I’m just joining the choir here, but I want to take a second to applaud the selection of Ross Douthat to replace Bill Kristol on the New York Times‘ op-ed page. (Even if it the proximity in our ages does provoke a bit of a Tom Lehrer moment.) As a social conservative with a taste for ambitious government social programs, Ross is pretty damn near my ideological opposite, and we’ve had occasion to spar a few times over the years. He’s also probably the sharpest and most intellectually honest conservative writer of our generation—and I’m not even sure the qualifier is needed there. While I rather hope conservatism’s current identity crisis doesn’t resolve itself with an embrace of his substantive views, a shift toward his unfailingly thoughtful and serious approach to public issues would be salutary.