Semi-interesting, but I am strongly disinclined to trust anything Charlotte Allen has to say about culture because other things I've read by her seem always to

Semi-interesting, but I am strongly disinclined to trust anything Charlotte Allen has to say about culture because other things I've read by her seem always to have a heavy social-conservative spin on them. A few examples: http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/whWereare.htm http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/whWereare.htm ("The vast majority of women who might otherwise qualify as public intellectuals would rather recite the feminist catechism or articulate some new twists and refinements on it than carve out a place for themselves in the larger public world." The sole purpose of this article seems to be being as negative as possible about present-day feminists.) http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/17/opinion/oe-allen17 http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/17/opinion/oe-allen17 ("I can't stand atheists -- but it's not because they don't believe in God. It's because they're crashing bores." Most of the article consists of this sort of insult and sneering.) http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/484gmzem.asp http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/00... (unkind but not very unfair summary: Bill Ayers! Barack Obama! Progressives are idiots, hahaha! Look, some Marxists!) And, surprise, surprise, it turns out she works for a conservative think tank. Of course it's perfectly possible for someone who works for a conservative think tank to have useful and interesting things to say, but in practice I tend to find that such people give a high enough priority to pushing a particular agenda -- as, after all, they are being paid to do -- that I can't trust anything they say without independent verification. (The same may well be true of people working for think tanks on the other side, but there seem to be considerably fewer of them about.)