The blogosphere offers a welcome antidote to the safety and blandness of the academy. But sometimes the failings of the blogosphere show why we developed those academic conventions of respect in the first place. Under the guise of rough and tumble frankness, the blogosphere risks turning into a society of like-minded partisans congratulating themselves on being smarter than all the idiots who see things differently....
Of course Kurtz only got to this place because he wrote something that did not flatter the prejudices of NRO's libertarian-leaning readers, and some of them have e-mailed him the kind of retorts that go over a treat in the land of the Big Snarl.
This stands in hilarious contrast to something Kurtz said last May:
Liberals live for the idea that they're saving the world from the racial, religious, and sexual bigotry of conservatives. Yet, looking at the conservative web, I am continually amazed at the fellowship across all of these potential divides...
This conjures a vision of convivial Free Republic / Reason mixers, the weed-legalizer laying down with the sodomite-hunter. I wonder if he ever actually believed it. Some folks apparently do need to be mugged by reality. As to whether Kurtz will long remember the lesson, I would not lay down money.
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