Have a ranting Christmas

Julian Sanchez proves my point, not his. But I'm not in a mood to argue at length, for to do so would be as foolishly wasteful as a New York Times op-ed columnist devoting 773 words to the theological implications of Avatar.

Merry Christmas, Julian. (And in case you didn't hear, the science is settled: Avatar sucks.)

Reihan Salam is too young for this 're-inventing conservatism' gig

The fact that he co-authored a book with Ross Douthat -- with the ridiculously pretentious subtitle "How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" -- would easily suffice to make me skeptical of Reihan Salam's judgment, even if he were 45. That he is both (a) a Harvard grad, and (b) only 29, more or less seals the deal.

My prejudice against these Best And Brightest types is perhaps misunderstood. I do not automatically despise every young Ivy Leaguer. J.P. Freire graduated from Cornell, and he's a good guy. Helen Rittelmeyer graduated from Yale, and she's even better.

What I hate, however, is the disrespectful Best And Brightest tendency toward know-it-all-ism, as if high SAT scores and four years at a school where tuition is $40,000 a year entitles them to pole-vault past the dues-paying journeyman career stage and start lecturing everybody else.

The Internet facilitates such obnoxious precocity. Excuse me for resorting to the when-I-was-your-age argument, but before the Internet, not everyone had access to a national readership. Pixels are free, whereas publishing in print costs money and so, in the pre-digital age, it was a very rare thing for a callow parvenu or arriviste to gain access to the kind of punditry platform that National Review's blog affords Salam:

As regular readers, I'm a huge fan of Tim Lee and his concept of a bottom-up approach to understanding and improving society. And so I was struck by the final paragraph of Republican consultant Alex Castellanos's New York Times op-ed on the Republican revival . . .

You can read the whole thing, but what caught my eye was how Salam begins with the trademark know-it-all-ism of the Best And Brightest. Castellanos is even older than me and was working on big-time campaigns when Reihan Salam was still pooping in Pampers.

Pause to contemplate what's happening here. In a rare reversal of its usual policy, the New York Times gives a Republican a chance to explain how Republicans won an election -- and not merely won it, but did the Godzilla-through-Tokyo stomp to an 18-point landslide. In response, Reihan Salam feels compelled to piss in Castellanos's cornflakes with his snooty oblique criticism, to the effect that Castellanos has offered an imperfect interpretation of McDonnell's Virginia gubernatorial campaign.

It's a punk move, and betrays the ungodly arrogance that inevitably overtakes young people who've become accustomed to being petted and praised for how precociously clever they are.

Young people, especially the most promising young people, must be chastised and disciplined if ever they are to develop to their fullest potential. This puerile Douthatian know-it-all tendency toward omniscient punditry -- "I've got a Harvard diploma! I know everything!" -- must be rigorously suppressed.

Intelligence and wisdom are two different things. There are plenty of bright fools (and I may be one of them) just as there are those people of less stellar aptitude who, by patient toil and study, eventually eclipse the adolescent glory of the Best And Brightest in the same manner that Aesop's tortoise beat the hare.

Much as I love the hierarchy-flattening effects of the Internet -- affording a guy with a Blogspot platform the chance to whack David Brooks, who certainly needs whacking and needs it badly -- there are some hierarchies that we should hesitate to level. Chief among these is the deference that the young traditionally owe to their elders.

Remember that I am a father of six, including a 20-year-old daughter and two teenage boys.

Are my kids bright and promising? You betcha.

Do I let my kids get away with thinking that their youthful potential entitles them to special treatment and unmerited praise? Hell, no.

If I don't indulge my own kids in their (arguably hereditary) tendency to think they're God's gift to the world, why should I sit silent while Reihan Salam presumes to lecture Alex Castellanos?

Shut up and get me a cup of coffee. I got ties older than you, kid.

Unlike Ross Douthat, Ann Coulter isnot a stuck-up Harvard douchebag

Last night, Myers The Blog Intern found an interesting clip of an Ann Coulter appearance on the Glenn Beck show in March, when she described George Soros as a "Nazi collaborator."

Some liberal commenter (who may or may not be just another Media Matters hack) complained about Miss Coulter's characterization of Soros. And indeed, it is a serious accusation, since being a "Nazi collaborator" would make Soros worse than Neville Chamberlain and as bad as postmodern philosopher Martin Heidegger, although certainly no worse than France.

The liberal commenter seemed to feel that I was obliged to pass judgment on the accuracy of Miss Coulter's assessment, prompting my reply:

I think that if you have a problem with Miss Coulter's description of the wartime adventures of George Soros, you should take that up with Miss Coulter.

Far be it from me to assume that she is unable to defend her own prose. However, if my assistance were required, I would certainly provide it. I would similarly assist Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn, Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin or any other conservative who (a) doesn't apologize for being conservative, (b) is willing to "put skin in the game" in the fight against liberalism, and (c) isn't all stuck-up like they're better than everybody else.

