Positive Tuesdays?

Update: Persuasion Tuesdays have started! Come on by and be a part of it.

A while back, Just The Girl Next Door started a weekly meme called "Thursday Thirteen." It's a lot of fun. You just post a list of 13 things on Thursday, put up the proper Technorati tags and then when others leave comments, you post a link to their Thursday Thirteen. Bloggers get lots of links and traffic from this and it builds a real sense of community among the participants. I do it every week I can. Here's my most recent Thursday Thirteen, or TT.

There are various resources available to make TTs easier. One is Technorati, where you can easily find other TT participants. Another is Mr. Linky. Mr. Linky has a cool widget that makes adding links to your post easy. In fact, the visitors themselves do it.

Previously I proposed a way to use blogs and talk radio to push for constructive changes for the country. Leading up to the last election, the Republicans held the Senate, the House and the Presidency. Center-right bloggers wrote vigorously every day. Most of it was negative reactions to what Democrats were or weren't doing. We did not get a balanced budget, a simplified tax code or the border fence built. We did manage to point out endlessly that Senator Byrd (D-WV) had been a member of the KKK and that Senator Kerry (D-MA) was a nincompoop. Was that what we wanted? I think not.

We've tried the attack dog routine and it got us nothing. Now let's try something constructive. I propose creating "Positive Tuesdays" or "PTs." To participate there would be only two rules. Your PT post would have to follow two simple rules:

1. It would deal with how we can make America a better country and

2. It wouldn't contain any harsh criticism of others.

You could post lists, links, photos, YouTube videos, whatever you want, but it has to deal with some aspect of improving the country. Examples would include posts about flat(ter) taxes, educational vouchers, lower crime due to border fences, photos of local private construction where jobs are being created, stories of private companies growing, acts of private charity and so on.

Desired Outcome: An exchange of ideas and arguments leading to a coherent and brief list of goals akin to the Contract with America. Convergence on a small number of realizable goals would focus the efforts of talk radio and the blogosphere on getting them done. I would argue that our combined might would be pretty influential.

The blogosphere brought together a wide array of talents to uncover Dan Rather's fraudulent documents and the photoshopped images from the recent Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. Why can't we do the same here? It would formless and chaotic at first, but threads and structure would emerge.

Let me know what you think. By the way, I hate the name. If you've got a better one, I'd love to see it. I chose Tuesday because I do Thursday Thirteens and World of Good Wednesdays. If you prefer Monday or Friday let me know.

What You Can Do Right Now: Post about this idea now on your blog and talk it up. John over at Stop the ACLU has been a real supporter of the idea and I'll probably run with it just on the basis of his support. Others who have been encouraging include The Real Ugly American, CatHouse Chat and the Conservative Cat.

Update: How about Strategic Tuesdays? Yech.