Viva Maxspeak!

By Kathy G.

Blogging here for the past week has been a blast -- I'm going to miss it. For some reason I got my dates confused and thought I would be doing this for a few more days, so I never did get around to posts I'd planned about mine safety, the economics of unions in theory and practice, and Arthur Miller and his Down syndrome son. (All I will say here as to that latter subject is that I strongly recommend you read the stunning article about it in the current issue of Vanity Fair. It will break your heart, but in a completely unexpected way it's inspiring too, because oddly enough it does have a happy ending of a sort). Oh well . . .

Thanks to all of Ezra's readers and commenters for sparking such great discussions and for keeping me on my toes, and a special heartfelt thanks to Ezra for inviting me to do this. I had no idea this blogging thing could be so much fun (or so scarily addictive)!

Finally, I didn't want to leave without saying how sad I am that Max Sawicky is ending his wonderful blog, Maxspeak. Since its inception, Maxspeak has been one of the three or four indispensable blogs for me. I was considering doing my own follow-up post to Ezra's earlier one about five blogs that make me think, and if I had, Maxspeak would have topped the list. Here's what I've loved about Maxspeak:

1. I've admired the way Max brought economic logic to bear on a host of public policy questions, yet never succumbed to the extremely conservative politics and pinched, distorted moral vision that, alas, plagues so many professional economists.

2. I appreciate Max's politics, which unlike so much of blogosphere I inhabit are not merely liberal but left. That has made for some important and salutary differences. Max has always been much more critical and distrustful of the U.S. foreign policy establishment than most liberal bloggers, and man oh man has time proven him right about that. The very interesting and potentially extremely productive conversation that's occurring in the liberal blogosphere these days about the foreign policy community owes a lot to him, I think.

It's true that Max sometimes likes to piss all over the netroots in general, and Kos in particular, but although I'm a lot more optimistic about the netroots than he is, I always welcomed his skepticism. I agree with him that there's a danger of the netroots becoming too much of a cheerleader for the Democratic Party, and that netroots-ers put too much of an emphasis on winning and tactical sophistication, and not enough on developing a coherent and compelling political vision.

3. I admire Max's prose style. The man says a whole lot using few words. I wish my own writing had that kind of pith and punch.

Max hasn't yet spelled out the details about why he's abandoning the blog, but it sounds as if he's entering a new employment situation that precludes him from blogging. I wish him all the best in his future endeavors, and I hope he'll consider a return to the blogosphere at some future date. Viva Maxspeak!