This explains why I've got no use for douchebag snobs like Ross Douthat and other members of that elite crowd, The Republicans Who Really Matter. A very simple test: If you think you're better than those Pennsylvanians who stood in line on a cold windy evening for a chance to see Sarah Palin, you're a douchebag.

Ann Coulter is not like that. Say what you will about her, she doesn't mind talking to Ordinary Americans:

Seated on the patio of a D.C. restaurant (note the margarita in the foreground) Ann Coulter has a conversation with an enthusiastic Obama supporter. At left is Jeff Carneal, president of Eagle Publishing, who is probably not quite so enthusiastic about Obama.

Ann Coulter poses with Alyssa Cordova of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute.

Ann Coulter poses with Evan Gassman and Evan's girlfriend. Evan gave me a business card, so I remembered his name. His girlfriend didn't have a business card, but she was sweet.

Ann Coulter poses with investigative journalist Matthew Vadum (right) and some blogger dude who can't even remember the name of Evan Gassman's sweet girlfriend.

So you see the difference between Ann Coulter and a certain Harvard douchebag who expects everybody to be impressed by his SAT score and skinny-dipping with Bill Buckley.

Also, Ann Coulter links my blog, unlike a douchbag.

No Douchebag Is An Island

Ross Douthat's latest column prompts Brad at Sadly No to observe:

"I can only imagine the Times’ copy editors reading this while slowly shredding their own faces off with cheese graters."

Of course, it's entirely possible that Douthat's column has genuine merit, but I'm not going to bother to read it and find out one way or the other. He never linked me when when he had a blog at The Atlantic Monthly, so he's just a stuck-up douchebag in my book.

So far as I know, Douthat never linked any conservative bloggers. He therefore has no reason to expect that we should defend him when Brad imagines the New York Times editors asking themselves, "We're paying him how much to write this s***?"

Hey, Ross: You went to Harvard. Fend for yourself, douchebag.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Watch your back, Douthat

Ross Douthat today engages in sociological observation of the meritocratic elite in such a way as to infringe on turf claimed by David Brooks. (Via Memeorandum.)

There's nothing really wrong with this particular Douthat column, if op-ed social criticism is what you're looking for. But that's some mighty pricey editorial real estate to be occupied by a latter-day Veblen cleverly commenting on what he sees on TV and reads in magazines when there's so much important news to be reported.

A simple request, Ross: Call up Joe Lieberman's press secretary Erica Masonhall and ask her when Lieberman plans to start holding hearings about Obama's war on inspectors general. Maybe she'll return a call from a Harvard-educated New York Times columnist. She sure as hell didn't return mine.

Leave the Veblen trip to Brooks. Even the New York Times can't afford to support every pompous op-ed windbag in Washington. You start crowding Brooks, and I'm betting he wins that competition. If he outlasted Kristol, he'll outlast you.

Now, somebody needs to hit my tip jar.

Attention Boston Globe employees

The New York Times Co. is planning to close your newspaper and put you out of work. However, David Brooks still earns $300,000 a year as a columnist for the Times. And they've just hired Harvard-educated boy genius Ross Douthat, too.

Just thought that news might cheer you up.

OMG, Douthat, too?

If David Brooks is Pinky, Ross Douthat is the Brain, but as to his New York Times debut, Matthew Saroff of TPM sums it up in a blog post title: "Ross Douthat Is a F***ing Moron."

The money sentence in Douthat's silly mess:

In the wake of two straight drubbings at the polls, much of the American right has comforted itself with the idea that conservatives lost the country primarily because the Bush-era Republican Party spent too much money on social programs. And John McCain’s defeat has been taken as the vindication of this premise.

First: Conservatives are not interested in "comfort." Second, the simple lesson of the past two cycles is something that anyone who has been paying attention since Ross was in middle school would tell you: Lie down with Bushes, wake up with Democrats.

Douthat has never been a reporter. His life has been confined to academia and think-tank punditry in elite precincts: New Haven, Cambridge and Washington. He does not have any scope of experience to write about anything except the opinions of the elite, which are already easily available to anyone with access to NPR. Ergo, Douthat is redundant at best, and allowing him to write this kind of Big Picture analysis is to subject the reader to an arrogant, puerile know-it-all-ism.

Marc Ambinder (an actual reporter) shrugs his shoulders in resignation. Obviously, the thinking at 620 Eighth Avenue is: "If we've got to hire a 'conservative' columnist, make sure we hire one who'll reaffirm our readers' belief that conservatives are clueless idiots."

Kathy Shaidle e-mailed me this column with a two-word subject line, "Lent's over." Thank God for small blessings.

NY Times circles the drain

Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic:

The New York Times Co. fell into a deeper financial hole during the first quarter as the newspaper publisher's advertising revenue plunged 27 percent in an industrywide slump that is reshaping the print media. Its shares dived Tuesday as investors prepared for the debut of Harvard-educated bore Ross Douthat on the op-ed pages of the struggling newspaper.

I might have added that last part.

