1. I'm in sympathy with much of what Ross Douthat writes here (particularly on the corporate uses of diversity) but I think his discussion of the Cotton op-ed suffers from a fatal abstraction from context. nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opi…
2. Here's the crucial context @DouthatNYT misses: the idea of sending in the military to quell the uprising didn't just scare the liberal & post-liberal reporters at the New York Times, it also freaked out the non-liberals in the Pentagon.
3. The crucial context is that the president is Trump (a race-baiting know-nothing) rather than, say, Eisenhower or George H.W. Bush or Obama. That's why the Pentagon resisted having troops sent in and that's why many civilians reacted with revulsion.
4. You could, if you wanted to, make an argument that in the abstract "sending in the troops" might in some circumstances make sense. But guess what? Life is not a debating club. Our choices take place in a specific moment: sending in the troops would mean Trump with in charge.
5. It's not an accident the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff got enormous pushback for participating in Trump's St. John's photo op: the next day he issued a statement reaffirming military's commitment to constitution & later apologized for photo op. 
6. @DouthatNYT says Cotton distinguishes between looters & protestors. But, again, this isn't an abstract debate. Cotton isn't the commander-in-chief, Trump is. And Trump, as he did today, uses looters and protesters interchangeably. He'd be in charge if troops sent in.
7. The problem with James Bennet's op-ed page (a problem that Douthat's current column replicates) is that it treated ideas as entertainments: playful exercises for the mind. Thought experiments. Now I think ideas can be playful but not always, not during a mass uprising!
8. Also, @DouthatNYT needs to address the fact that Cotton called for rules of engagement to be "no quarters" given -- i.e. no prisoners, only killing. That's a war crime.
9. The 82nd Airborne was almost deployed. "There was some very deep philosophical discussions about the Constitution." Like I said, life is not a debating club. connectingvets.radio.com/articles/new-d…
