It’s been quite the experience. I have learned much, matured a great deal, and I have met a tremendous number of amazing people from blogging.
Since you’re reading this particular post, I know you’re interested in this momentous day of mine. I’ll start out with giving you a history about why I started blogging and where I am today. I’ll end with giving credit where credit is due and leaving you with a brief return to the past. As well, I didn’t forget my weekly political post. It’s the article below this article.
In the early summer of 2003, I was a 15-year-old brat who was openly pro-abortion, pro-UN, anti-War on Terror, and on the verge of hating President Bush (yes, me, Caleb, your favorite far-right wing, conservative, fundamentalist religious extremist). That all changed, however, when I started to meet some really cool dudes (and dudets) at my job I had that summer. They began to talk about these issues and began to show me that the liberal point of view was rather, shall we say, obtuse.
During the fall of 2004, I began to volunteer on the Colorado Bush/Cheney 2004 Presidential Campaign. Being a huge fan of Rush Limbaugh, I began to hear about these odd little websites called blogs. Blogs were becoming a great asset to the Bush Campaign, and I (being part of that campaign) wanted to start learning about these blogs. November 2, 2004 (election day), was a date that cemented in my mind that blogs were here to stay. On November 3, 2004, while I was taking a tour of the rocket construction facilities for Lockheed Martin (yes, for real), I decided it was time to become part of something that was larger than my stock market trades.
November 11, 2004, a small, insignificant blog appeared on AOL Journals. Basically no one knew about it (I only emailed 12 people about it, of which only 5 or 6 of them started reading). This blog was The Dude Page. The Dude Page, a political blog, began to grow as I started writing more and linking to other people. The Dude Page grew from a webpage operated by a novice 16 year old teenager to a political website that received significant recognition from AOL itself (I was #5 on the Top 5 AOL Political Blogs with The Dude Page).
My blogging had grown so much a part of me, in fact, that I wanted to delve deeper into the blogosphere and become a much more respected blogger. AOL Journals, however, had many significant restrictions. The top two were long URL addresses and non-AOL folks couldn’t comment. A blogging friend had just switched over to an unfamiliar blog-hosting site, Blogger.com. After much intense deliberation with myself, family, and a few selected friends, I decided to end The Dude Page (sentimentally a very hard thing to do, believe me) and begin a new Blogger blog called Conservative Textbook.
Since Conservative Textbook is my current blog, I won’t go into details about it because that would be boring. Some time ago I joined a second blog, The Red Voice, and became a weekly contributor to that blog. That has been very influential on me because it has opened my eyes to many different, conservative perspectives.
And that, my friends, is a brief history on my blogging career. I would now like to take a few lines to thank several people that have helped me out with my blogging. First and foremost, thanks to my family for all your support with this “crazy” idea. I would like to thank Ian for helping me with choosing the name Conservative Textbook (I originally was going to call the blog Caleb Land). Anna, thanks for proofreading my work at 11:30pm over e-mail. Jess, thanks for your down-to-earth thinking with topics (you’ve actually been a source of a lot of topics, believe it or not).
To my blogging buddies – thanks Pat for your suggestions on writing over the Internet. Armand, thanks for being my boss at TRV. Thanks to Jen (of Republican Jen) for being the FIRST blog I ever linked to and in return was linked on. Thanks Mr. Jeremy C. for being the standard I measure my blog against (maybe one day I’ll be as large a blog site as you are). Finally, thank you Blake for being a very realistic person who always reminds me of how to be real on my blog.
To some new blogging friends – thanks Kristin (Spunky Jr.) for your advice on growing a blog. Gracias Alex (SmartHomeschool) for your advice as well. Also, some thanks go to Tim (Agent Tim). My goal is to one day get my blog as physically impressive as your blog is right now. Finally, thanks Matt for being the Colorado blog I wish I could have been.
Finally, to all you liberals out there – thanks a ton. To tell you the truth, if you guys didn’t come around and aggravate me on my blog, things just wouldn’t be fun at all. So thanks Dave (honestly), Chris (keep it up, surfah dude) and all you others.
To close, I would like to leave you with a bit of nostalgia – the very first post I ever wrote for a blog (the first post of my first blog, The Dude Page). It’s untouched and unedited; it’s the very article that appeared on 11/11/2004 (to tell you the truth, I have every single post I ever did on The Dude Page stored on my Macintosh laptop). It’s a bit embarrassing how poor the writing style is on this ancient post, but that’s the price I have to pay to show you guys this old post.
I look forward to another fun, exciting, annoying, tiresome and memorable year of blogging with you guys.
Let's Start
Yo,
Hey, for those of you who just started coming here, go to the bottom of this page to see my welcome. You do wanna see it because it explains alot about what goes on here.
Well, let's begin this blog with something easy. How about the election. Yes, I know that it's sort of old news now, but it'll get this blog going because it will bring up numerous topics. In fact, I'll start us out on a topic even (I'm so nice. LOL).
As you can probably guess, I'm very happy with the election. Bush held on to the White House, a good thing. Congress has even more Republicans now, and the GOP has a firm majority in the Senate now. Also a good thing. It's still hard to say what will happen with the Supreme Court at this point because of Senator Specter, but the Supreme Court should be much more conservative by the time this is all over.
Well, that's my view on it. It was a major victory for the GOP because we now have a good majority in Washington. This of course, is good for several reasons. Let's address one of them.
Abortion:
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm very pro-life. I mean, why should a baby have to be murdered because of the actions the mother took? What about rape you say? Well, rape is a terrible terrible thing, and I can't imagine how bad it must be for the mother to have to carry around a baby because of what happened to her. But, the point still stands, is it right for a mother to do violence to a baby because violence was done to her? I don't think so. In any case, the mother does not have to keep the baby once it has been born. She can give it to an adoption center if she doesn't want it. But don't kill the baby. Anyways, people say that abortion is good for the mother in the long run. No, it's not, because nearly all women who had an abortion feel guilty for the rest of their lives because they killed an innocent life. They do, look it up.
So, do I think that abortion will be outlawed if Bush gets the right judges past the Senate? I can't say. If they could get into the Supreme Court, it could happen. But still, outlawing abortion would be a HUGE deal, and I don't know if we could do it realistically. Do I want it done, yes. Do I think it can happen? It's too early to tell.
So, that's where I stand. What about you?
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