Ross Douthat

Speaking of the Jews, Razib has an interesting post (following up on this post, from last year) attacking the intellectual seriousness of the term "Judeo-Christian." Among other things, he argues that in terms of historical beliefs and practices, it makes more sense to talk about a Judeo-Islamic tradition, with Christianity, trinities and all, as the outlier, than it does to lump the Christians and the Jews together. Given that the term in question evolved, in part… More »

Freddie deBoer emails:It seems to me, from reading your blog post and from watching your Bloggingheads with Matt Yglesias, that part of your problem with The Israel Lobby is that, intentionally or not, it mimics certain anti-Semitic tropes. Isn't that exactly, though, the kind of argument that has been directed at conservatives regarding race, to their great consternation? With issues like affimative action or similar, conservatives have been accused of being… More »

Megan speaks up in its defense - arguing, inter alia, that the rump, terrorist-run Jewish Gaza in Stephen Walt's hypothetical would still have a potent lobby in the United States for the same reason that there's long been sympathy among Irish-Americans for the interests of the stateless, terror-producing members of the IRA. She also suggests that the influence of the Israel lobby in the United States is best explained by ethnic affinities - not only the ethnic… More »

Bradley Burston, via Jeffrey Goldberg:In recent days, however, Israeli moderates and the center-left have been faced a new and bizarrely troubling thought: What if this most denounced of wars actually does some good? Lurking at the margins, are signs that this war may have positive downstream effects for Israel, and for Palestinian peace prospects as well. Much of this hinges on the effect it may ultimately have on Iran and its satraps. In fact, viewed against the… More »

I'm a great believer in the idea that the United States needs to spend more money on our aging infrastructure, which makes me one of those conservatives who are at least faintly hopeful that the Obama Administration will use the short-term atmosphere of crisis as an opportunity to push through some smart long-term investments. But I'm also someone who grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, whose downtown is in many respects a monument to the failures of a particular… More »

On the "would Reagan have nuked Russia" question, a foreign-policy guru friend emails the following: The likelihood of a President facing a truly existential, all-or-nothing decision to launch an annihilative strike against the Soviet Union ... was generally understood to be extremely slim, especially once the Soviets began fielding survivable nuclear forces capable of reliably reaching the U.S. Homeland. Far more likely - and indeed central to the course and,… More »

The wizards at TNR have exhumed my long-ago back-and-forth with Damon Linker. More »

Ron Rosenbaum, on the "Letter of Last Resort":At this very moment, miles beneath the surface of the ocean, there is a British nuclear submarine carrying powerful ICBMs (nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles). In the control room of the sub, the Daily Mail reports, "there is a safe attached to a control room floor. Inside that, there is an inner safe. And inside that sits a letter. It is addressed to the submarine commander and it is from the Prime… More »

Damon Linker:In his obituary for Richard John Neuhaus, Douthat claims, in response to some nameless silly person (who just happens to be me), that Neuhaus was dedicated to reconciling Christianity with the liberal tradition. I suspect that will sound pretty odd to those familiar with Neuhaus' role in arming the conservative side of the culture war with arguments intended to decimate liberalism. But then everything begins to make sense once you follow the link that… More »

I only met him twice, but he was a mentor nonetheless. My family migrated through Christianity when I was young: I was baptized Episcopalian, attended Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, and became a Catholic, with the rest of my family, when I was seventeen - leaving me not quite an adult convert, but not a cradle Catholic either. I read the usual books along the way - Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and so forth. And I read Neuhaus. Every young writer, I imagine, has… More »

Yesterday, Matt Yglesias offered a thoughtful attempt to put his skepticism about Israel's Gaza incursion in the context of the lessons he's drawn from the Iraq War:I've been thinking back on some of the online disputes I've been having about Israel's attack on Gaza, and it occurred to me that what's missing from a lot of this is context. Not further context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but further context on the use of force in general ... over the past… More »

Of Walt and Mearsheimer, Daniel Larison writes:Without refighting the battles over The Israel Lobby all over again, I'll say this much. Whatever the flaws of the essay, it was far from "lousy," and the book addressed and fixed many of the flaws in the original essay. It is true that the book did not take into account the role of other Near Eastern governments and their lobbies (from my perspective, more attention to the complementary influence of pro-Turkish and… More »

Regarding this post, Rod Dreher asks:Ross Douthat faces a fascinating (to me) dilemma: the Vatican officially says one thing about the morning-after pill, but Ross believes that the Vatican has reached an incorrect conclusion based on a misunderstanding of reproductive science.Ross is a Catholic. If a friend said to him that she wants to take the morning-after pill, but is concerned that it might be the moral equivalent of an abortion, so she wanted his… More »

Having praised the new Foreign Policy site, let me welcome them to the blogosphere by taking exception to this hypothetical from new-minted FP blogger Stephen Walt, which has been mentioned favorably by Yglesias and Klein as an example of the sort of daring thought that mainstream op-ed pages fail to publish:Here's a thought experiment: Imagine that Egypt, Jordan, and Syria had won the Six Day War, leading to a massive exodus of Jews from the territory of… More »

Everything that I've read on the subject suggests that Will Saletan has it right, and the Vatican has it wrong. More »

If you haven't already checked it out - starting with Shadow Government, a loyal-opposition blog featuring Peter Feaver, Philip Zelikow, and my good friend Christian Brose, and continuing down an impressive new blogroll and main site - then you've missed the DC wonkosphere event of the New Year. (Well, so far.) More »

This Peter Hitchens line seems to offer a tidy distillation of the moral case that's been advanced around the blogosphere against Israel's tactical approach to the war in Gaza: Terrorist attacks on Israel are indeed revolting and indefensible. But the bombing of densely populated areas, however accurate, is certain to cause the deaths of many innocents. How then can it be defended? In what important way is it different from Arab murders of Israeli women and… More »

To kick off the year, here are a few things I might have blogged about over the last week or so, had I maintained the impressive Christmas-season pace achieved by many of my peers (or any pace at all, really).Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias ponder whether the newspaper business could have done more to save itself.David Frum and Alan Jacobs ponder the decline of literature.The New York Times ponders the decline of moviegoing.Ta-Nehisi Coates ponders racial politics and… More »

Regular posting will resume in the new year. In the meantime, to usher out two thousand and eight, here's a poem for all seasons:We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness. And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand. That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture. O my love, where are they, where are they going. The… More »

Reihan has an obit for his fellow Stuyvesant alum. More »