Brooks

The New York Times editorials were placed behind a pay firewall back in September. I used to read them daily, mainly because they reflected my political leanings. Since going behind the firewall I've had to find other opinionators that write columns that spur interesting discussion and thoughts.

Then earlier this week I discovered that some blogs out there were reproducing the NYT columns in full, and I took the bait. I know it's copyright infringement so my conscience won't let me cut/paste them here, but I will provide links to the ones I find intellectually stimulating. Read them or skip them as you like.

Following on to the Danish cartoon controversy, NYT conservative editorialist David Brooks writes an excellent piece today contrasting the radicals who have reacted violently to the cartoons and those of us in free societies. I love the passage below:

We in the West were born into a world that reflects the legacy of
Socrates and the agora. In our world, images, statistics and arguments swarm around from all directions. There are movies and blogs, books and sermons. There's the profound and the vulgar, the high and the low.

In our world we spend our time sifting and measuring, throwing away the dumb and offensive, e-mailing the smart and the incisive. We aim, in Michael Oakeshott's words, to live amid the conversation — "an endless unrehearsed intellectual adventure in which, in imagination, we enter a variety of modes of understanding the world and ourselves and are not disconcerted by the differences or dismayed by the inconclusiveness of it all."

We believe in progress and in personal growth. By swimming in this flurry of perspectives, by facing unpleasant facts, we try to come closer and closer to understanding.