Blogging and overreach.

Yesterday I posted on why I thought Damon Linker's arguments against posts from Patrick Deneen and Andrew Bacevich were misguided, to put it mildly.

As a follow-up, Linker has commendably decided to rethink his position:

“On Tuesday of this week, I posted an item in which I drew connections between an essay by Andrew Bacevich and political authoritarianism. Two days later, I posted a follow-up in which I expanded on the argument. In retrospect -- and in light of some online reaction to the posts -- I've concluded that the connections I made in the original item were overdrawn, and that I made things even worse in the second post. Ideas and arguments can take on a logic of their own, and I foolishly followed the logic of mine into a position several steps more radical than one I really want to defend. I trust that future online disputation and debate will provide many opportunities for me to address these and related issues again -- and so also to stake out and develop a more moderate, nuanced, and genuinely liberal position.”

I'm glad to see this, because I think it's great for people like Bacevich to have moderate, nuanced, and genuinely liberal conversation partners. And I certainly understand how easy it is to overreach when blogging, though I doubt that I'm likely to get called out by Daniel Larison or the Atlantic bloggers for my mistakes.