In case you haven't followed my latest online spat, Peter Wood wrote an article last week asserting that I represent a wave of new anger--wait, sorry, New Anger--tearing apart out fragile public discourse. I offered up an ever-so-polite reply. Matthew Yglesias chimes in to note that he agrees with me, though he proceeds to suggest that I have made the same accusation against lefty bloggers that Wood makes against me. Normally, that sort of accusation would be backed up with some kind of example of me making a Wood-esque argument against the blogs. No such link is found in Matt's post. I suspect this is because none exists. Which is not to say I'm a huge fan of all the liberal blogs. Let me explain. I don't believe there is any such thing as a New Anger or that anger is confined to one side of the political spectrum. I do have certain preferences for how political discourse ought to be conducted. I'm a fan of good, vigorous debate, backed up by logic and facts, and I see nothing wrong with throwing in some personal insults to make things fun. (Which is what makes Wood's argument so bizarre: He considers my reply to Brink Lindsey some watershed moment in nasty discourse, when in fact nastier stuff appears in every issue of National Review.) I think there are many bloggers who do this sort of thing extremely well, perhaps none better than Yglesias. On the other hand, there are some bloggers who aren't very good at marshalling facts and logic and just prefer to simply hurl personal insults at their adversaries, ungirded by facts or logic. If you've written a blog post that consists entirely of saying, "So-and-so is an idiot," you've done nothing to persuade anybody, and you've added nothing to the public discourse. I also tend to think that polemicists who use frequent profanity generally do so because they're unskilled writers; they have given up on trying to be persuasive or informative and are simply trying to emote. In any case, they are just my personal preferences, and I would not suggest that those who flout them are doing great harm to the Republic. --Jonathan Chait