Everything is in its right place once again, with Jim Manzi,
recently signed up to be The New Republic’s “in-house
critic” drawing fire from liberals. This situation is an
improvement over the recent intramural dust-up at National
Review, in which
conservatives
were
after Manzi for attacking Mark Levin’s climate change chapter
in
Liberty and Tyranny.
Manzi’s crime this time is the same as it was in his run-in with
Levin: criticizing faulty logic on climate change.
He challenged,
in his role as in-house critic, Al Gore’s
recent TNR article on climate change. His basic
argument is that if you accept that anthropogenic global warming
is a real phenomenon, it does not follow that proposed emission
reduction policies such as cap and trade are advisable.
For his troubles, Manzi earned the labels of “right-wing
misinformer” and “serial misinformer”
from Joseph Romm, a brilliant and prolific environmental
blogger, probably the most prominent one. Romm also accuses
TNR of having “proudly hired Manzi to un-fact-check
their articles” and in doing so “given a vote of no confidence to
the articles that they do publish - and to the editorial team
they assign to ensure the accuracy of that piece.”
Now of course neither Romm nor any of the left-wing bloggers who
have seconded his accusations can provide a single example of
Manzi making a factual error or spreading misinformation, because
he hasn’t. In fact, if anything, Manzi’s sin was precisely the
opposite: challenging Romm’s preconceptions about climate change
policy without engaging in any distortions of the underlying
science or even challenging the prevailing scientific findings,
thereby denying Romm the easy out of writing Manzi off as a
“denier” or crackpot. Romm’s post contains a number of
plausible objections to Manzi’s thesis, but Manzi
anticipated each of them in his post or addressed them
previously. None are evidence that Manzi made any factual error.
If you have the time, look through Manzi’s National
Review
archives or his American Scene posts
to get a sense of his writing style. It’s defined by transparency
(he always links to sources for cited facts), straightforwardness
(he shows every step and justifies every assumption), and
deference. The last characteristic is perhaps the most notable,
as Manzi will maintain cordiality with his
interlocutors
even after they accuse him of malfeasance. The one exception
that I’m aware of is his infamous post on Levin’s book — which
is actually the exception that proves the rule, because he
later apologized for his tone and gave Levin the last word.
It seems as if it is because of Manzi’s track record of being
honest, open, and accommodating that Romm is unable to stand his
arguments in a liberal publication without trying to undermine
his credibility. It was for that same reason that many
conservatives found Manzi’s criticism of Levin so grating — it’s
in a way easier to deny global warming altogether than to argue
on Manzi’s level. At the time, a number of liberals cast the
reaction to Manzi-Levin as a sign that conservatives are
close-minded, despite the fact that National Review did
publish the piece, after all. But now that the tables have turned
and Manzi is writing for TNR, some
of the
same liberal observers are questioning his motives and
accusing him of “lowering the standard of discourse.”
It is to National Review’s credit that they published
Manzi then, it is to TNR’s credit that they publish him
now despite the left-wing outcry, and it is to Manzi’s credit
that his soldiers on producing impeccably factual articles only
to be derided as dishonest by both the right and left. If only
the same could be said of Romm about his willingness to consider
reasoned challenges to his assumptions.
(By the way, Romm’s post originally contained a clear factual
error: he cited someone who incorrectly claimed that Manzi was
the CEO of Lotus (I can’t find a cached version, but it’s noted
in a comment left in the morning). Since then Romm has fixed the
error, but there is nothing in the post indicating that it has
been changed. A meaningless mistake, but suffice it to say that
the “misinformer” Manzi would not make a factual error and then
fail to acknowledge it in the post.)
