The ideology of Chillin'

As you may know, Mark Coffee at the Decision '08 blog caught fast rising meme by the tail yesterday. He proposed a "Coalition of the Chillin'" and got an immediate response, including one from me. The Coalition as Mark created it is a reaction to the hysterical over-reaction to the filibuster deal. Personally, I think "Chillin'" ought to be an ongoing commitment. In the case of this particular issue, to be "Chillin'" means not losing faith and bailing out at the first bit of rough water. As Mark indicated in this post today, it can also mean keeping the screaming down to where we can hear one another a bit.

I won't pretend that I had a great agenda behind the Coalition of the Chillin' - it was a goof that happened to (luckily for me, and I hope for you, as well) tap into some low-level frustration. It occurs to me, though, that it accidentally serves a pretty important purpose. To put it as simply as I can - nobody digs the Daily Kos but the Kossacks. If that's the model we emulate, right or left, then blogs will lose their influence quickly. Shrill histrionics and apocalyptic rhetoric, blogger triumphalism, all of these things appeal only to the faithful. Let us stand for our principles, yes, but we don't have to shout all the time, that's all. If we become completely indignant about every issue, how will we differentiate the TRULY terrible from the mildly annoying?...

Music to my ears, Mark.

If you want to join in with those who are keepin' cool these days visit Mark's blog and let him know.

If you want to post the Chillin' blogroll, Ryan James has created one. I didn't see the script code for the blogroll anywhere handy so I grabbed it from his page source. Just paste this into your template in the appropriate place.

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=ef29fcf0a59f0076c2bccd8b4039bccc">

Ryan created a slightly smaller version of the logo which is available here. I created an even smaller and cleaner version for my blogroll. If you want to download it and use it feel free. Do me a favor, however and don't hotlink it. Thanks.