“Robert Stacy McCain is on my RSS reader so I never miss any of the craziness . . .”

That’s liberal “Dougj” at Balloon Juice, reacting to my American Spectator blog post about Mark Levin’s evisceration of Jim Manzi. Getting linked by liberals, of course, brings the troll commenters, including “D Aristophanes” of the Sadly No blog, who writes:

Manzi has replied to Levin. The reply doesn’t ‘portray Levin’s defense as an act of aggression’ or ‘claim that [Manzi] is being “purged” by intolerant right-wingers.’
Perhaps an update is warranted, Robert. Might be a good place to work in a Nathan Bedford Forrest quote while you’re at it . . .

Well, first things first. Manzi has responded at length and, at least for now, avoids further personalizing the debate:

Why . . . am I not just going along with the “don’t worry about AGW” line? Because of uncertainty. The problem of the lack of confidence . . . is crucial. It is the basis of the sophisticated argument for emissions mitigation. . . .
[T]he legitimate risk from climate change is that our current best forecast is wrong; more specifically that climate change will be worse than current forecasts.

By which, I take it, he means we should err on the side of caution: If man-made global-warming could possibly be catastrophic, we must curtail carbon emissions.

Superficially, this makes sense, except that (a) the AGW theorists insist that the necessary amount of “emissions mitigation” is very large, requiring drastic interventions that can only be imposed by government coercion; and (b) such a draconian regulatory regime might be a complete waste of time, as the climate-catastrophe scenario may well be a statistical mirage.

In other words, to “err on the side of caution” in regard to AGW could mean crippling our economy in response to a threat that may prove to be non-existent.

What’s mystifying here is why Manzi would pick a fight with Levin over AGW in the wake of devastating revelations about data problems in the climate-research community. It’s almost as if Manzi resents a generalist like Levin writing about a subject on which he, Manzi, considers himself a specialist. No one could reasonably expect that Levin, writing for a mass readership, would devote himself to a detailed scientific discussion that would cause readers to skip the whole chapter. If Manzi doesn’t like Levin’s treatment of the subject, OK, but isn’t there an apples-and-oranges problem in expecting popular polemic to be conducted in the manner of academic discourse?

The whole “epistemic closure” donnybrook, of which the Manzi-Levin duel is but a fraction, has provided endless amusement for the Left side of the blogosphere. As I said tonight in a phone conversation with another conservative blogger, this kind of intellectual infighting is an unfortunate (but fascinating) distraction from the real business of politics. However, I’m happy to discover that some lefties are smart enough to subscribe to the “craziness” in RSS, as everyone should.

As for the request from “D Aristophanes” that I “work in a Nathan Bedford Forrest quote,” I am most happy to oblige. Shortly after the Battle of Chickamauga, in which Forrest and his hard-fighting cavalry had distinguished themselves, Gen. Braxton Bragg ordered Forrest to turn over his command to Joe Wheeler. Forrest stormed into headquarters and, refusing even to shake Bragg’s hand, recited the history of his grievances against Bragg, a recitation that ended with this memorable denunciation:

“I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damned scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them, and I will hold you personally responsible for any further indignities you endeavor to inflict upon me. You have threatened to arrest me for not obeying your orders promptly. I dare you to do it, and I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.”

Any more requests? My membership card, perhaps?

As I explained last year about my speech in Rome, Ga.:

What I actually said was that when you go to defend the South, you had better be prepared to defend it “down to the last boll weevil on the last cotton patch beside the last tar-paper shack on the last dirt road in Mississippi.” . . .
I have frequently described the widespread prejudice against the South as boreal supremacy, the belief that everything about the North is superior to everything about the South. Such prejudice against the South is so common that some people don’t even notice it, but I do, and I resent the hell out of it.
Confronted with the assumption of Northern superiority, some Southerners will react by attempting to ape Northern ways and adopt characteristically Northern attitudes, and start “putting on airs,” as Alabama folks would say. . . .
When I think of my own ancestors — hard-working people who toiled from dawn to sundown on the red clay hills of Alabama — I am quite naturally filled with pride. The suggestion that I should be ashamed of my ancestors is an insult I deeply resent.

A refusal to kowtow to boreal supremacy can get a Southern man in a lot of trouble. But if I was afraid of getting in trouble, would people be subscribing to the RSS to make sure they “never miss any of the craziness”?

Speaking of which, don’t miss Republicans for Arlen Specter.