Eco as in economic as well as eco as in habitat

Tom has some interesting musings on New Direction today. I tried to post a response but was unable to do so as I am not a member of the blog. So I'm posting my comment below:

Acorns versus oaks here - though, even so, I think we're looking for a piece of political genetic engineering. It may be useful to examine the right's experience with British blogging and apply some of the lessons learned, but we don't want to grow up into replicas of the right. We don't want to become the oaks they are. We need to be a bit more proactive and differentiating - yes, use the right's tools where appropriate but to an entirely different purpose. We are not here to deconstruct those who would deconstruct the existing establishment but - rather - reconstruct an alternative ecosystem which serves people instead of uses them.

I mean eco as in economic as well as eco as in habitat.

I also feel that LabourList's original remit - contribute to winning a fourth term - was far too ambitious. To build an alternative blogosphere takes time - there are no short cuts; as, indeed, events have demonstrated. We have to play to our strengths, not wrap ourselves up in the weaknesses of our opponents. Democratic socialism, for me, involves using the strength of the collective to defend the individual. Our online presence should reflect this. We should, like the best bits of the European Union, come together out of choice and be able to maintain our vigorous differences, both visual as well as dialectic. That's why I think we still need a souped-up Bloggers4Labour portal which pulls together existing blogs and serves to celebrate their differences and exchanges in one user-friendly place.

The right's presence on the Internet is a paradigm of the melting-pot that is the United States of America. The left's presence on the Internet should be a celebration of cultural interplay that - in the future - must be the United States of Europe. We do not aim to eliminate difference through economic empire but celebrate and promote it to maintain our social and cultural DNA. Our future security as a race depends on us maintaining that stock of DNA.

As democratic socialists, we should realise this and operate accordingly.