What the liberal part of the blogosphere really needs is a good conservative blog to link to.
In the run-up to November, the blog world is becoming increasingly cocooned. I’m reading less and less stuff from the right, and reading it less and less tolerantly. [Worse, I’m aware that my own writing is becoming narrower and less interesting (not to say more annoying) to those who will vote for George W. Bush on Election Day.]
Since paying serious attention to opposing views is essential to staying sane, this consitutes a problem. The Volokh Conspiracy (especially Eugene and Jacob Levy), Dan Drezner, Jane Galt, and Virginia Postrel are all fun, civilized, and useful, but none of them is really focused on electoral politics. Moreover, they’re mostly libertarians rather than conservatives in the sense that Burke or Oakeshott would have recognized.
So I am delighted to be able to add to the blogroll a worthy new effort called PolySigh, written by a group of academic students of politics of temperamentally conservative bent, including my friend Steve Teles, who likes to describe himself as a Whig.
See, as a good sample, Steve’s essay on Julia Child’s conservatism (and the follow-up). Even when I disagree with Steve (as I do on his analysis of how Democrats should deal with their cultural baggage) I always learn something from him, and his colleagues seem to operate at a comparably high level.
Update: I’m told that PolySigh is deliberately non-partisan and un-ideological. I stand corrected. Still, it’s a good place for liberals to turn for opinions that don’t reliably match their own.