Welcome message to visitors

Hello, friends.

We designed this blog to act as an educational tool for ourselves as well as visitors to the blog. In order to make sound arguments to advocate effectively for a position or cause, we believe it is imperative to understand the foundations underlying opposing arguments as well. While they may become apparent during our blog debates, our individual political bents (or liberal vs. conservative tendencies) are meant to be invisible through the device of coin-flipping to choose which position each of us will advocate for each week. For instance, we would flip a coin to determine who will argue on behalf of overturning Roe v. Wade, and who will argue to leave it in place (but, no...this is not a likely debate topic for us; it's just so overplayed). We recognize, of course, that there are more than two possible positions on many issues (though on political issues, one of us will try to argue the democratic position, and the other the republican position). We are just two guys, so the two position thing works for us. We certainly welcome additional perspectives on whatever topic we are addressing.

This is an exciting experiment in honing debate skills, and we look forward not only to arguing positions that we don't personally hold, but also to hearing from other bloggers on each issue. It is our hope that two things will happen here: 1) everyone (including the hosts) will become better informed about each issue discussed, because we are deliberately arguing both sides of each topic; and 2) everyone involved will maintain a respectful attitude, and a sense of humor. We also hope that visitors will understand the purpose and spirit of the blog--we don't need angry ALL CAPS rhetoric, cut-and-pasted rants from other blogs, or blog-spamming with commercial ads, porno, or any other inappropriate filler material.

We will be choosing our first weekly topic shortly, and each of us will post our initial thoughts in due haste. It may turn out that topics for discussion will be taken from participants' suggestions, but for the first week, we will pull a topic from our hat.

Thanks for stopping by!
Dano and Reed