"Ross can't really believe all those things he writes in the Salient..."

I always worried that Ross Douthat was becoming the poster-boy for self-conscious tokenism among conservatives (i.e. the "Don't worry, guys, I'm one of the right-wingers it's okay to like!" type); I see now I was being uncharitable:

And Gopnik ends, predictably enough, by suggesting that the Good Chesterton, the one New Yorker readers should admire, is the Chesterton who doesn't challenge any of their pieties or prejudices - Chesterton the anti-imperialist, Chesterton the critic of utopianism, and above all Chesterton the literary stylist, with his wonderful apothegms and allegories and "Catholic koans." The Bad Chesterton, meanwhile, is the one whom Gopnik's readership could be counted on the dismiss even without his saying that they should: Chesterton the Catholic apologist, that is, and especially Chesterton the reactionary radical.

. . . But the things he was right about, when the bien-pensant types of his day were badly, badly wrong, illustrate the weaknesses inherent in certain strains of modern liberalism, and if you rush to dismiss his premises as inherently tainted by anti-Semitism and crypto-Falangism, then you don't get to blithely congratulate him for his conclusions.

If Reihan needs back-up singers for "Some of My Best Friends are Ross Douthat," I guarantee that Dara, Nicki and I are willing to volunteer.