Matthew Yglesias

CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS. If you’ve been looking for someone to criticize Peter Beinart‘s book for going too far in the direction of abandoning liberal hawk orthodoxy, look no further than George Packer‘s review of The Good Fight. The more interesting part of the review, however, is actually addressed at Francis Fukuyama, who writes in his […]

EVERYONE HATES CHARITY. Let me welcome Jon Chait to the charity-bashing bandwagon. As he observed in a column over the weekend, Warren Buffet‘s giant charitable contribution “matters as much as an annual increase or decrease of 1/10 of 1% of the federal budget,” which gives rise to the question: “How much would it cost to […]

THE ITALIAN JOB. It always seemed likely that the Bush administration’s practice of kidnapping people off the streets of Europe in order to have them shipped abroad for torture was carried out with at least the tacit consent of some of the relevant governments. But in democracies, governments change. And with Italy now under a […]

AGAINST OBJECTIVITY. I guess I appreciate what the Supreme Leader is getting at in his column when he says that “any civil society needs institutions in every realm of life — in business, the law, the arts, what have you — that take as their presumptive raison d�etre not ideology but its opposite, impartiality.” On […]

STICKING UP FOR LEE SIEGEL. A lot of bloggers I respect are slagging on anti-blogofascist Lee Siegel‘s tirade against baseball caps, but let me say that flaws in Siegel’s other writing notwithstanding, I totally agree with him about this. –Matthew Yglesias

WHEN IN DOUBT: FIND AN EXILE. Ah, excellent. Farid Ghadry, part of the Syrian exile group Reform Party of Syria, says that the recent operation where Israeli jets buzzed Bashar Asad‘s house “is very encouraging to the Syrian opposition.” Let me go on record as sharing Justin Logan‘s skepticism. Appearing to be working in collaboration […]

THE CASE AGAINST READER MAIL. In response to the proposition that people should sometimes “make some decisions which are different from the ones dictated by narrow self-interest in a social context deeply shaped by the enduring legacy of sexism,” reader J.R. remarks that my views are “simply fascism with a velvet glove.” But I wrote […]

NEVER SACRIFICE? I don’t really want to spend all day on this, but Jonah Goldberg‘s posted and endorsed an email on Linda Hirshman that makes the bizarre claims that her arguments are “fantastically illiberal” because “Hardly anyone in our deeply liberal society argues that we should sacrifice our desires to a greater good � the […]

SCOTUS STANDS UP. I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised by the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hamdan case. Ordinarily, the Court is very deferential to executive assertions of national security authority and then turns around and changes its mind years after the fact. Note also that conservative “strict constructionists” continue to believe that the […]