Cato Unbound

My favorite writer, P.J. O'Rourke, is the H.L. Mencken Research Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. I'm not exactly sure what the Mencken Research Fellowship entails, but he still writes for Atlantic Monthly and travels hither and yon. Most think tanks produce enough good thinkers and pithy writers that you'll frequently see quotes in news stories from members of one or another of them. But you can't always take them at face value: a member of the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation is going to support the Republican line. One from the Center for American Progress you must assume wants to make the Democrats look good. Cato, on the other hand, is one of the very small handful of think tanks without an axe to grind.

So when I heard that the Cato Institute was starting up a sort of blog, I was keen to see what it was all about. So: Cato Unbound.

The way it works is, each month the Institute invites some luminary to write an essay on a topic of current concern. Then, other luminous types write responses to the original essay. The first writer can then respond to the responses, and after that it becomes discussion, between the initial writers and the blog's readers as well. How cool is that? This month's topic is the Constitution, and the first essay is James Buchanan's discussion of three amendments he'd add to the Constitution.

This is a very exciting idea. The editors of Cato Unbound hope that other bloggers will take up the discussion on their own blogs, and that those discussions can add to the whole Unbound thing. Think about this: what if Cato manages to get all those ranting political blogs to stop calling the other side names and start having honest discussions about interesting and important topics? This could be the best thing to happen to the blogosphere since its creation.

I almost forgot the best part. You don't have to "join" anything! You can just go there and read about it yourself, then discuss it on your own blog. No fees, no signups. Exactly the way the web is supposed to work.