Ezra Klein: More Quixotic Magazines, Please!

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March 20, 2007

More Quixotic Magazines, Please!

I'm also glad to hear the mega-rich, English-first financier Ron Unz is going to play angel to the American Conservative. If more wealthy dudes wanted to fund ideologically marginal political publications, that would be a good, invigorating thing for the nation's debate. The American Conservative is willing to make arguments more mainstream institutions would find laughable, even repellent. Sometimes, those arguments really are laughable, or repellent. But sometimes, they're important. And in any case, it's healthy to have bomb throwers and provocateurs testing the strength and merits of what passes for political consensus. So, in summation, rich people should stop giving so much money to museums and public radio, and begin funding quixotic political start-ups that will make them seem extremist and strange. I'd really love to see a well-funded, feisty magazine arise that takes aim at the nation's economic mainstream and foreign policy consensus from a near-socialist standpoint. It's not where I am on the political spectrum, but it seems no crazier than libertarianism, and it would be a useful critique if made in a pointed and rigorous way.

March 20, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

I agree that a (money-loosing) truly democratic socialist publication with some heft - some very careful and educated-to-history writers - would be a 'good thing' for the country, mostly because the mantra of those who view the near-centrist left as dirty fucking hippies would have a real target, making today's left look moderate by comparison. That said, big money and hard-left causes seems like a unlikely proposition. And real money would be needed to avoid the appearance of a rag-tag group publishing on recycled toilet paper. Would the cover be Red?

On the other hand, a vitalized American Conservative will have to choose whether they speak 'real' conservatism or just a more wingnutty version of The Standard or National Review (if that's possible). A more wingnutty NR could have the effect of making NR more mainstream also through the same process as described above for a 'real-left' pub might have on the progressive near-left. I wouldn't think that progressives would be real happy with anything that made Jonah Goldberg et al appear to be voices worth the nation's attention.

Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Mar 20, 2007 1:21:43 PM

I'd really love to see a well-funded, feisty magazine arise that takes aim at the nation's economic mainstream and foreign policy consensus from a near-socialist standpoint.

The Nation? Mother Jones? Counterpunch? Dissent?

Posted by: DRR | Mar 20, 2007 1:22:09 PM

I was just certain that this post was going to morph into another TAP subscription drive.

Posted by: Glenn | Mar 20, 2007 1:30:34 PM

There's "Dissent," "Anarchy," arguably Harper's but probably not really. Socialist Review.

Still, I know what you mean. Those magazines tend to be kind of monotonous. Maybe not Harper's, but they're not a fully political magazine.

Posted by: Jason | Mar 20, 2007 2:28:27 PM

"Dissent" can be worthwhile when their not publishing mea culpas by former Stalinists or otherwise engaging in sterile historical debates. I consider "anarchy" to be largely, though not entirely, a waste of trees.

I think what Ezra has in mind are publications that would have a direct impact on policy debates (correct me if I'm wrong). I don't really see any of the listed publications, with the possible exception of the Nation, coming close to filling that role.

Posted by: WB Reeves | Mar 20, 2007 2:40:16 PM

I think what Ezra has in mind are publications that would have a direct impact on policy debates

Is that possible for a near-socialist perspective?

Posted by: Sanpete | Mar 20, 2007 2:57:31 PM

Notice the thread title ...

Posted by: Sanpete | Mar 20, 2007 2:58:20 PM

I don't either, but I think we're getting the cart before the horse -- surely the reason that those magazines don't have direct impact on policy debates is precisely because they come from a "far left" perspective.

I mean, yeah, I too would like a far-left magazine that impacts the national debate. Let's get one of those. But that's kind of like saying: man, if only I had more money, I wouldn't be so damn poor.

Posted by: Jason | Mar 20, 2007 3:00:32 PM

Whoops, intervening comments; sorry to repeat the same point.

Posted by: Jason | Mar 20, 2007 3:03:23 PM

Is that possible for a near-socialist perspective?

Hmmm. We may have stumbled across a generational gap here. Sanpete, Jason, do you mind if I ask how old you are? Not an attempt to invalidate your viewpoint but at the age of 51 I'm old enough to remember when Socialism wasn't quite the dirty word that it is today. At least not when it came to the Socialism of a Norman Thomas or a Michael Harrington.