UPDATE: David Boaz of the Cato Institute points out that the NYT can't get basic facts right.

Don't believe the blog hype!

Somebody's lying to the Wall Street Journal:

It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products.

What a load of crap. Once again, the media can't get the basic facts right. I average more than 100,000 visits per month and anybody who thinks that generates $75,000 a year is delusional. As for this "$75 to $200 for a good post" -- Heh! Maybe Jane Hamsher expects that kind of money. Or maybe Harvard boy Ross Douthat.

This WSJ nonsense about $75,000 a year is almost a rumor too good to deny., but I'll deny it anyway, because it could hurt my business. Most of my blog income comes from people hitting the tip jar, which you should do immediately.

Otherwise I might be tempted to sell out. But that would require a willing buyer, and so far my promotional work as "unofficial spokesblogger" for Corona Beer isn't a paying gig. But if you'll just click that bottle, maybe . . .

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis: "He says that bloggers with 100,000 readers a month are making $75k. Name a few." And buy that man a Corona!

UPDATE II: Pat in Shreveport: "That's why he gets the big bucks." No, they give the big bucks to Ross Douthat. Because he's so witty and insightful, we laugh at the mere mention of his name. Har. Har har har.

UPDATE III: James Joyner at Outside the Beltway:

I'm quite dubious of these figures. They are likely self-reported and inflated. $75,000 a year is $6250 a month. Who is it that's getting paid $6.50 per thousand visits? At that rate, Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds, who average around 4.3 million and 10 million monthly uniques, should be atop the Forbes 500.

Joyner's got a Ph.D., so he's got those def math skilz. Buy that man a Corona!

UPDATE IV: Another professorial blogger, Donald Douglas, says he ain't ready to quit teaching merely because he's raking in the sweet blog-o-bucks.

UPDATE V: Little Miss Attila is rattling her tip jar, too. She talks about a recent dearth of advertising income, but at least she's in BlogAds, a network that won't even allow me to join. So instead I'm doing G*o*o*g*l*e A*d*s*e*n*s*e (you're not actually supposed to mention it on your blog) which threw me a whopping $153.25 for 243,000 page impressions in March.

Maybe Dr. Joyner (who's also a member of the BlogAds network I'm not allowed to join) can do the math and tell me how many page impressions per month I'd have to get in order to gross $75,000 a year from Google. Short answer: A freaking lot.

UPDATE VI: Linked by The Anchoress, who's got more traffic than me and ain't even close to $75K/yr. And I'm not linked by Megan McArdle, who's probably getting paid at least $75K/yr. by The Atlantic Monthly, but only a fraction of what Ross Douthat (who never linked me, either) is being paid since leaving the Atlantic for the New York Times.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of bloggers in the world: Bloggers who link me, and assholes.

UPDATE VII: Linked by Rusty Shackleford, who is not an asshole:

The Jawa Report gets over 100,000 hits every 3 - 4 days. It averages out to about 750,000 hits a month or about 9 million hits a year.
So by that math I should be making like $500,000 a year from this thing.
I actually felt kind of guilty for making some money last year from blogging since so much of the content of the Jawa is written by others. Pajamas Media, I thought, was a pretty sweet deal. But it was nowhere near what it needed to be for me to quit my day job.
Seriously, nowhere even close. Not even in the ballpark. Think minimum wage.

Blogging works best, it seems to me, as a promotional medium. That is to say, it's a good way to call attention to something: A news story, a video, an event, or photographic evidence that Miss California's had a boob job.

While it is possible to use a blog as a venue for long-form writing (and all the updates are turning this post into a War and Peace), the key function of a news/politics blog is as an aggregator -- link, link, link. To that basic work of aggregation, you then add your own personality or specialized knowledge.

Since no two people have exactly the same set of interests, no two blogs will have the same linkage. Ergo, from the reader's perspective, the key to getting the maximum value from the blogosphere is to identify a small number of blogs that share your general interests and then following their links. Your favorite bloggers thereby function as intake funnels that pre-select and present information.

From the blogger's perspective, it helps to have some (more lucrative) service or product that you can promote through your blog. If you're a journalist, an author, a political consultant, a radio talk-show host, or the idiot daughter of a failed presidential candidate, blogging can function as a way to establish your "brand" and promote your work in an interactive format.

Given this dual nature of the 'sphere -- blogging as promotion and blogging as aggregation -- some people will gain far more from its non-monetary benefits than from direct income. It's a way to "get your name out there," or to get your ideas "out there," and so you're willing to overlook the fact that blogging per se is not particularly lucrative.

Dear Ross Douthat

Hey, Boy Genius, have you ever done any actual reporting in your life? Or are you Harvard guys too good to do anything except sneer?

