David Frum in the NYT Book Review: "You do not need to be a partisan of a political movement to write its history. But you do need enough imaginative sympathy to comprehend how it won adherents and supporters. Yet increasingly it seems that the history of conservatism is attracting liberals who lack that sympathy — for whom the whole thing was a giant con, a tissue of rationalizations for ugly bigotries. These liberal chroniclers of conservatism refuse to examine their own prejudices. They do not see that their wholesale dismissal of the principles of others amounts to little more than self-flattery."
While Frum and I may disagree on much, this is very artfully put. I think this indictment accurately describes 95% of the liberal (and probably the conservative) blogosphere. Unfortunately, human nature seems to enjoy this kind of self-flattery, and the audience builds upon itself. The echo chamber of our public dialogue: self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing. How many others long for the antidote, as I do?