Style matters Agree or disagree with Michael Kinsley, no other pundit currently working could have written this opening paragraph:

“There is a broad feeling among Indonesian elites,” writes Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, in a phrase so humbling to a fellow columnist that I could barely finish reading the sentence. It is not essential, though, to have stuck a thermometer into a single, narrow Indonesian elite in order to comprehend Friedman’s point and even (if this is not presumptuous) to agree with it. The point is that if anti-terrorism is the value America promotes and rewards beyond all others in the world, then our formerly highest value97democracy97gets short shrift. We shower affection on a cooperative military strongman in Pakistan while sparing little for a nascent democracy like Indonesia, with its magnificent profusion of elites.

That last phrase is a murmured, apposite aside worthy of Patrick O’Brian.

More tomorrow, on guns, anti-Semitism, and other bloggerish red meat. [12:18 AM]