[The Tea Party] have all of the weaknesses of the anti-war marches: Their message is intertwined with a sense of disenfranchisement and all kinds of inchoate cultural resentments, they've brought various wacky extremists out of the woodwork (you know, like Glenn Beck), and just as George W. Bush benefited from having opposition to his policies identified with peacenik marchers in Berkeley and Ann Arbor, so Barack Obama probably benefits from having the opposition (such as it is) associated with a bunch of Fox News fans marching through the streets on Tax Day, parroting talk radio tropes and shouting about socialism. Obama is a very popular President, at the moment, his unpopularity among Republicans notwithstanding, and it's awfully hard to see the Tea Parties doing much to change that reality in the short run; if anything, they're far more likely to reconfirm the majority in its opinion that American conservatism is increasingly wacky, echo-chamberish, and out-of-touch.

Politics as an abstract concept formed by reading Talking Points Memo may be sufficiently prestigious for you, Mr. Working Class Hero, but if you weren't gunning the turn-only lane on Valleydale Road in Hoover in a desperate haste to reach Wednesday's rally with Rick and Bubba, Lee Davis and Tim James, don't tell me what the Tea Party movement is about, OK?

You and David Brooks make such a perfect couple. Perfectly useless, that is. Go surf some more 'barely legal' porn. and stop pretending to know anything about actual politics.

Lent's over, douchebag, and it's punk-smacking season.

UPDATE: Linked by Cynthia Yockey, who stepped up to help fill the gap by punk-smacking Douthat while I was bound by my Lenten vow.

Will Rossy D. set down his teacup on 15 April?

By Smitty
Ross Douthat is sniffing in a self-congratulatory way about 'A Coming Tax Revolt'. He responds to a Jonah Goldberg tidbit saying that the death knell on tax cuts as a winning issue for Republicans may have been premature:

Speaking as one of those conservative reformers, I'd make two points. First, nobody was saying that tax cuts couldn't potentially become politically salient again if the Republicans got clobbered repeatedly at the polls and a sizable Democratic majority enacted large tax increases. The point - which Reihan and I started making in 2005, back when the GOP's hold on government still seemed reasonably strong - was that it would be nice to prevent that sort of thing from happening, and that an anti-tax message alone was insufficient to the task of forestalling a Republican collapse. In this regard, I don't feel like our obituary was premature; I think it's been largely vindicated by events.

Amidst this self congratulatory talk, what were you and Reihan peddling in '05? (emphasis mine)

The third possibility--and the best, both for the party and the country as a whole--would be to take the "big-government conservatism" vision that George W. Bush and Karl Rove have hinted at but failed to develop, and give it coherence and sustainability. This wouldn't mean an abandonment of small-government objectives, but it would mean recognizing that these objectives--individual initiative, social mobility, economic freedom--seem to be slipping away from many less-well-off Americans, and that serving the interests of these voters means talking about economic insecurity as well as about self-reliance. It would mean recognizing that you can't have an "ownership society" in a nation where too many Americans owe far more than they own. It would mean matching the culture war rhetoric of family values with an economic policy that places the two-parent family--the institution best capable of providing cultural stability and economic security--at the heart of the GOP agenda.

Ross, are you one of those Conservatives Unusally Neighborly Towards Socialism? A RINO, as it were? If you have Conservative hair #1 where it matters, tell me how you interpret the 10th Amendment, and whether any of the CBO charts so conveniently hosted by Mr. Perot mean anything to you. If the citizens of a state want their government 'serving the[ir] interests', that may be fine. But the Freddie/Fannie nonsense cannot be seen as something the Framers would support.

Surely an Ivy League graduate must realize that getting serviced in one chamber by Barney Frank, with Chris Dodd in the other is not the kind of servicing many find acceptable. How do you refer to yourself as conservative without denouncing this kind of crap, and the federal taxation you seem to welcome, with every breath, sir?

Are you going to be at a Tea Party on the 15th? We need you to set down the tea cup and to avoid being an I-told-you-so sycophant if there is going to be any "conservative reform".

Ross Douthat update

Kathy Shaidle sent me an e-mail that said, "Don't read this until after Lent."

Smitty? Somebody? Please read the article and comment.

How long until Easter?

Update: by Smitty
Cynthia Yockey fills an important role, tying in her other Douthat reporting into an excellent roundup.
Thank you kindly!

How long until Easter?

Cynthia Yockey was the Good Sapphic Samaritan last week, helping me maintain my Lenten vow (I'm a proud Protestant, but made a promise to a friend who is a notorious Catholic hypocrite), and now as further testimony that the Lord sends "angels unawares," Katha Pollit adds her widow's mite:

But [William Kristol's] presence on the [New York Times op-ed] page reminded readers that David Brooks is not really what Republicanism is all about. Frankly, though, I don't see why there must be two conservatives on the page.

I suppose I should also acknowledge that, via Rule 3, a hat-tip is owed to Matthew Yglesias, even though he couldn't be bothered to read Atlas Shrugged before denouncing it.

Now, I have acknowledged to Cynthia that she is owed an apology, because when I responded at length to her dispute of my views on gay marriage, I ignorantly wounded her -- an unintentional offense, yet an offense nonetheless.

