Ezra Levant floats what I think is a brilliant idea: a legal defense fund to protect bloggers if they face defamation law suits or the Canadian "human rights" tribunals. As he notes, any such system of mutual aid would require bloggers to live up to some code of conduct or system of mutual observation, in order to protect against the bankruptcy of a mutual insurance system by what is known in the insurance industry as "moral hazard".
But Levant reminds me that much of the strength of classically liberal North American culture was built up in the nineteenth and early twentieth century by people organizing themselves in a myriad of fraternal/sororal and mutual insurance organizations, the architectural remnants of which (buildings now often converted to immigrant churches, here in Vancouver) you can spot in most North American cities. Buried in academic libraries you can find historical reference works listing the many thousands of these institutions. The value of such institutions, which were in large part destroyed by the Depression, World War II, large corporations, and the rise of the welfare and mommy state, is that when people self-organize to meet all variety of mutual insurance needs they also create all variety of social networks that can serve many needs. When scholars abstractly talk about the loss of "social capital" in the postmodern age, it is the loss of mutual insurance covenants, of people working to guarantee each other's freedom, that they are really talking about.
I encourage all bloggers to consider and pursue Levant's idea.
But Levant reminds me that much of the strength of classically liberal North American culture was built up in the nineteenth and early twentieth century by people organizing themselves in a myriad of fraternal/sororal and mutual insurance organizations, the architectural remnants of which (buildings now often converted to immigrant churches, here in Vancouver) you can spot in most North American cities. Buried in academic libraries you can find historical reference works listing the many thousands of these institutions. The value of such institutions, which were in large part destroyed by the Depression, World War II, large corporations, and the rise of the welfare and mommy state, is that when people self-organize to meet all variety of mutual insurance needs they also create all variety of social networks that can serve many needs. When scholars abstractly talk about the loss of "social capital" in the postmodern age, it is the loss of mutual insurance covenants, of people working to guarantee each other's freedom, that they are really talking about.
I encourage all bloggers to consider and pursue Levant's idea.
