On the contrary, I find him entertaining, and linked to him almost every edition last year, when we published twice a week. Bur when we switched to a daily format, and simultaneously introduced the economics section, I was doing far fewer non-economics links on any given day, and got to Jeremy only occasionally. He’s like a Senate candidate who would be elected in a double dissolution but can’t get a look-in in a normal half Senate election.

On the question of right-leaning blogs, there is a fundamental difference between bloggers like Harry and Andrew Norton, who weigh up issues thoughtfully, give credit where it’s due, and debate in good faith; and those like Blair and Beck whose sole interest is in pouring scorn on leftists and exposing leftist hypocrisy. I’m sure that the latter are a tonic for the troops, but the troops know where to find them without any help from ML.

Finally, to back up Gummo’s point about missing verbs and things: there are one or two bloggers out there who, notwithstanding the quality of their ideas, are generally unlinkable due to sloppy grammar and construction.

(On the “editorial english” here’s a small hint – if the first sentence of the first paragraph in a post is missing a main verb, I ain’t going to select it for ML. Because, as a general rule, the quality of the writing just goes downhill from that sort of start.)

A couple more years of sticking his hose in the free market economic trough could see him turning into a libertarian.

Harry is a typical Liberal supporter. Most of his views outside of economics are based on personal preferences.

There’s one libertarian blog I would strongly suggest people take a good look at:

” barely a blog ” by Ilana Mercer. This gal has serious attitude. She’s writes excellent catty pieces.

Harry is a proper conservative, too, and a very careful scholar. He’s economically liberal (in the free market sense), and socially conservative. His views are going to be different from mine or Jason’s, because we’re both economically and socially liberal. The right is just as prone to uneasy alliances as the left, as both Don Arthur and Andrew Norton have pointed out this week.

As for Jeremy Sear, I quite often like his stuff, but presumably James Farrell didn’t because he seldom linked Jeremy’s posts. Conversely Jeremy has had a couple of mentions since Gummo’s been doing that category over the last week or two. We are actually fairly discriminating with what we put on ML, although it certainly reflects the personal tastes of those who compile it. It couldn’t be any other way.

However, we’ve generally had broadly right-leaning people selecting the posts to be highlighted from right-leaning categories e.g. Jason Soon, Helen Dale and now Saint. All have had the same problem – selecting a reasonable number of vaguely respectable right wing posts just isn’t very easy. There really aren’t very many, unless one is totally undiscriminating and regards anything with a right wing viewpoint as inherently wonderful.

And where does this “refuse to link to Tim Blair” crap come from? You really do just make it up to suit yourself, don’t you Sam? In fact I’ve just gone back and counted, and Tim Blair posts have been linked in ML no less than 7 times in the past 3 weeks. I didn’t count Anonymous Lefty citations, but I’d bet that Tim has been highlighted at least twice as often. Still, feel free to hold your prejudices notwithstanding that they bear no relationship whatever to the reality.

The dearth of quality right-leaning Australian blogs has been a problem for a while for ML.

Ken, this is really just your own biases talking. There are hundreds of right-wing blogs out there that as every bit as good as “Anonymous Lefty” or “Reasons You Will Hate Me” which you link to every other day. That is to say, they are terrible. But being terrible is ok if you are terrible in a leftist way.

Apart from LP how many good Lefty blogs are there? You refuse to link to Tim Blair then complain there’s no quality right wing blogs. You are only seeing what you want to see.

He’s firmly in the Xenophon/Hanson camp, at least his blog is. I’ve met Harry and he’s a lot less into regulation in real life. Let’s not forget it is his job to push the case for regulation of addictive substances.

I really don’t have a good explanation as to why many right-wingers like to go to extraordinary lengths to condemn sound scientific reasons to regulate industrial activity. I used to believe it was all simply shilling for the industries affected, but that was before I realised how wide-spread the phenomenon was.
I still strongly suspect it’s largely initiated by industry shills, but I’m not quite prepared to believe that the vast majority of right-wingers are simply falling hook line and sinker for industry propanganda.