Thinking that Cynthia was currently in a long-term lesbian relationship, I engaged in a hypothetical speculation on the possibility that, should she by misfortune become a "lesbian widow," there would be no guarantee that her next relationship would also be lesbian. Whatever one's orientation or your congenital predisposition, whatever your habit and custom, life is like a box of chocolates, and sometimes a chance encounter becomes a "pivotal life movement." Not until many years later, wondering how you arrived at your present circumstance, do you look back and ask, "When did that road fork? Where did I turn?"

My intention was kindness, but the result was cruelty, for I did not know that Cythnia's 20-year relationship had ended with her partner's death -- after a long, painful, debilitating illness -- on Dec. 7, 2004.

Ms. Yockey has chronicled her devotion to Margaret Ardussi in a page that I promised her I would link. My oppressive patriarchal heteronormativity bids me speak, but as Smitty points out, "He that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding." Therefore, Ms. Yockey, I pray only that my apology is sufficent and acceptable, as it is my continued hope ever to remain

Your most humble and obedient servant,

ROBERT STACY McCAIN

'McCain's right, of course . . .'

". . . and the Brookses and Meghan McCains of the party might as well join up with the Democrats, for if we adopt the 'moderate' programs these folks are pushing, we might as well have a one-party Democratic state."
-- Donald Douglas, on "Core Values Conservatism," agreeing with me and Charles Murray (I think)

Professor Douglas is taking issue with Ross Douthat's critique of Murray's Thursday lecture at the American Enterprise Institute (yet another event to which I was not invited).

Not being a member of the intellectual leisure class -- hit the tip jar, people -- I have no time for fucking around with the fine points on this one, nor is there any need for that. We need not agree on the ideal size of government in order to agree on three major points:

• Government is too big. It's too expensive, too powerful, and too meddlesome. Even if we could get this much government at half the price, it's still more government than is good for us.
• Bush and Republicans were wrong to expand government. No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D were giant steps in the wrong direction which, by blurring partisan distinctions, made it more difficult for the GOP to present itself as the party of limited government.
• Democrats want government to be even bigger. Government can never be too big, too expensive, too wasteful or too intrusive to satisfy The Evil Coalition of Liars and Fools.

You need not agree with Grover Norquist on the desireability of shrinking the federal government until it's small enough to drown in the bathtub. With government as big as it is now and rapidly growing much bigger, the current situation creates a clear line of demarcation. You are either a small-government conservative or you are not a conservative, period.

Murray, Douthat and the Professor are welcome to engage in a three-way intellectual Jello-wrestling match over the fine points of philosophy or policy on all this. As politics, however, the choice is clear: The Republican Party can either (a) try to reclaim its limited-government credibility by going all-in against Obama's neo-Keynesian economic plan, or (b) employ the approach favored by The Republicans Who Really Matter by nitpicking the small change.

My hunch is that (b) is a one-way non-stop ticket to Republican irrelevance. Jennifer Rubin is right: The opposition party must oppose. This is that 4 a.m. call, and if my answer lacks nuance and sophistication, it at least has the merit of simplicity: WOLVERINES!

UPDATE: Not directly related, but one of The Republicans Who Really Matters weighs in:

Drive-by pundits . . . are non-journalists who have been demonizing the media for the past 20 years or so and who blame the current news crisis on bias.

Fuck you, Kathleen Parker. I started out in the news business making $4.50 an hour in 1986, and I'll take no lectures from the overprivileged likes of you. What journalism has become is a disgrace, and the unwillingness of people in the news business to say "fuck you" to useless idiots like you is one of the reasons why. (H/T: Tim Graham.)

UPDATE II: Kevin Williamson weighs in with a more thorough fisking of Parker's column, as opposed to my outraged punk-smacking. The outrage is that someone who has for so long been a mere opinion columnist -- as opposed to working in the actual news end of the operation -- should be lecturing anyone about what's wrong with the news business.

"Newspaper columnist" used to be a gig that you had to work a long time in the news business to get. The late, great Lewis Grizzard, for example, started out as a brilliant young sports reporter, and nonetheless was past 30 -- and had already served as executive sports editor of the Chicago Tribune -- before he became a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1977.

Then in the 1980s and '90s, as cable news and USA Today started encroaching on the turf of the metropolitan dailies, there was this big push for "diversity" and "youth," the chief result of which was a lot of Clever Girl Columnists wasting newsprint. (Hello, Rheta Grimsley Johnson! Hello, Maureen Dowd!)

Kathleen Parker was one of the better Clever Girl Columnists who got the affirmative-action leg up in that manner. But she succumbed to the Elite Media Syndrome of thinking that working in the news business makes you somehow superior to the guy who drops 50 cents in the newsbox, and her insufferable elitism is an apt metaphor for what went wrong with the business.

It's still possible to make a profit on a newspaper, but to do it, you've got to have a small staff of people who work their butts off. You've got to have do-everything staffers, rather than having specialists who won't lift a finger to help outside their job description. And one of the luxuries that profitable newspapers can no longer afford is the overpaid op-ed columnist who never gets her shoes dirty.

