A round up of recent commentary by assorted voices who either attempt to strike a balanced note on heated debates and controversial issues, or improve our ability to find our own sense of balance by exposing us to new information and different points-of-view.
To kick things off today … two posts that represent two notes in the same chord, sizing up today’s generation through the eyes of Boomers. (Warning: You may detect a trace of creeping, age-induced crankiness in these posts, yet another reminder that everyone over 40 will sooner or later be caught saying things that sound disturbingly-similar to things their parents once said, the very things we swore we’d never say.)
The first of these two posts comes from Megan McArdle. Money quote: ” … people now in their early twenties don’t really remember anything before the late Clinton administration; no wonder everything seems like it’s going to hell in a handbasket. Their baseline is an unsustainable economic bubble in an unprecedented peacetime lull following the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
The second comes from Libby Spencer, writing at Newshoggers. Her money quote: “I know and admire many young people who sacrifice their peace of mind and material interests to pursue their activism. And I don’t blame anybody for being scared. I’m scared too, when I see everything I fought for in the 60s being incrementally destroyed by this administration. But I think it’s a cop-out to say there’s nothing you can do, so you complain to your friends for a while and then start dancing. You can’t win if you don’t fight, simply because you think you can’t make a difference.”
Meanwhile, in his own version of the search for balance, The Angry Independent stirs up the pot at Kos, questioning the unquestionable (a.k.a., Hillary).
Jon Henke is surprised to find a point of agreement with Ezra Klein.
Steve Benen is somewhat mystified by Mike Huckabee’s charm, and thus tries to tip the perhaps-skewed scales of this growing love-fest back to reality. (Steve’s post clearly fits in the category of those that are not in and of themselves balanced but that hopefully “improve our ability to find our own sense of balance by exposing us to new information and different points-of-view.”)
Ed Morrissey questions his fellow conservatives at Redstate on their decision to ban pro-Ron-Paul discussion.
Shamelessly promoting his book, The Conservative Soul, Andrew Sullivan excerpts one of that tome’s defining riffs on conservatism as “a politics of doubt.”