Perhaps you’re correct, but I can’t immediately think of another plausible explanation for why usually rational and non-religious right wingers like Sinclair Davidson (and even Jason Soon to a lesser extent) remain so sceptical about global warming especially. I haven’t noticed them lining up quite so enthusiastically about smoking research, even though the same US “thinktanks” that orchestrate global warming denialism are also at the forefront of smoking research denialism. Claiming that evil greenies conspired to ban DDT is another favourite, as is (at least until fairly recently) denying that CFCs damage the ozone layer. To what would you attribute this evident strand of right wing psychology?

Not true. Harry frequently blogs about smoking issues (another favourite right wing denialist topic) and water policy (mostly from an economic perspective but including some scientific issues). Harry is one of my favourite bloggers for that reason. These are all areas where many right wingers, even ones who are usually quite sensible, allow their fears about possible nanny state encroachment to overwhelm their responses to the scientific evidence (instead of focusing on policy responses to the scientific evidence that would be pro-markets and pro-individual autonomy).

That isn’t to deny that there are some issues where some lefties are equally uninterested in a dispassionate, evidence-based assessment (e.g. plastic shopping bags, whales), but more of the righties generally seem far more obsessed with adopting a Canute-like approach to issues where the evidence doesn’t suit their prejudices.

… This is a left-wing characteristic?

I guess you’re thinking of global warming, which is about the only scientific issue (apart from economics, obviously) that HC has blogged about.

I should have included those right-leaning Australian blogs in the previous comment myself. I don’t even think of Harry as right-leaning because his views on scientific issues are so evidence-based, nor do I think of Stephen Kirchner that way (he’s classified under our econobloggers category rather than right-leaning).

However, we already check all three of those Australian blogs daily, and regularly include them in ML. Similarly internationally with Marginal Revolution, but I’ll certainly check out the others you listed. Many thanks.

Other Australian nominations???

Harry Clarke
Currency Lad
Institutional Economics

Other international blogs
Marginal Revolution
Cafe Hayek
Carpe Diem
EconLib

I try to do a bit of rebalancing by including material from sensible right-leaning international blogs like Samizdata and Will Wilkinson and Volokh Conspiracy, but it would be better if we could find more local right-leaning material worth highlighting.

Maybe some of our readers could help by posting links to right-leaning blogs they see as often/sometimes containing posts worth highlighting to a general audience. BTW I acknowledge that part of my own negative/bored reaction to most right-leaning blogs may well be a result of my own ideological biases, although I don’t see myself as especially left-leaning.

I’ve just had more straw with which to make bricks than saint has (there’s that bloody 60s grammar again). Wouldn’t call that “impressive diligence”.

I was wondering what happened. We’ve been a bit skewed to the left the last couple of days what with your absence and Gummo’s impressive diligence. You can always email me your selections as I’ve previously suggested. I know I forgot to check my email before publishing the other day, but I usually remember. Moreover, although it takes a bit of extra time to check and copy your stuff into the right spots, it takes even more if I have to whip through and do a rough and ready coverage of right-leaning blogs myself to achieve some semblance of balance (as I did today and yesterday).

I’m not sure what’s happening with Google Docs. I’ll try creating a brand new template and sending out a new collaboration invitation and see if you can access it then.

From the program, which didn’t mention it explicitly, we can also infer that c) the schools and other educators have not done their job, or there wouldn’t be so many suckers out there.

That’s a gratuitous and unfair swipe at an education system that isn’t allowed to do its job (if the job is seen as protecting kids from becoming suckers in later life – a goal I’d wholeheartedly endorse) because its role is always discussed in terms of its contribution to the economy, skilling of the population etc, etc.

The fourth corner, however, also left unexplored, was d) the role of the borrowers themselves. This is where sensible, prudent people, such as I fancy myself, start to froth and gaggle

Um – they have aspirations fed by the advertising industry that takes advantage of the fact that the education system is turning out suckers, so they buy all that crap about dream homes…

OK, first reactions over, time for the analysis. Off to ABS to see if I can get those stats I wanted.

(Must not cock-fight with other Missing Linkers).