Since launching the blog format, I’ve been soliciting for guest posts for this and our other sites, and have received several proposals. You’ll be seeing some of these soon, as well as some fantastic comments from readers that are going to turn into posts of their own. Other ideas are from some brilliant and talented people who are understandably upset about how things have turned out, and this is reflected in their writing. Many of the latter will not be published, and here is why: the simple secret to a successful guest post is to inform and inspire.

We simply aren’t going to promote an underdog mentality here. Underdogs can shake things up, no doubt, but at some point the underdog has to turn into an uber dog, and that is a difficult transition to make. Other websites get a lot of mileage out of doom and gloom, but we’re not going to go there, either. Sure, we’re going to tell you the reality of things, and we’re not going to paper over any suck, but that isn’t going to be the lead point of any article. We’re going to inform the reader about something they can do, or that has been done, and then inspire them to take positive action themselves, even if only by learning from our mistakes. We are going to embrace the suck, overcome it, and turn its energy to work for us.

A great case in point is our flagship guest post by SFC Barry. In that article, he described how the military does something that is out of the reach of most concerned civilians, translated that into something that a small neighborhood defense team can do, and then made it clear that this something was possible to do.

Another meme that floats around is “stir up water to catch fish”. I’m not sure this is even a real thing fishing-wise, I would think this would just lead to dirty fish. I have to admit I’ve been there, done that, and it was ultimately counter-productive (see, there’s one of my mistakes right there, avoid it). Usually, that approach just leads to a lot of bad vibes, and maybe that is the point. Maybe it is someone else catching those fish when they swim away from you.

Finally, there is this whole idea of leadership. Another meme floating around the blogosphere is that it is cool to deny taking a leadership role, or even wanting a leadership role, conflating such a thing with a master-slave relationship. This is a perversion of Western Civilization. Winners lead, and winners follow. A man with a family, even if just a wife, is the leader of that family. He may not do it well, or he may deny that responsibility, but that responsibility exists nonetheless.

Similarly, if a man has the ability and charisma to take charge in his local circumstances, whatever that may be, and to improve his world and the lives of others in the process, his failing to exert a leadership influence is just as distasteful and wasteful as a man who refuses to lead his family. We’ll drill into that whole thing, including the concept of noblesse oblige, the missing secret sauce of civilization, in future posts. In the meantime, if these last two paragraphs resonate deeply with you, and you have ideas which express those principles in some practical way, then you are the right man to write guest posts for our sites.

Women? Their greatest calling is to nurture their families, and they do this in a variety of ways. Our culture has degenerated in large part for failing to exalt women for doing this thing that they do best, and to sidetrack them into things which dissipate their energy and talents. If you are a woman, and can help others learn from how you nurture your family, then you are the right woman to write guest posts for our sites.

These things are what grandparents and great-grandparents once did for their own families, before the families themselves were destroyed, and that knowledge and experience wiped from our cultural history. Inform and inspire, my friends. That is the secret.