Good-bye to bad rubbish.

Ross Douthat, porn expert?

"Forget 'normalizing homosexuality' -- something the Right has been worrying over since the advent of gay liberation. Today, the Internet and DirecTV are normalizing everything, from group sex to bestiality to darker things that decency forbids mentioning. And as for pedophilia -- why, any erotic website worth its salt promises links to images of the 'barely legal,' 'young teen sluts,' and all the rest. Today, Nabokov's Humbert would need not be a tragic figure; instead, he could have spent his years ensconced in front of a glowing computer screen, with a thousand Lolitas for his delectation."

* * *

"Over the past three decades, the VCR, on-demand cable service, and the Internet have completely overhauled the ways in which people interact with porn. Innovation has piled on innovation, making modern pornography a more immediate, visceral, and personalized experience. Nothing in the long history of erotica compares with the way millions of Americans experience porn today, and our moral intuitions are struggling to catch up."

* * * *

A Catholic friend advises me that Lenten vows are not enforced on Sunday. Or, as we call it around here, Rule 5 Sunday.

Eutopia. Eusocial. Europe.

by Smitty

Ross, I love you nearly as much as I love your ivory tower. Let's have some fun with The Case For Small Government:

At bottom, I think the argument suffers from a problem that's common to both sides in the debates over the desirability of European-style social democracy - namely, the hope that what's ultimately a philosophical and moral controversy can have a tidy empirical resolution.

Is the Decline and Fall of Europe insufficient for you? Are shenanigans like the Treaty of Lisbon not a good enough indicator? Do you read The Brussels Journal? My wife is German. Maybe I am too lost in anecdotal evidence that the likelihood of success of "European-style social democracy" in the US has been captured here: It Won't Work. Uless you're eusocial.

In both cases, there's an unwarranted hope that the right facts and figures can settle a debate that ultimately depends on the philosophical assumptions that you bring to it.

Hogwash. Facts matter. As does history. If the foundation of your eutopian la-la land rests upon demonstrably bogus assertions about your demographics, WTF good is it? Unless you're taking a foppish deconstructionist route, that is. Then you can just "feel" something.

I would just deny that they can come close to settling, in any meaningful sense, the debate over how big the American welfare state should be overall, and whether we should copy Western Europe or disdain it.

And why should you? Recall, These United States are still 50 in number. If you have any sort of bully pulpit from your lofty heights, you should argue the Constitution, and the right of states to be as "Massachusetts" as they wanna be, without taking the whole country down roads that historically lead to swamps.

That's because both the American and the European models of government are successful in purely practical terms, to the extent that purely practical terms exist - which is to say, both models have provided, over an extended period of time, levels of prosperity and stability unparalleled in human history.

PAX ROMANA, anyone? Or are you taking the condescending view that history began in 1636, with the founding of Hah-vuhd?

(Yes, the stresses that Islamic immigration and demographic decline are imposing on Europe are real and serious - but I think it's too soon to say, with Murray and many on the Right, that "the European model can't continue to work much longer," full stop. The end of history may be more resilient than we think!)

Don't look at reality too long, buddy: someone might steal your lenses. No, you're right: Geert's just paranoid and stuff.

And as long as this remains the case, where you come out on the debates over whether we should prefer the continent's sturdier safety nets to America's lower unemployment and higher growth rates (or the continent's more equible provision of health care to America's lead in health-care innovation, or what-have-you) will ultimately boil down to values as much as it will to what the numbers say.

Back to my European in-laws: that "sturdier safety net" has little empirical meaning. Then again, I'm only talking to a small sample, so you could be right. Not that I seriously think so, just that sounding too certain is rather tacky. Oh, and the wife works in pharma, and is unenthusiastic about the "lead in health-care innovation" you're touting here. I wouldn't play a straight libertarian hand, but I would say "less is more" when it comes to regulation. Each new law is another bandage on the patient. Governments rarely, if ever, cut away any of the old stuff. Result: mummy. But we'll just have to crash the system and then see what you dreamers can do to continue blaming Bush rather than analyze anything.

How much do you prize equality and ease of life? The more you do, the more you'll favor a European approach to the relationship between state and society. How much do you prize voluntarism, entrepreneurship, and the value of lives oriented around service to one's family, and to God?

Oh, step up to the plate and just admit it: in Socialism, the state is God. At some point, however, even the biggest Einstein must tire of the failures of idolizing the state.

Eutopia. Eusocial. Europe. You go, dude. There.

'Ever get the feeling . . .'

". . . the world exists just to annoy you personally?" Thomas J. Marier writes in an e-mail, sending along happy news that Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times sent to his staff:

Folks:
Some exciting news. We’ve hired Ross Douthat, currently of Atlantic. Ross will be joining the Times staff in mid-April and will be based in the Washington bureau. He will start out primarily online, but will soon be writing with increasing frequency, and then regularity, on the Op-Ed page, in the Monday slot opposite Paul. At some point, he’ll also resume his work as a blogger, which I highly recommend.
If you don’t know Ross, you’ll find him funny and smart and sharp. He’s going to be a great addition to our team. I know you’ll make him welcome.
Andy

(Gritted teeth.) Congratulation, Ross! We're all so excited for you!

