DAE remember when Megan McArdle first blogged as “Jane Galt” in the first blog era? I was surprised to later learn she was a 30yo professional writer already, because she was not an example of clear ideas clearly presented; her posts would end up barnacled with UPDATE: while I think/want this, I do NOT think/want this other thing that is a logical or practical consequence, which I think settles the matter, like 3 times worse than early Rod Dreher.
But she was a libertarian blogger when that was hot, and as a girl a rare bird (the pre-blog LP newsletter had one of Marilyn Vos Savant’s rivals as smartest woman giving rhetoric tips?), and well-enough networked in DC.
Which is a reminder that if the Twitter era dynamic doesn’t seem to promote the best takes, earlier models were vulnerable to ingrouping, the groups were just smaller, in person, and particular to the scene.
In the later ‘90s the libertarian magazine Reason and its pioneering Hit & Run group blog were staffed by writers who had spent the early '90s as expats in Budapest. Compare their post-Cold War “Right Here, Right Now” optimism with the crew coming out of Moscow’s The Exile half a generation later.
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