Posted by: WB Reeves | Mar 20, 2007 3:59:16 PM

Alvy Singer: I'm so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who work for "Dysentery."

Robin: "Commentary."

Alvy Singer: Oh really? I had heard that "Commentary" and "Dissent" had merged and formed "Dysentery."

Posted by: Matt | Mar 20, 2007 4:03:10 PM

do you mind if I ask how old you are?

Not at all - I am 29.

So yeah, I came of age in an era where "socialist" was a slur, not a political philosophy.

Nevertheless, I do consider myself a socialist. I have heard rumors of the way before times when there were others ...

Posted by: Jason | Mar 20, 2007 4:10:32 PM

Can we all agree that the less we hear from Steve Sailer the better?

Posted by: matt | Mar 20, 2007 4:52:20 PM

Can we all agree that the less we hear from Steve Sailer the better?

Posted by: matt | Mar 20, 2007 4:52:47 PM

WBR, the past is past. Presently socialism of the kind that was once respected and popular here is disrespected and unpopular here, and that's unlikely to change soon, if ever. Both the Right and the Left in this country have moved more towards the center in some important respects since then, making socialism in its more pure forms less attractive and less called for as a counter to rugged capitalism.

There is something of a generation gap, by the way. You're a year older than I am. Old man.

Posted by: Sanpete | Mar 20, 2007 4:54:13 PM

Jason, thanks for the reply. One's life experience definitely conditions one's sense of what is possible. My own tenacity in standing by my political principles through the last three decades has been fueled by such experience. I can believe that a fundamentally different social and political reality is possible in the present and the future because I know that it has actually been so in the past. The parochialism of a reactionary era may obscure this truth, particularly for those born into such a stagnant period but as Gallileo indicated, the world yet turns. Never allow your vision to be limited by the myopia of accepted opinion.

Posted by: WB Reeves | Mar 20, 2007 4:58:01 PM

I am 87, yo.

Posted by: RW | Mar 20, 2007 5:05:19 PM

There is something of a generation gap, by the way. You're a year older than I am. Old man.

Heh, Here's hoping that you have ways to go before having some one describe you as "elderly" as happened to me in a political debate not long ago.

As for the past being past, it's also prologue. We don't agree as to what constitutes the political center if you consider our current politics to be an expression of such. This leads me to believe that we may be coming from opposite sides of the spectrum. We'll have to compare notes on that sometime.

R.W., Congratulations, I imagine we've all got something to learn from you.

Posted by: WB Reeves | Mar 20, 2007 6:41:23 PM

WBR
Humor.
31, actually.
Back to work for me!

Posted by: RW | Mar 20, 2007 6:43:10 PM

"WBR
Humor.
31, actually.
Back to work for me!"

Not to worry. I'm sure we can all still learn things from you.
Different lesson plan though.

Posted by: WB Reeves | Mar 20, 2007 6:56:12 PM

I sometimes go lurking on conservative blogs to see what they are talking about and saying. I don't agree with them and alot of their ideas are laughable but, sometimes you learn something.
I've learned who they hope we pick and who they pray we don't for our nominee as they see it.
Things like that.

Posted by: vwcat | Mar 20, 2007 7:12:39 PM

We don't agree as to what constitutes the political center if you consider our current politics to be an expression of such.

I haven't tried to fix what the political center is, only to point out that the Left has moved right and the Right has moved left in important ways since socialism was a respectable viewpoint in this country, and that will make a resurgence of socialism of the old-fashioned kind less likely.

AARP has been sending me stuff for a year already.

Posted by: Sanpete | Mar 20, 2007 8:53:51 PM

TAC can be interesting and relatively honest (relative to Bush-Rove-Cheney; AEI/Heritage; etc.; which is not saying much).

But I have trouble with thier connection to some outright racists such as Buchanan (yes, he is).

I wonder how "interesting" TAC will be once we past the Iraq war and the fantacist NeoCons? Or will they just be turn out to be the mix of John Birchers and upper-class twitty Anglophiles, who happened to be right about Iraq though perhaps not for the right reasons, that they were before Iraq?

Posted by: dr.steveb@verizon.net | Mar 21, 2007 3:32:28 PM

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