Now excuse me while I go swallow a bottle of sleeping pills, wash it down with a quart of Chlorox, slash my wrists, get in the car, drive to the Bay Bridge, shoot myself through the head, and crash through the guard-rail to the water below.

How long until Easter?

UPDATE: Rod Dreher is giddy like a schoolgirl.

How Not to Get a Million Hits On Your Blog, And Not Score With Hotties. Ever.

First, accuse Suzanna Logan of being a homophobe.

Next, try to walk it back when you belatedly realize she's hot.

Then, jump into her comments like you're completely obsessed with her.

Finally, do a roundup post, displaying to the world that you've spent your entire day making a complete fool of yourself. Oh, and along the way, be sure to call her "sweettits" and include a lame Photoshop of you with her.

When you're through doing that, go to a Castro Street glory hole, offering up your rump to complete strangers, while bragging that you've got more than 25,000 hits on your blog in the past 13 months.

Losers. They're born that way.

P.S.: How do you know that Suzanna is so intolerant of homosexuals? For all we know, when Suzanna and Moe get together to watch Jason Mattera videos, they drink a few pina coladas, share their feelings of desperate loneliness, break out the digital camcorder . . .

By the way, Little Mister Loser, did you see how Moe body-slammed Megan McCain? Moe also smokes Marlboro Reds. NTTAWWT.

UPDATE: William Jacobson diagnoses a new BRD (Blog-Related Disorder), SiteMeterenFreude:

"deriving pleasure from the failure of other bloggers to generate traffic"

He swears he'll never succumb to this one, but I needed an outlet for my ailing spleen between David Brooks columns. Since swearing off Douthat-bashing for Lent (and I'm not even Catholic), I find myself easily provoked to punk-smacking. So when this idiot wandered into my crosshairs, he was automatically going to get it like Carlo got it from Sonny Corleone.

What's making it worse is that my friends are taunting me, egging me on, for the sheer voyeuristic thrill of watching me rip a new one on some unsuspecting victim. My old "friend" Ken Hanner just sent me an e-mail containing precisely one sentence:

Ross Douthat is on Washingtonian Magazine's list of Most Influential People Under 40.

Yeah. (Grit teeth.) Congratulations, Ross! I'm shaking the tip jar and hustling T-shirts, and you're so gosh-darn "influential"! I wish you all the best!

God help the next "centrist Republican" idiot who says anything nasty about Rush, Ann or Sarah. The Fierce Populist Ad Hominem Hammer From Hell is ready for 'em, with an aching spleen full of punk-smacking bile.

UPDATE II: You see what happens to a guy when he's not "influential"? His own minions start plotting against him in the comment field. Watch it, Logan. It's against my religion to punk-smack a girl, but if you don't want those Godiva chocolates, maybe Michelle Lee Muccio does.

UPDATE III: A commenter helpfully informs me that bile comes from the liver, not the spleen. OK, so I didn't major in biology. It's a blog, not a scientific journal. However, I do know where babies come from.

A heavy personal sacrifice

At the urging of a mutual friend, I've decided to give up Ross Douthat-bashing for Lent. I'm not repenting or recanting, but I'm just swearing off until Easter. My friend tells me that I'm undermining my standing with Respected Conservative Intellectuals by this anti-Douthat jihad.

(Yeah, it's a bad thing to be picking on a kid. The phrase "whited sepulchres" ring a bell there, buddy?)

But, OK, enough of that. I'll have to find other targets for unfair ad hominem invective to tide me over until Easter. So if any of you upstart punks out there wander into the crosshairs, don't blame me when the Mother Of All Fiskings comes down on your head. You have been warned.

And if, on Easter morning, Douthat finally looks down from the lofty heights of Fallowsium, and condescends to link a state-school alumnus, you'll know that this unprecedented occurence is a miraculous omen, perhaps even a sign of the impending Apocalypse.

O, ye of little faith!

The luxury of 'liberaltarianism'

Ross Douthat weighs in with a commentary on "liberaltarianism," the proposed fusion of liberalism and libertarianism that started getting kicked around a bit on the blogosphere a couple of years ago. (Cf., "Obamatarians," a more recent expression of the same impulse.)

The problem with this concept was never really on the part of liberals, except insofar as they either (a) misunderstood libertarianism, or (b) simply lied about their openness to libertarian ideas. Confusion and deceit among liberals is a given. But the liberals always knew what they wanted from such a transaction: Elect more Democrats.

