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« Naipaul and India | Main | Zero waste forum » Tuesday, March 13, 2007Tuesday's TalkfestThis post is a trial balloon. I think it would be cool, once a week, to highlight a brainy discussion happening online somewhere. Maybe at The Valve. Or Slate. Or Long Sunday. Or one of the many blogs dedicated to a particular field of study, the comments sections of which are crackling with un-tenured intellectual energy. Or even in an Ideas forum. Readers are invited to alert me to particularly witty, passionate, and incisive debates, powwows, and brouhahas. PS: "Tuesday's Talkfest" is not necessarily the title of this feature, and this feature may or may not happen at all. Just a trial balloon. The talkfest of the week, in my opinion, is happening between several blogs -- kinda like how issues used to be hashed out between several intellectual journals (Partisan Review, Commentary, Dissent). It was sparked by David Brooks's mournful NYT column (TimesSelect subscribers only) this past Sunday on the "Vanishing Neoliberal." And it was exacerbated by the news, mentioned by Brooks and reported on yesterday in the Times, that (a) The New Republic is under new management, and (b) from now on, the magazine -- whose liberal-hawkish/neoliberal stance on the US military action in Iraq has in recent years cost them readers -- will be "reliably left of center." At The Plank, a New Republic staff blog, Jonathan Cohn says, yes, neoliberalism is dying and that's mostly a good thing. (Alas, the comments on Cohn's post are so far uninteresting.) Cohn links to a post by Ezra Klein, over at Tapped, the American Prospect's blog, in which Klein says, yes, neoliberalism is dying and it's about time. So does Tapped's Ben Adler. (The comments on Klein's post are marginally more interesting than those on Cohn's; the comments on Adler's post are quite thoughtful and worth reading.) But Mickey Kaus, at Slate, says no, neoliberalism is not dying, despite the fervent wishes of liberals tired of being beaten up by other liberals; he claims it's all part of TNR's effort to rebrand itself as a post-neoliberal magazine. What do you think, readers? Let's discuss Tuesday's Talkfest together. Posted by Joshua Glenn at 08:16 AM
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