The American Spectator

AGAIN, THERE IS A LOT TO LIKE about the blog world. It can ennoble and inform and provide great tools for discourse and for meeting like-minded people. But what it doesn’t encourage is reflection, patience or, to stress again, discipline. And its wild informality, including the use and misuse of the written world, does not lend itself to careful persuasiveness.

So, a memo to parents: Don’t let your children sit at their computers all day long. Even if they must be inside (outside exercise is often better), encourage them to read books and newspapers, to play board games, even to write notes to each other with pen and paper. That way they’ll learn to communicate rather than just to emote.

Meanwhile, if they or you must enter the Internet world, you can’t go wrong with The American Spectator’s website (which itself has a blog). It’s the best website, with lots of stuff about horrible screaming monkeys, God and the universe, and even pizza, albeit without old tires or whipped cream. Fafblog, eat your heart out.

Quin Hillyer is executive editor of The American Spectator. He can be reached at hillyerq@spectator.org.