I offered my take on the current war of words and ideas over whether the U.S. should engage in more warlike action in Libya. Now, there are three essential considerations at The Atlantic. Substituting for James Fallows, Sam Roggeveen offers here and here, with more to come, two deeply considered posts (beneath the common sturm […]
The High Spark of the Low Heels, Boys
Politics is a contemptible business. Public service, that’s something else. Government? That’s not what politics is. Politics is a sewer. It leads those who participate in it, especially in any regular form, to employ every low human behavior except, generally, murder, though accusations even of it are not now unheard of. And because the politicians […]
People Give Themselves Away
They do. They really do. Once they cross a certain psychological border of irrational – but always rationalized – bias in their thinking about a subject, and it thus emerges as a kind of fetish, they give themselves away. They can’t help themselves. Often, the clues are subtle, though hardly hidden, and they are frequently […]
The Unsound Judgment of Andrew Sullivan
Earlier in the day I wrote the following email to Jeffrey Goldberg about the current eruption between Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic and ex NR editor, blogger Andrew Sullivan, in which Wieseltier accuses Sullivan of anti-Semitism I may or may not comment on Wieseltier-Sullivan on my own blog (that’s certainly what we all need […]
Tortured Argument
The next several years of the torture debate will be variously instructive, not least in what we already see in the low form and manner of important public political argument among figures who should have been schooled to a higher level. The debate will last at least a few years, and it will distress in […]