What were the roots of this progress? At the beginning of 2006, The Rational Argumentator finally obtained its own domain name: http://rationalargumentator.com, which enabled greatly increased traffic to the site as well as improvements to the magazine’s appearance, organization, coherence, and speed of publication. Yet the domain name itself was acquired for a reason; TRA’s old GeoCities sites had been reaching their bandwidth limits on a daily basis! Visitation had already begun to accelerate, and the domain name acquisition was more of a response to the trend rather than an initiating factor. Of course, the domain name did accelerate the increase in visitation further.

But what caused the initial rise? One explanation is the increased publicity TRA has been receiving from individuals who admire its ideas and are ready to promote them—out of their own good will—to potential future audiences. One such individual has been Mr. Paul A. Lime, who has been widely recommending TRA’s articles on free-market economics to new readers. I give him sincere thanks on behalf of all of The Rational Argumentator’s contributors for disseminating the indispensable ideas of economic liberty in an age that greatly needs them.

TRA’s appearance has also been greatly enhanced over the past year. A new logo and more realistic grafics representing the New Renaissance Hat and Eden against the Colossus—kindly created by Miss Wendy D. Bateman—have greatly enhanced the site’s visual appeal. A new sidebar enables for speedy and efficient navigation among all issues, main components, and special features of TRA. The Index of Contributors has been growing steadily—offering readers the opportunity to find all TRA-published works by any given creator. 

            We must also not forget the immense increase in TRA content during the past year. The Third Manifesto was published in Issue XL; this one is a part of the forthcoming Issue LXXI. In between, there were 30 issues, each with at least ten features—many with more. The number of TRA features published this year exceeds the prior year’s number by over 100. TRA has increased its contributor base and now receives regular columns by renowned authors like Alan Caruba, Representative Ron Paul of Texas, and Dr. Robert P. Murphy. TRA receives a submission almost daily, and there is no shortage of articles for publication. For the first time in TRA’s history, there is—on the contrary—a rather substantial waiting list! We encourage further contributions from any established or aspiring writers who have rational, intelligent, informative ideas to share. We will always make room for quality writing and thought on TRA—even if we have to speed up our publication schedule!

        More innovation and improvements are forthcoming, for we at TRA hope that our fifth year might even exceed the fourth in performance, visitation, and development. Already—for instance—TRA is transitioning from its black-background/white-text format to a white-background/black-text one for ease of readership and greater speed of publication. After all, the fewer color conversions a text experiences prior to publication, the faster it can reach its audience—which will enable TRA to bring readers more quality content in a more compelling way.  Other major improvements will come to elevate TRA onto ever-higher levels of quality and effectiveness; some of these improvements not even I can foresee—just as I did not foresee my domain-name acquisition this year. Yet the immortal words of Goethe continue to remind me that “that which moves not forward, goes backward.” Be assured that the lesson of these words will not be neglected. 

Click here to return to TRA's Issue LXXI Index.

Learn about Mr. Stolyarov's novel, Eden against the Colossus, here.