OK Scott, but given the start of your comment, "And that's just
it, Lucy...many of us are extremely sensitive to the whole
"liberals must always take pains to avoid the uneeemly appearance
of excessive passion or disagreement" argument, because it's one of
the pillars of wingnut attempts to control the discourse," I don't
think it was unreasonable to assume that you were saying that
someone, somewhere in the current debate (or connected to that
debate) was making this argument.
I assumed that this was directed at Drum. I think his blog is
great, and read him regularly, and completely subscribe to the
arguments made above about the need to engage with the persuadable
middle, if we can figure out who they are. However, if Drum has a
flaw (a small one compared to the overall merit of his blog) it's
that he does seem to slip into a willingness to accept any
superficially polite engagement from the right as worthy of
substantive consideration, even when it's pretty much crap, and
that he has on occasion shown a similar overreadiness to
disassociate himself from people on the left he regards as too
extreme. I couldn't give you examples offhand, but I think of Drum
as someone whose actual positions are pretty solidly liberal, but
who has a strong emotional investment in being a centrist who can
work with both sides, one that sometimes affects his substantive
positioning.
I don't think bringing Drezner in as a guest-blogger to be politely
engaged with, would have bothered the WM commentators all that much
if Drum had highlighted his own position on the issues where
Drezner was going to speak, and his expected disagreement with
Drezner's positions. I think what annoyed them was the perception
that Drum was disassociating himself from his audience in the
following manner: This is a blog for polite centrists who think
seriously about the issues -- all you partisan liberals in the
comments section are simply childish.
This sounds much more negative toward Drum than it should -- it's
hard to describe subtle things without making them sound more
important than they are.
Comment statistics for LizardBreath on the Electrolite blog
The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by LizardBreath:
Show all comments by LizardBreath.