One thoughtful commenter wrote in response to our Welcome to OneUtah.org post, “I also look forward to reading this blog. I appreciate hearing multiple viewpoints. I hope you will be able to avoid the traps that make many other left-leaning blogs unreadable for me. I don’t want to feel like I’m in the locker room when I’m reading about politics. You’re off to a great start.”

To which I responded in part: “This blog will be completely unique among blogs because of the criteria to be a contributing author. I will NOT be one. As I said in another post, the contributing authors will be “our living Utah heroes…”

“We don’t have a formal definition of that, but one primary criterion will be; people who hold that “strength of conviction” is a weakness to be subordinated in the quest for objective knowledge.

That’s at least one.

They should also be people who by community standards have worked really hard to get educated.

They should be people who have attained some measure of success in their lives…and appear not to have “sold out.”

And they must be good people as measured by how many hours of their own time they have given in their communities. How else can we trust them? Why else WOULD we trust them?

Oops, that’s five. Please feel free to suggest others.

I just want it to be like it was in the olden days. When there was a wise person in every tribe or village. And everybody knew who it was because they could see them and know them.

And everybody listened to them because they were good people, even the powerful leaders, or they would lose their power.

Today we have powerful leaders, but we don’t hear the voices to which we should be listening.

You may find that this blog is critical of the Bush administration, but that doesn’t mean it’s partisan.

People, who really care about equality, justice, and a better life for all, tend to be critical of most politicians most of the time. If that’s partisan today, it wasn’t yesterday, and it won’t be tomorrow if this is still America.”