Thread by @DouthatNYT

A couple of thoughts about this piece, which is kind enough to spare me from its purge (somebody's got to write the sex robots pieces, I guess):
nymag.com/daily/intellig…

Levitz is correct that there are lots of interesting left-versus-liberal debates that deserve a wider airing in establishment organs. He could have just written that half of the piece without the pandering first half, but oh well.

He's also correct that most conservative writers don't represent where the GOP is right now, and so the case for hiring/publishing conservatives rests on their/our interestingness more than their "representation" of the Trump admin.

But the idea that bc the GOP under Trump is ideologically paralyzed (mostly true) the intra-conservative intellectual conversation is boring and paralyzed as well is ... not at all true. Indeed it's the opposite of true.

This T.A. Frank feature is a good rundown of how, in some ways, there hasn't been a more interesting time to read conservatives arguing with one another since the '70s or '50s:
washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/…

You've got conservatives representing the center-right flank of #TheResistance, conservatives experimenting with European-style nationalism and Catholic integralism, conservatives for isolation and internationalism and everything in between.

These arguments aren't shaping Trumpian policymaking because nothing is likely to shape Trumpian policymaking. But it is very likely that they'll shape future formations of right-wing and centrist policy, and have influence on the liberal-left debate Levitz cites as well.

If you are bored by these arguments you're incurious; if you aren't aware of them you aren't being kept informed. And a magazine or newspaper that claims to offer a wide-spectrum as opposed to narrowly ideological view of the world and excludes them isn't doing its job.

Just the differences between myself and my colleague @BretStephensNYT, for instance, with whom I disagree about a *lot* even as we're both clearly on the right, are a useful instruction in the tensions dividing the ideological formation that governs many Western countries.

Now if you think that the Times could do better than me and Bret as embodiments/exponents of our respective worldviews -- well you might be right! But that's an argument for having different conservatives, not for having a MSM that doesn't bother with conservatives at all.

Of course implicit in Levitz's argument and explicit it in his headline is the idea that MSM should, in this age of conservative disarray, simply concede that it IS the liberal media that its conservative detractors have described it as for years.

That's an idea with many defenders. They are, however, wrong. It's good that the my employer (and the Post) prefers not to simply become the Guardian, however generally liberal our orientation and readership. The Atlantic's "no party or clique" mission is likewise worthwhile.

And Levitz's own magazine, with its still more liberal readership, is better for having @sullydish (and @hpmacd's conservative-splaining book reviews, for that matter).

So by all means, hire more socialists and radicals. Just don't use it as an excuse for willed-incuriosity about the world outside the liberal-left debate.