm fairly cool about them as long as folks behave reasonably toward one another.

Ditto with national politics, which over the next few months has played an exaggerated role here, since South Carolina has filled a prominent role in choosing the next POTUS.

You will see certain themes here -- the rejection of political factions (especially the Democratic and Republican parties), sometimes through the medium of the UnParty; a somewhat more focused alternative called the Energy Party; advocacy of changing our forms of government on the state and local levels; the rejection of radical individualism; an unhealthy interest in popular culture, by which I am alternately attracted and repelled.

Another purpose -- and perhaps the central purpose -- is to provide a window into my own thinking, which is but one perspective on the newspaper's editorial board. When I became EPE in 1997, I mandated that henceforth, editorial writers would produce a weekly column, so that readers could see the personalities, interests and attitudes that shape our official editorial positions. This blog is an attempt to go beyond what the columns are able to do.

Who am I?
I'm the Catholic, communitarian-leaning, 54-year-old editor of the editorial page of The State, South Carolina's largest newspaper; I am a husband, the father of five and grandfather of three.