More on Matt Cavanagh

I have “a letter in todays’s Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1174928,00.html on l’affaire Cavanagh (on which see “JQ’s earlier post”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001551.html and, especially, comments there by Harry). There are also supportive letters from Edward Lucas of the Economist and Bernard Crick (who is, perhaps, somewhat compromised by his previous association with Cavanagh’s employer, on which, “see Chris Brooke”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2004_03_01_archive.html#107986894172321743 ). One benefit of having a blog is that, when the Guardian edit your letter you can publish the unexpurgated version yourself. They’ve not done a bad job, but here’s the original with the bits the Guardian cut out in italics:

bq. Political philosophers often entertain hypotheses which ordinary people find outlandish _or even outrageous_ . They do this in order to clarify our our fundamental commitments about justice, fairness, liberty, and so on. Even when they have come to a considered view _about those commitments_ , the question of how principles translate into policy is a difficult one. I take it that _a liberal newspaper like_ the Guardian believes that such fundamental inquiry by academics has a place, indeed and essential place, in the political ecology of a free society. _How deplorable it is then, when one of your correspondents, in search of material to discredit David Blunkett, should dig out theoretical reflections made in a wholly different context by Matt Cavanagh, a former philosopher now employed as a policy advisor._ Kudos is due to Blunkett for being willing to seek the advice of someone who has been so sharply critical of him in the past. Taking Cavanagh’s quotes from their context, then crying “race” _and seeking soundbites from backbenchers to embarrass a minister_ is _behaviour_ worthy of muckraking tabloids, not of the Guardian.