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Patriot Paradox
This is a re-review of Patriot Paradox
This was not my first stop at 'Patriot Paradox'; I actually first saw the site a couple of months ago (around the time of the site's last review), but haven't visited since then. From the first look, it's clear that this weblog will center around conservative American politics and values, from the American flag and quote in the header to the suggested reading list to the name of the site itself. This is a blog that immediately suggests it will contain views and opinions from a very specific and very strident viewpoint.
I dug into the 'About' page to learn more about the site's author, Nick. The information is presented in an interview format, and definitely reinforced my first impressions -- many of the answers deal with conservative politics, America, Christianity, and the author's rather strong opinions on those and related topics. Browsing through the archives, I found mostly the same, with occasional posts used by Nick to introduce himself (in the very first entry), discuss his favorite comic characters, and advice regarding RSS technology, for example. But Christian conservative commentary is the order of the day at 'Patriot Paradox', and the vast majority of the recent entries deal in some way with American politics, religion, or patriotic themes. If that's your bag, you'll find much content of interest within this site.
In terms of design and features, 'Patriot Paradox' is fairly standard, with a three-column layout featuring a central region for text framed by areas dedicated to blogrolls, a poll, archive links, ads, and more. Comments, trackbacks, and search features are also enabled and easily accessible. Deserving special mention is an 'extra' called 'King of the Blogs', which is a blog contest run separately by Nick, but linked in the sidebar.
To be honest, it's difficult for me to review a site like 'Patriot Paradox'. I have little personal interest in politics, find that I have few opinions in common with the author, and am a bit taken aback by the fervent partisanship evident in many of the posts. It's simply difficult for me to relate to many of the entries personally.
That said, I feel that a good review should reflect how well the author accomplishes his or her mission. Nick certainly gets high marks for consistency and persistence in that regard -- there are few surprises here, and my first impressions of the site were echoed throughout the posts I read. I do, however, feel that as a blogger concerned largely with politics, Nick could provide and encourage more discussion and debate over the topics he introduces. I found quite a few entries containing quoted news items and minimal or no personal commentary -- I would prefer to see more discourse and individual perspective on the stories, rather than just a catchy title and perhaps a quick one-liner. Nick's unique viewpoint and opinions show through in the longer, more analytical posts, but these are too few and far between for this type of site, in my opinion.
With Nick's strong and passionate views, I would have expected a more involved readership (both for and against his point of view, most likely), but I don't see strong evidence of this in the recent comments on posts concerning current events. I believe that a political, highly partisan weblog such as 'Patriot Paradox' would be enhanced by more in-depth and compelling analysis by the author, and a stronger sense of community throughout. Nick seems to be on his way there, but may have a bit further to go. I give 'Patriot Paradox' 3 out of 5.
This site was reviewed on 2004-04-27 by charlie.
They felt this site belonged in the News/Links category.
charlie felt that Patriot Paradox deserved a rating of 3.
This is a re-review of Patriot Paradox
Patriot Paradox. First and foremost I will say that I did not like this blog, not one iota. Political blogs, especially political blogs written by the Christian/Republican contingent of American society are something that I normally avoid at all costs. Having said that though, for the purpose of this review, I do believe it achieves it's aim as an informative, patriotic/political blog. I mean, Nick is so patriotic he got married on July 4th! In all seriousness, if you're into politics of all sorts or if you're one of the people who are actually paying attention to the American Election these days, then this blog is definitely one for you.
In the hopes of finding out more information about Nick Queen, I hopped on over to his about me page to garner some more personal information. It's just the basic stuff to be found there, when and where he married, his beliefs, his political stance, the first thing he'll say to God when he checks in with Saint Peter - stuff like that.
So with my background knowledge in hand, I started reading.
Man, this guy loves his politics. It's extremely well put-together, I certainly cannot complain about the way Nick argues his topics (apart from the fact that I don't agree with him on many, many issues). He's a very intelligent individual who knows how to debate and write a convincing argument for his own beliefs. It's actually refreshing to read such a site that isn't all "This is what I think and if you don't think the same thing as me then you all suck!". In that, I give Nick props for the way he comes across - which is mostly unobtrusive.
