About Peach Pundit

When I came into possession of Peach Pundit a while back one of the first things I did was update the about page, which for years was a single sentence. I thought it would be important, especially since there is a natural human instinct to group individuals together, to express one of my personal core values right at the top; the right of conscience. I tried to make it clear in that updated page that not everyone here agrees with everything that is posted.

I attempted to communicate that this way:

We believe in the ultimate right of conscience here. That means sometimes you will see posts from different contributors which contradict each other. Our contributors are free to write about what ever they want and express their own personal opinions. No one speaks for the Peach Pundit Community as a whole.

When I wrote that no one speaks for the Peach Pundit community as a whole, I meant it then, and I still do today. This means that not even I speak for the entire community even though I own the site. And I did not want to get into a situation where my own personal agenda was the only one represented here. This means that there are times, a lot of times actually, when something gets posted here that I disagree with.

For example, I am pro-life. Unapologetically. But we have contributors here who are not. When a Peach Pundit Contributor expresses a pro-choice point of view, I do not intervene even though I disagree with the position. The appropriate way for me to handle a disagreement here is to post my own perspective, which I repeatedly have. Unfortunately, I am not able to do this every time I disagree with a contributor, so anyone who would take silence for approval would be severely mistaken.

From time to time I get feedback asking me why I allow a specific post to be on this site when they know I disagree with it. From time to time I get feedback from people asking if my own political views have changed because another contributor wrote something here that conflicts with my worldview. From time to time I get blamed for something someone else wrote as if I held those beliefs myself when I do not. I have come to view these misperceptions as simply the cost of being in this role.

I do not make a habit, nor will I start, of censoring contributors when they post something I disagree with. The danger of that, of course, is that no matter how many times or ways I say that I do not agree with it, I know there will be some who will falsely believe that I must agree with all of the content here just because I do not exercise my ability to remove it. Again, that is the price of being in this role.

In the time I have owned this site, I have only had to ask someone to edit their own posts a few times, mainly to make it clear that they were expressing their own personal opinions. I have only removed two posts during that time, one which made demonstrably false claims about the law, and another that I felt attacked someone that should be out of bounds. In the latter case, the contributor went to great lengths to prove and update their post to reflect that person is a public figure, and so it was reposted.

I have read several musings from former Editors of Peach Pundit about how people came to see this site as a tool, or utility, for them to advance their own agenda. I get that feeling quite a bit too, only I do not shy away from it. In fact I embrace it.

One of the many lessons I have learned over the years is that absolutely everyone in politics has some sort of agenda. I will not pretend that I do not, and neither should you about your own. One of my favorite things to do here is point out how the supposedly impartial mainstream media exposes their own agendas. Every human being has one. It would be myopic to try to say that we do not all have own own agendas while everyone around us moves chess pieces around the board. So I am not going to ask my contributors to check their agendas at the door. Instead, I will expect our readers and listeners to discern these things for themselves.

Which brings me to why I allow for all of this on a site I own. For one, censorship sucks. If I wanted only my personal point of view to be published, I would not have contributors at all. I have also come to view Peach Pundit as a sort of chronicle, capturing the realignment of the center right, to far right, to populist right and the tension that realignment has created from multiple points of view.

Right now we have a state Republican Party that does not feel welcoming to elected Republicans. One of the most popular Governors in the country was booed while he addressed a state convention. A State Rep was attacked by an activist at a campaign event. Elected Republicans decided to forego participating in an election night victory party. Outside groups had to come to the aid of Republicans seeking reelection, collectively knocking on countless thousands of doors because there was no help coming from their party. All the while people who hold leadership positions use those roles to amplify their criticism of elected Republicans calling the latter traitors and other nonsense like RINO. In short, the party is not in a healthy place, hasn’t been in quite sometime, and the victories Republicans enjoyed this year have the effect of a rug thrown over a stained carpet. But the stains are still there.

And so we are going to capture that realignment induced tension from many different points of view. Sometimes it is going to make my team look bad, and Peach Pundit is not going to participate in hiding the stains. We will celebrate our victories, commiserate over our defeats, and criticize whenever we feel it is warranted. That is my personal agenda; to chronicle all of it, the good, bad, and ugly. And all I will ask of you, Dear Reader, is not to assume that everyone here agrees with what and how stories are told.

So as a reminder, here is what you will find if you click on the link to our About page:

• We believe in the ultimate right of conscience here. That means sometimes you will see posts from different contributors which contradict each other. Our contributors are free to write about what ever they want and express their own personal opinions. No one speaks for the Peach Pundit Community as a whole.
• Personal Opinions are just that, personal, and do not reflect the views of those with whom any of us are professionally affiliated.
• Our contributors have three rules; Write truth and avoid defaming or libeling anyone. And the third is that we take doxxing seriously and prohibit it.
• Until recently, our contributors have been uncompensated for their work. But now they receive a share of 90% of the profits from this site. If you want to help compensate them, please consider joining our list of Patreons at patreon.com/peachpundit.
• We are generally conservative here, but not all of us.
• Contributors are just people and all of them deserve respect. Some are just getting started in politics, some have a long history of activism, and others have served or currently serving in elected office.
• If you choose to remain anonymous we are cool with that. But if someone figures out it is you, well, that’s on you.
• Your ability to post comments on this blog is not a right and can be removed at anytime for any reason. But the only people who have ever had this ability taken away so far was because they were epic assholes, not because they disagreed with something posted here.
• This is not your place to spew Two Minutes Hate. Be a contributing member of the community or find somewhere else to be miserable.
• Peach Pundit may partner with ad sites from time to time and all of our users are therefore subject to their terms and conditions.
• We may use Generative Artificial Intelligence to create original images to attach to our posts. These may depict real people in fictious circumstances, but will be created and used in compliance with the terms of service of the application used to create the images.

Do with that what you will.