The most bully pulpit on earth — your blog, and how to use it to make a difference.

Author’s program note. Have you ever felt that the problems of our muddled planet are too much for you… that you’d like your brief span on our bit of terra firma to matter… but can’t imagine how to get started? In short, have you despaired… about your power, your abilities, your significance… about the future of our 3rd rock from the Sun… about making a difference that will last and make you proud?
Let me tell you this, fellow pilgrim, every single good person on Spaceship Earth has these thoughts; you wouldn’t be the sentient soul you are if you didn’t burn the midnight oil pondering these great questions of our species and its impact.
If you truly want to make that vital difference, then you will read this timely article and read it again… because it makes clear and in necessary detail just what awe-inspiring power you have at your immediate disposal… and how to use it, over and over again, with ever growing experience and impact; a power that no Caesar ever had… no grave thinker… no nimble statesman… no dedicated man or woman of any kind (no matter how bold and innovative)… until the Internet came along and gave you — you — the power to change… to motivate… to chide… to encourage … to uplift… to censure… to rethink and to re-examine… to educate… to cherish… to bring kindred spirits together… and lighten their labors whilst singing their praises.
You — you — wherever you are on this fast-spinning sphere, can alter the course of events, scrutinize and reshape the present, transform the future, enhance anything, enrich everything, place nefarious and heinous deeds under the most stark and unremitting light… whilst bringing to widespread public notice good thoughts, good deeds, good actions of every kind from every quarter and source.
All this and more is inherent in what we call a blog…and you have trod this world at just the right time… a time every reformer, redeemer, and revolutionary of the past envies you — you — for you possess what they could never even dream of whatever their station, intellect, or influence.
Commit.
First, commit and re-commit yourself to making a difference…not merely thinking of doing so, but actually pledging yourself to do so. When I was a young man thinking often about and baffled by my future, my mother offered me a salient piece of advice I have not only recalled from time to time… but crafted my life by: commit yourself, she said, to a cause that’s bigger than you are, a cause that will need every skill you may master and all your imagination, energy, and the full measure of your heart, above all your heart.
This is a worthy objective for a life… though it never ceases to challenge and make demands which can sometimes seem too great, too exhausting, too strenuous. However, you will never know who you are unless you set such a rigorous pace and objective; for the grand goal and how you handle it make clear beyond question and cavil who you are…
Just one little candle.
Every great deed, every worthy thought, every beneficial action of every kind has begun with one step. Instead of being oppressed by all there is to do, instead be glad and comforted by the fact that you have the power now to begin… for as we say in New England, “well begun is half done.”
Begin by saying, writing down and carrying with you at all times, the first four lines from the song “One Little Candle”. You can find it in any search engine.
“It is better to light just one little candle Than to stumble in the dark Better far that you light just one little candle, All you need is a tiny spark.”
(Music George Mysels, Lyrics Joseph Maloy Roach. Published 1952.)
Bully pulpit, not cliche, dross, drivel.
The term bully pulpit was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt, who referred to the White House as a powerful platform for advocating a progressive agenda. In his day only presidents and other holders of high offices had this power… but that is true no longer. You — you — have at your immediate disposal powers and the potential for change, influence, and impact greater even than the man who coined the phrase and used it to effect the broadest possible results.
Unfortunately, some blog publishers are unclear on their mission and thus regularly publish material that is second-rate, old-hat, badly written, verbiage that would be better trashed than recycled through endless editions. Instead be clear on this: the material you publish must be worthy of a blog’s potential and your ability to live up to it. That is every word, every sentence, every paragraph, every page must adhere to the highest possible standards, or else the whole enterprise is pointless, derisory, infra dig. And that result will never do… nor will it help you reach your goal of influencing the maximum number of people on this planet and so effecting meaningful change.
Celebrate, sustain, advance the underdog.
People of power, means, access, influence and position have absolutely no need for your services. They already occupy every significant place on Earth and the benefits and emoluments pertaining thereunto. Your task, to be worth the doing, must be to be clear on what you should be doing… who you should be supporting… and who scrutinizing and holding accountable. In other words, the best use of your blog is to support the underdog in any and every way at your empowered disposal. The world is full of the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the desperate, the down trodden, the disappeared, the destitute. They are legion as are their stories of alienation, injustice, abuse; all too often thrust aside, deferred, buried, belittled, unregarded, distorted, dismissed.
Which is where you, your commitment, your blog, that bully pulpit, come in. In a world of such unending outrages, your task is clear and crucial, for all there will be days when it seems overwhelming.
Remember this, to have the power to effect good and to fail to use it regularly, pointedly, thoroughly is not merely an error, but dereliction, sacrilege, incomprehensible, immoral.
Thus, vow to set your blog on the path of unremitting reform. It will demand everything you’ve got with results unpredictable and never final. But this is God’s work… and so it must be done… and why not by you and the blog that can touch and transform all? For, after all, you yourself are the one little candle that must be lit, that you may stand out in bold radiance, a beacon of hope for all the world and all who need you so.
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