I admit to taking advantage, as often as I can, of all the wonderful creativity and analysis on the internets these days, without paying (when I can get away with that). But I have chosen to subscribe to Andrew Sullivan’s blog – what he offers is far more thoughtful than anything I could find in most newspapers or magazines. I followed him in the early aughts and loved his New York Magazine weekly essays, now sorely missed. When a small-c conservative as reasonable and open as Sullivan cannot find a place in the mainstream it is pretty frightening, and he deserves support, therefore. A quote from a recent posting of his about the nonsensical idea of defunding the police:

And when the likelihood of an African-American being killed by a civilian is almost thirty times the likelihood of being killed by a cop, it seems to me perverse that almost all the attention is on the police. 

It’s even more perverse to respond to this by calling to abolish the police altogether. In order to tackle three percent of black lives lost, you favor removing the primary force trying to prevent 97 percent of them! However problematic the police, what kind of practical sense does that make? And the immediate results in a city like Minneapolis show just how reckless — how deeply dangerous to black lives — this kind of strategy is. Demoralized cops are quitting in droves; gangs are re-taking the streets; neighborhoods are becoming war-zones.

Sullivan also invites speakers like the brilliant, young Coleman Hughes to his podcasts. As I have, I believe, written before on this site, when I was Hughes’ age, I was still learning the alphabet.

No, I’m not doing PR for Sullivan as part of some kickback scheme – I do think he is worth your time, like Sam Harris or the Commentary podcast. There is so little sanity out there.