Via Clive Davis, a splendid letter from Emanuele Ottolenghi.
Also from Clive, this interesting post about the prevalence of ex-liberals. Well, I was once liberal enough to go on demonstrations for right-on causes (Jubilee 2000, as was, and I don't really regret it), read a huge amount of frightful guff by and about Gramsci, Althusser, Freire etc. etc. (ah, nostalgia, not) and think that proportional representation was a path to national salvation. So I suppose it was only ever a matter of time before becoming a reactionary monarchist babykiller. 9/11 wasn't a turning point, just a marker along the way, but it might be more than coincidence that it was about then that I stopped thinking of myself as a small-l liberal and started to entertain the previously alarming thought that I might become a small-c conservative.
Which is how I come to read this sort of thing sympathetically. A dashed good read.