Reading Matter

I recently noted that I was given a subscription to The Economist. Around the same time a friend signed me up for a year's worth of National Review, and I rounded out the collection by giving myself a subscription to The New Republic.

I still look at Reason sometimes, but I miss the pre-libertine-libertarianism days of old - and I know those kinds of arguments quite well anyhow, as they were once my bread and butter (e.g., the initiation of force is a no-no, middle-of-the-road policy leads to socialism, etc). There must be something a bit sado-masochistic about me nowadays - I "like" to be told things that I don't want to hear, and test myself against worthy opponents.

As an exercise in self-flagellation, I used to read The Nation, but I can hardly stand to any longer - it feels too much like being beaten to death with balloons (NB: a recent article insists that "Johnny Cash was NOT a Republican"). So I'd rather get my "far" Leftism from some of the gentlemen featured on the blogroll to the ... right.

I must say - prescinding from any ideological matters - that so far The New Republic strikes me as being better written (with each issue being more of an "organic whole") than National Review - the prose of Franklin Foer, Leon Wieseltier, and Lawrence Kaplan in particular is consistently strong. Not to say that NR is bad by any stretch (Ramesh Ponnuru and Rich Lowry are quite good writers), but there's an elusive "X-factor" that, for me, gives the nod to TNR so far. If one of those old, crazy polymathic Catholics like the late Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn were still around and contributing to NR, the balance might shift.

But it's nice to put all that exhorting and contending aside, too, and thumb through the latest Scientific American ...