Or: why I'm thinking of buying Paul Berman a lottery ticket. It's purely disinterested (1 here, not 2) on my part. At Slate various people are asked what they'd do if they had 'a million dollars to give'. This is the beginning of Berman's answer:
If I had a million dollars, which I don't, I would give it to a little cluster of political and intellectual projects in Britain whose purpose is to renovate the liberal left with new ideas. The people working on these projects are best known for having produced a document called the Euston Manifesto, which was composed in a bar near the Euston station of the London metro. (If these people had a million dollars, they wouldn't have to compose their manifestos in bars - they would be able to rent a proper office for themselves.) Their online journal, Democratiya, has become, by my lights, the liveliest and most stimulating new intellectual journal on political themes in the English-speaking world - certainly the liveliest new thing to appear on the English-speaking left in a good long time. Their project Engage has rather bravely taken up the challenge of arguing against the slightly demented anti-Zionism that appears to have... overrun whole regions of British intellectual life. And people from the same group put out a couple of vigorous blogs as well: Harry's Place and Normblog.By contrast, Anne Applebaum, David Brooks, Alan Dershowitz, Nora Ephron, Harold Koh, Robert Pinsky and others yet are not mentioning so much as a single cent for normblog. What can they be thinking of? (Thanks: GK.)