The design of the blog is a well-structured, basic layout with the usual red-white-blue colours that tie in well with the theme. There's several links to like-themed blogs, sites and causes and on the whole, it's very easy to read. It makes good use of the "extended entry" codes that flip the rest of the entry out onto the same URL rather than having to go through to the individual page for the entry. It's very convenient and makes the blog look very neat and tidy.
Just in case you haven't already caught on, if you're not politically inclined, you will not enjoy this blog. However, those of you who may be interested to read what a very American man has to say about his country (or rather, the people who run it), then you will probably be in your element - whether or not you agree with Patriot Paradox.
This site was reviewed on 2004-04-27 by Ren.
They felt this site belonged in the News/Links category.
Ren felt that Patriot Paradox deserved a rating of 3.
My first impressions of Patriot Paradox were that here I had a serious news and current affairs blog. After reading the About Me section, I came to realise that this was a news site with a fairly definite slant on it. But before I go on to the slant and the content, I will briefly describe the technicalities of the site.
It looks fine- has a fairly tasteful title bar with a picture of a US flag and a quote by Patrick Henry, though don't ask me who he is (or what the quote actually means for that matter). It is a fairly standard three column layout with the usual paraphernalia in the sidebars- blog rings, links, favourite blogs and such. No photos though (in the sidebars or the posts) which was a bit of a shame. Archives go back to August 2003 and there are plenty of them. I also like the extensive use of the "Read More" facility, as it made scanning the archives very easy. There is not much more I can say about the layout- it is nothing out of the ordinary, but is functional and easy to read.
So on to the content then. To save any messing about, I may as well make it clear straight away that the blogger is a pro-life, Christian, Republican, patriotic American. I have made this clear from the start because these viewpoints colour nearly all the postings to be found in this blog. I feel it only fair to also point out that as a reviewer, I am not an American, and if I were I would probably be a liberal, so my assessment of the content is probably biased, though I will try to keep my personal opinions to a minimum.
The content is all well written and seemingly well researched. The author almost always argues his case intelligently, whether it be an argument for going to war in Iraq, or the case against contraceptives being used. He often quotes from other sources and clearly has built up a large network of blogs which also have similar viewpoints. I did tend to find the arguments to be very one-sided though and there seemed to be little tolerance for other's viewpoints. The concept that others (quite validly) may see the world differently from the author seemed to get a bit lost in some of the posts, I felt. There also are a number of posts which seem to get in to the direct criticism of other blogs and bloggers, for holding differing views. Quite how serious these little wranglings are to be taken I am not sure, but they seemed to be more along the lines of petty squabbles rather than rich political discourse.
This blog also loses points because it tends to be a bit blinkered in its remit. For those of us who don't live in a US-centric world, the arguments and content tend to become superficially interesting but ultimately irrelevant. We have nothing in the UK which compares with the pro-life/ pro-choice debate for example. Also Christianity seems to be much more hardline in the US too, which I had trouble identifying with from my own experiences. Ok, there are a few general posts to be found here (funny news stories, personal entries, film reviews and the like) but I found that these were rather few and far between.
I also took off half a point because I fundamentally disagree with many of the arguments presented in the blog - my prerogative as a reviewer! Particularly, there are some homophobic viewpoints widely discussed in this blog- you have been warned.
Overall then, this is a blog which Christian, US Republicans will probably love. Anyone who wants to get in to a political discourse with people like this will also be able to engage with the content. Those of us who are, quite frankly not interested in US politics, (and I include myself in this category) may as well move on and find something more interesting to read.
This site was reviewed on 2004-02-11 by ODAAT.
They felt this site belonged in the Personal category.
ODAAT felt that Patriot Paradox deserved a rating of 3.
3 reviewers gave Patriot Paradox an average rating of 3.0000
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Reader Rating: 2.4167 based on 6 votes
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