Matt Zeitlin

I hardly want to get into the minute back-and-forth concerning how and why Andrew Sullivan went from an intense, passionate supporter of Israeli expansionism and moral superiority into a critic of Israel who sees their recent behavior as counterproductive and immoral and even flirts with endorsing the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis about the Israel lobby’s domestic political influence. But it should still be remarked just how strange it is.

Now, I understand how someone could have gotten less pro-Israel and more critical in light of the Lebanon and Gaza wars along with the Netanyahu’s government provocations regarding settlement expansion and construction in East Jerusalem. But Sullivan’s recent change of face becomes harder to explain as a reaction to recent events when he starts posting maps that show the relative Arab/Jewish population mix in major cities in the British mandate in 1946.

Obviously, there are many different interpretations of this data. Palestinian sympathizers will say that this depopulation was the result of something close to an ethnic cleansing campaign during the 1948 war; pro-Israel types will say that the depopulation was both the natural result of what happens when you lose a war of aggression and that Arabs were told by their leaders to leave those cities during the war. And, in the middle, you’ll get doves and New Historians who will say that there was some deliberate Arab depopulation in the 1948 war but that it wasn’t really an official policy of the Israelis and that it can only explain a small part of the population shifts since then.

The point is that this is something people have been concerned with for a long time and it’s an issue that people of various persuasion on the issue have been using to support their cause for a while. That Andrew Sullivan all of the sudden discovered the Naqba strikes me as evidence of him being a passionate, mercurial  dilettante as opposed to someone who comes to these issues through some sort of rational contemplation. This is not to say that everyone besides Sullivan manages to excise emotion from their political arguments, only that Sullivan’s variant emotional responses to events explain the positions he takes more than they do for most other public intellectuals.

My favorite hawkish foreign policy writer — and that’s a real compliment, honest — finally has a blog. My feeling is that this blog will only make someone with whom  I disagree with on just about every major foreign policy issue seem more and more appealing. That’s because I imagine that the blog will have a lot more hip hop than foreign policy commentary. But anyway, just check out. Eli may be a hawk, but he’s certainly a mensch.

For a whole lot of reasons, the blogging medium lends intself to criticism. So, when someone does a praiseworthy, difficult thing – in Ed Whelan’s case apologizing for a pretty unclassy act – they deserve to be praised. And Ed Whelan did that. Props. Obviously, he can’t put the cat back in the bag, publius can’t be re-pseudonyminized, but still, recognition of that one did wrong is a good thing to do.

As long time readers know, I’m of the opinion that there are few bloggers — college aged and otherwise — who write such consistently good stuff as Matt Rognlie. Although he blogs much, much too little, his batting average is incredibly high. And now, thankfully, he should be getting some more exposure after getting this very kind nod from Tyler Cowen:

3. Via Arnold Kling, an excellent economics blog by Matthew Rognlie, a twenty-year-old.  Here is Matt’s vita, hire him.  His blog is much better than what most professors could do plus he has an 800 trifecta on his SATs.

Now that the Cowen has cleared the path for Matt to ascend to econblogger superstardom, I’ll just say that I’ve been linking to him since before he was cool.

Official Friend of the Blog Ned Resnikoff is going to soon embark on his long awaited Juan Way Tour. For their summer vacation, Ned and some of his high school buddies are driving a veggie-oil powered school bus across the country. Ned, as is fitting, will be blogging the entire journey.  The good folks at Campus Progress set up Ned and his crew with an awesome website where they’ll be chronicling their trip. Think of their blog as a biodiesel fueled running diary that takes the best from the three ultimate road trip stories: the Odyssey*, Democracy in America and, of course, Road Trip. Check it out.

*For all the pedants out there, I know the Odyssey isn’t technically a road trip, but I really didn’t want to pick the Aeneid, which is the Odyssey‘s derivative, imperialistic bastard cousin.

So, this blog, written by two former Congressional staffers, has a lot more going for it than its clever title. And by that, I mean, incisive commentary! Seriously, check out this post about copyright and DMCA, as well as the rest of their stuff.

It will wipe out the shareholders.

Friend: So Zeitlin, doing anything fun for your birthday?

Me: Yeah, liveblogging Obama’s not-State of the Union

Friend: That’s uh, pretty lame….

Here it is.

Part of the mission at this blog, in so much as it has one besides providing a forum for my own writing is to promote the work of other young writers and bloggers. One of them I want to direct your attention to is Dara Lind. Part of the Yale/Culture 11 (RIP) mafia, she’s a senior there and has written for the standard smorgasbord of publications and blogs that young conservatives find themselves at (Doublethink Online, Culture 11, The American Scene). And, most importantly, she occasionally comments on this very blog. So, since she has the official IYW stamp of approval, check her stuff out!

Her’s a perceptive piece on Gawker land she wrote for Culture 11 and here’s her archive at TAS. Enjoy!

