Establish a Blog! to Abolish all agricultural subsidies!

This post on Abolishing all agricultural subsidies! at Samizdata is fascinating in several regards.

I am definitely and absolutely against subsidies on principle except when they benefit something I favor, in which case I make a principled exception. And I have no well-formed opinion on ag subsidies except that they bring together a fascinating combination of defense interests ("sustainability" with guns) and rural traditionalism ("cultural preservation" for the right).

But what is most striking about the post is this:

It is not particularly about Samizdata's own intelligent (but probably) fairly predictable opinion on ag sub.

It is about a new weblog established by the Guardian a British paper of leftish perspective. A major left-wing paper has established a weblog (titled kickAAS) to favor a particular political policy. It's as if the Chronicle of San Francisco established a weblog to aid Ah-Nold. I'm not against it --- after all it's just taking one's editorial position and ratcheting up the energy-level --- but I am somewhat astonished (at the use of a Blog.)

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias is somewhat dubious and leads to Daniel W. Drezner's take on The blogosphere and the Guardian

Just as interesting as the battle to end agricultultural subsidies is the fact that the Guardian, in setting up the site, thinks that the blogosphere can affect political change. I've expressed my doubts on this score in the past, but I also hope I'm wrong in this case.