Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Bitter Academics, Torture, Tom Friedman, and Political Discourse

I particularly enjoyed this Bloggingheads diavlog with Dan Drezner, and Megan McArdle, in which they discuss topics such as the bitterness of academics, whether John Yoo should lose his tenure, the torture debate, the wisdom of throwing pies at Tom Friedman, and the nature of our current political discourse. It's too good all around to excerpt, but I'll say that I agree with Dan that the best way to undermine Yoo is not to take away his tenure, but to undermine his ideas, which is a good rule in general, as it's also not a good idea to throw pies at people either.

I aslo agree with Megan and Dan about the complexities of the torture debate, and that we've really had less of a debate on these issues, then we've had a shouting match. THat really applies to our discourse in general. All good stuff, and worth a look.

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