I got really sad today when Northwestern managed to blow a 12 point lead with four minutes left against Illinois. Seemingly, no Wildcats can dribble with their off hand or have ever practiced beating a press. And while it was mighty disappointing to barely miss beating our 20th ranked rival at home, I can’t say was surprised. As Rivals.com painstakingly detailed, Northwestern basketball totally sucks (seriously, read the article, it’s one of the best portrayals of utter despair since this).

But then, like a phoenix coming out of the ashes, Matt Rognlie, undergrad econ major extraordinaire, started blogging again. So, if you’re in the mood for well written and insightful analysis of Greg Oden, Cap and Trade, Kevin Murphy’s arguments against the stimulus or the eternal stupidy of goldbugger, check it out. If it can get me over our horrible loss, then you all should at least enjoy it

Alex Massie is, in the true sense, a friend of the blog. Not only does he link here on a somewhat regular (or as much as anyone does these days), but he’s always quick to send me the kind facebook message or email to clarify a point, or more usually, to make an insightful and humorous observation. So, it’s only fair that I send some love over to his week-or-so-old blog at the Spectator. The content remains excellent, but the aesthetics have been much improved. So, spectate, damn it, spectate!

And please, don’t hold the fact that Melanie Phillips (who generously quotes a Front Page piece calling Avrum Burg, the former speaker of the Kenesset and former Israeli paratrooper, a anti-semite) has a blog on the Spectator’s web site against him — they also have Clive Davis.

Sorry for the pitiful pace of blogging. I’m a college student! I’m busy! But I have been writing up a storm at North by Northwestern, the world’s greatest college online publication. I have a piece up exploring my ideal cabinet and wrote two posts for the politics blog, one about the Obama job questionairre and one running down the pros and cons of Clinton as Secretary of State (hint: cons section longer than pros).

I’m too nervous and excited to write much. That and I’ll be leaving for Grant Park soon. But Jamelle Bouie has promised a “blogathon.” So, please check it out. You can wait till tonight to see John King playing with his super-map

There probably isn’t a better way to capture the hearts of the liberal blogosphere than declaring a love for graphic novels (just look at Yglesias’ Rachel Maddow swoon). But a mere declration of love isn’t the optimal way to induce blog-o-swooing. The best way to write posts entitled “Doctor Manhattan’s Rate of Pure Time Preference is Zero.” Awesome! (fairly large spoilers, however)

For a similar, though less visually interesting argument, check out Tyler Cowen and Derek Parfit’s “Against the Social Discount Rate.” 

I think if one put Doctor Manhattan and Derek Parfit in a room together, they would have a pretty interesting conversation.

No, no, no, I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about the author of High Variance, who, by the symmetric property (I think, my formal/mathematical logic skills are rather lacking), is the girl version of Matt Rognlie (except she goes to Princeton).  And her blog is a must-read. Check it out.

I’m sure that you all want to read my amazing running commentary during the debate. Well, you’re sorta in luck! I’ll be blogging with some other writers from North by Northwestern - the world’s greatest online college publication. Check it out here. Also, Jamelle will be twittering and Ned will be holding down the fort at NYU Local.

I love Lil Wayne. If I could go on a night out with one person, it would be Weezy. So, when I learned that he was blogging for ESPN, I just had to spread the word. Check it out. 

Here’s the best part – he’s more excited about having a blog at ESPN than he is about having so many hit songs

First of all, wow. I am overwhelmed by the response to my first blog entry. I think I read the first 402 comments. A lot of them were crazy. A thousand comments in the first day? That makes me happy. I’ve been telling people, “Man I got a blog on ESPN,” and they go, “Yeah, boy, but you’re latest song is crazy!” and I’m like, “I know, but did you see my blog?” I am so excited to have this opportunity. You don’t understand. I got ESPN tattooed on my arm. I’ve had it for at least three months now, so that should show you how seriously I’m gonna take this. I know some people out there don’t think it’s really me, but you have to prove a lot of things when you’re an entertainer, so I’m used to it.

Except during convention speeches. Per usual, at twitter.

Megan McArdle, in an attempt to set up some broad standard for acceptable comments, tells her commenters to “Imagine you’re at a debate tournament, or a cocktail party.  If what you’re about to say would get you thrown out of either, can it or I will.” Well, having participated in policy debate, at a pretty high level, for all four years at high school, I can say that anything short of incredibly derogotory language, in the form of sexist or racist slurs (bitch, nigger, spic etc) is de facto acceptable at policy debate tournaments.

High school debate is a bizarre world, and I’m happy that there have actually been good journalistic and fictional accounts of it*. In my mind, there’s more good material to mine in debate than there is in high school sports, and until I see some parity between them in terms of long-form journalistic pieces, short stories, novels, movies etc, I won’t be happy.

*Cross Ex by Joe Miller and the recent HBO documentary Resolved are both quite good. If you want to understand how my perspective and worldview has been shaped, reading Cross Ex and watching Resolved would be a good place to start. Now, exactly why you would want to know how my worldview has been shaped is beyond me…

Yeah, check it out at Twitter. I’ll be liveblogging the speeches, for as long as I can stand it.