I’m thrilled to see that David Schmidtz has started posting at left2right. As his inclusion on L2R attests, Dave is one of the best political philosophers of his generation. Additionally, he’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. And he knows a lot of about birds and cacti and so forth. Our hike through the Arizona desert in October was one of the highlights of my year.
In his first two posts, Dave discusses egalitarianism and meritocracy. I suspect that these topics get a thorough discussion in his important forthcoming book, The Elements of Justice.
In other L2R news, I found Ross Douthat’s Weekly Standard piece fairly ridiculous. Some of what Ross says is true. The posts on L2R sometimes give off the stale odor of the cloister. But L2R is interesting and praiseworthy precisely because here are a bunch of academics who have decided to stop talking just to themselves, to stop just assuming that their ideas have automatical appeal, and to rethink some of the dogmas of liberalism in public. It’s nice to see liberal academics actually do some public deliberation, rather than just talk about doing it.
Will Wilkinson 