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Entry: Who Is Matt Welch? Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/who_is_matt_welch#22320 Post contents: Simple Simon wrote: >He [Justin] just sort of assumes that “everyone knows that a liberal could NEVER run a libertarian magazine.” Well, no, not everyone knows that. Well... Simple One, I guess you have indeed proved that not everyone does know that – at least, you don’t! So, let me try to enlighten you. Logically, yes, it might be possible for a Jew to run a Nazi magazine, for an anti-Semite to run a Jewish magazine, or even, less likely, for a liberal such as Matt Welch to successfully run a libertarian magazine. But it is so extraordinarily unlikely that no one here has thought it was really necessary to explain the point to you in detail. No one really cares what the political/philosophical views of the janitor at reason are. Janitorial work is rather well-defined, fairly mechanical, etc. To some degree, this may even be true of the editor of a book – you can fix the author’s grammar, usage, etc. and even help him express himself better without sharing his views. But the job description of the editor of an opinion magazine goes beyond that. An opinion magazine exists to propagate a particular point of view: in the case of reason, that view was once libertarianism, and reason still pretends, fraudulently of course, that this is still its perspective. Central to the task of an editor of an opinion magazine is to help the magazine fulfill its purpose of propagating its political perspective. If an editor holds views antithetical to that perspective, he will not want to help propagate that perspective: indeed, it would be unethical for him to do so, just as it would be unethical for a Jew to help advance the cause of neo-Nazis. And, even if the editor were so mercenary as to be quite cheerful about advancing views that he thinks are wrong, he’d do a bad job at it. When you think a point of view is wrong-headed, when you have little personal sympathy for it, when you think it cannot be successfully defended because you think it is wrong, you are not likely to be of much help in propagating or defending that point of view. Of course, Simple One, everything I just said is utterly obvious to all normal human beings, which is why no one here bothered to explain it to you explicitly and why Justin did not insult his readers’ intelligence by going into it. But since you have chosen to publicly embarrass yourself by stating that you really do not know this, I hope you appreciate my charity in explaining it to you. Dave Miller in Sacramento Sent at: 2008 05 16