Featured Music-Battle Hymn of the Republic

Excellent rendition of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" by the Robert Shaw Chorale, a truly superb musical group.

An Introduction

First of all, I would like to welcome any and all readers to this blog known as Torchlight. In this post I hope to show to readers the inspiration behind the blog along with some information about myself and what the blog will cover in the future.

The name Torchlight was derived from a fictional political history of the future entitled Dawn of a System and posted on Alternate History.com by a man going by the handle of "Noravea". This future history (in the form of both newspaper articles and short vignettes) begins with a fictional political blog named Torchlight and its initially mysterious author growing in influence during the 2016 Presidential Election. Eventually the author reveals himself as one Nicholas Caeus who sees his career steadily rise as he forms a new political movement based on the values of bipartisanship and pragmatism. After being elected Congressman and then Governor along with restructuring the Republican Party into the National Republican Party under his control, Caeus is elected President of the United States in 2032 only to soon find himself confronting a global war...

While the future history depicted here is certainly not optimistic and not one I wish to see become our future, there were many elements in it that were inspirational. Nicholas Caeus himself is an admirable figure who overcame a difficult youth including an abusive father, to become a honest and bold political leader dedicated to the American people. Meanwhile the movement Caeus helped start with his blog and then leads is refreshing in light of actual politics as seen with the impending government shutdown and the debt ceiling battle, as it shows Republicans and Democrats working together to pass commonsense policies that move the country forwards. Especially notable was Caeus' success in pushing many people of the Millennial generation into politics and ending the apathy about politics amongst this generation which has been detected in many studies.

As a result I have named this blog Torchlight, in the hopes that it too may do some part (however minor) in improving and moving forward the political discourse of this country and in getting people of my generation into participating in politics. By way of disclaimer, I ask everyone to remember that I am not Noravea and that this blog does not represent his political views nor that of the fictional characters of his story.

Regarding this website itself, I hope to make it a blog with both a wide focus and a large amount of content. The primary focus of this site will be on the politics, and thus much of the content will be commentaries of varying lengths on current events by this author and other contributors. There will also be longer feature articles which will be explore certain issues or events in-depth with a strong focus on its background and history and the potential solutions to the plan. Other features will include "Point and Counterpoint" where two contributors will give the opposing arguments on a certain issue or matter and the "Roundtable" where several different contributors will give brief commentary on a matter.

However like periodicals such as the Atlantic or the New Yorker, I do not intend Torchlight to solely focus on political matters. Besides pure politics, it will first of all, cover materials that are strongly related to politics such as economics and demographics with a focus on analysis and connecting them to politics. In addition there will be posts covering history, science, and similar topics of general interest in the interest of enlightening readers. Torchlight also harbours some ambitions of posting matters relating to theology but this cannot be guaranteed  unless appropriate contributors are found. Finally there shall be articles relating to culture including reviews of books, films, TV shows, plays, artwork, and music.

Besides articles by Torchlight itself, there will be links to sites, articles, pictures, and videos that will be of interest to the reader including links to newspapers articles on the day's major stories.

Finally Torchlight intends to devote some of its material to the region of Southern California (as indicated in the URL of this site) where the contributors live. As a result there will be some articles and pictures here relating to the region's natural landscape, climate, history, politics, demographics, culture, architecture, and so forth.

I hope Torchlight will be of great interest to readers in the future and especially fulfill the goal stated above of getting young people thinking about and involved in politics.

Sincerely Yours,
Casey Cho