Enter Stage Gabbing

Another year down

By Steven Martinovich

(June 3, 2002) - If it's anything that amazes me it's when I review Enter Stage Right after each anniversary. In the intervening year since our fifth anniversary the world has changed profoundly. What began as a year with a president who enjoyed a quiet popularity thanks to rapid movement on several fronts segued into a Bill Clinton-esque scandal involving a California politician and a missing intern. The Kyoto Accord and the International Criminal Court were debated ad nauseam and the war of wills between Israel and Palestine reached new heights. Campaign finance reform was not only passed by Congress but signed by a Republican president. Cloning, once the province of science fiction writers, became an issue debated by everyone.

It was all overshadowed instantly the morning of September 11. What was tacitly understood by few people before became widespread knowledge. A war had been declared against the west and our political, economic and cultural beliefs, culiminating into an attack at the very heart of New York City. I hope that we've helped to make sense of the world both before and after that dark day.

We've stumbled a few times over the past year, occasionally made some errors both factually or in conclusion, but I think for the most part ESR fulfilled the mandate I set out when I launched this effort on June 1, 1996. This magazine's primary goals has always been to challenge orthodox beliefs, provide compelling commentary on the day's events, provide a platform for writers the mainstream media ignores and carry the conservative banner. As I looked through some of the hundreds of pieces we ran in the past year, I think we had our best year yet.

It's amazing really when you think about it. Thanks to the personal computer and the Internet, ESR has published dozens of writers, few to none of whom have ever actually met each other. Despite that, I think we've built a tight community of like-minded people who enjoy putting together this weekly journal and the majority who come back week after week. I'm proud of the consistent quality of our work and the fact that you come back so regularly to see what we've managed to do.

Before I get overly self-congratulatory, I'd just to thank all of those people who've helped out in the past year and everyone who's taken the time to visit us. I hope you'll stick around for the next year and see what we come up with next. Some minor changes are coming along with an overhaul of the web site's appearance, but outside of that we'll still be the same Enter Stage Right.

Thanks for reading,

Steven Martinovich

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