The Outrage Over Kevin Williamson; New York Times, March 30, 2018

Bret Stephens, New York Times; The Outrage Over Kevin Williamson

"Shouldn’t great prose and independent judgment count for something? Not according to your critics. We live in the age of guilt by pull-quote, abetted by a combination of lazy journalism, gullible readership, missing context, and technologies that make our every ill-considered utterance instantly accessible and utterly indelible. I jumped at your abortion comment, but for heaven’s sake, it was a tweet. When you write a whole book on the need to execute the tens of millions of American women who’ve had abortions, then I’ll worry...

The real question, then, isn’t what kinds of arguments are “acceptable.” It’s what kinds are, or ought to be, acceptable to liberals. In The Huffington Post, one writer proposes that the answer is none. This is the liberalism of the 9- year-old sticking fingers in his ears and saying: nah-nah-nah-nah-nah. Anyone still wondering how Donald Trump became president need look no further.

The wiser test of acceptability is whether an argument is thoughtful, thought-provoking and offered in good faith. That holds true even if the views aren’t politically representative. Last I checked, you and I were hired as columnists, not party ideologues or demographic segments."