What did the libertarians want from the transaction? It is here that the ridiculous folly of the enterprise is found. Most of the Will Wilkinson types are intellectuals who are embarrassed by what Hunter S. Thompson called the "Rotarian" instincts of the Republican Party. That flag-waving God-mom-and-apple-pie stuff just doesn't light a fire under the American intellectual class, which is not now, nor has it ever been, enamored of religion, patriotism and "family values."

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It's a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists -- the feminists, the gay militants, the "world peace" utopians -- are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

There is no natural political constituency for the sort of libertarianism that considers marijuana legalization and the flat tax as equally estimable objectives. When it comes to the basic electoral calculus of 5o-percent-plus-one, this theoretical equation has never been shown to add up in terms of real-world coalition politics. (Maybe the stoners just forget to vote?)

During the "long boom" unleashed by the Reagan revolution, it was possible for libertarian intellectuals to believe that the arguments for economic freedom were now so blindingly vindicated that even their progressive peers must admit the obvious truth. All libertarians needed to do, they fancied, was to shed the unfashionable baggage of the GOP coalition -- the Falwells and Buchanans and Dobsons and other such lowbrows -- and the progressives would eagerly sign up for this new project: Free-market gay marriage! Free-market abortion! Free-market environmentalism! Free-market transhuman biotechnology!

If that idea ever made sense, it only made sense in a context of Republican political dominance. When the Democrats were putting up losers like Mike Dukakis and John Kerry, when Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were crushing progressive dreams like so many ants underfoot, free-market intellectuals could attempt to inveigle their progressive friends: "Don't worry about those hayseed holy rollers, saber-rattling jingos and suburban Rotarians. They make a lot of noise, but they don't really call the shots. Look at your 401K balance. The market works."

Well, we passed the sell-by date of that argument somewhere between "Mission Accomplished" and "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." And all the libertarian intellectuals who've been sucking on the Koch tit over the past 25 years find that their progressive friends are as unpersuaded about the virtues of economic freedom as they ever were. Lending libertarian support to progressive causes -- the driving impetus of the gay-rights movement is egalitarian, not libertarian -- has strengthened progressivism, while doing nothing meaningful to advance the free-market cause.

With their Democratic friends now holding supreme power in Washington, progressives now openly celebrate Keynesian pump-priming and redistributionist economic schemes in a way they never would have done when Tom DeLay held the whip. Chuck Schumer can laugh that the American people don't care what's in the stimulus, and no one can effectively refute him.

At the apex of Republican power and at the zenith of the "long boom" ignited by Reaganomics, the "liberaltarian" impulse was a luxury that foundation-subsidized intellectuals could afford to indulge. The era of respectable intellectual luxury is now over, and serious people must now ponder the rude realities of coalition politics.

UPDATE: "Like the Higgs Boson, the liberaltarian is a phenomenon that hasn't yet been directly observed but that everybody hopes to find someday."

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! (Guess this means I'll hit the 1-million hits mark a bit early, huh?)

UPDATE III: A slight diversion, to take aim at the false dilemma (either tax cuts OR Keynesian spending) argument as put forward by Newsweek's Daniel Gross:

Adherents of the tax-cuts-only strategy are suspicious of free-spending Democrats, old-fashioned Keynesians, and big government. They believe -- no, they know --that tax cuts are more efficient than government spending, since people and businesses make better and quicker decisions about spending than government does. . . . The current, somewhat extraordinary circumstances, and the nation's changing economic geography, should make us wonder how effective tax cuts will be in stimulating new spending and investment.

Now, I addressed this either/or fallacy Monday, with reference to Megan McArdle's suggestion that marginal rates are now low enough that major Laffer-curve effects are not to be expected from further tax cuts. (Argue amongst yourselves.) What kills me is that Gross is allowed to make an expressly political argument under the guise of an economic expertise that he does not, in fact, possess:

Mr. Gross graduated from Cornell University in 1989, with degrees in government and history, and holds an A.M. in American history from Harvard University (1991). He worked as a reporter at The New Republic and Bloomberg News, and has contributed hundreds of features, news articles, book reviews and opinion pieces to over 60 magazines and newspapers. Areas of expertise include: economic and tax policy, the links between business and politics, the rise of the investor class, the culture of Wall Street, and business history. (Emphasis added.)

The man is a journalist, not an economist, and his echoing of Obama administration talking points ought not be disguised as economic analysis. Nothing wrong with being a journalist, you understand, it's just that Newsweek is doing a bait-and-switch by presenting Gross as an economic "expert." But if Paul Krugman can win a Nobel Prize, I suppose we're all experts now . . .

UPDATE IV: Linked by The American Catholic.

Mark Thompson says I'm "somewhat hyperbolic." Dude, you're just now noticing this tendency?

RELATED STUFF:

• Helen Rittelmeyer, "Oh, I'm sorry, did we get our movement in your status quo?"
• Jonah Goldberg, "Whither Liberaltarianism?"
• Austin Bramwell, "The Two Faces of Libertarianism"
• Reihan Salam, "The Point of Liberaltarianism"
• Matt Welch, "Liberaltarianism in the Age of Obama"