Pamela Paul has written her final column for the NYT. As a fellow left-of-center moderate, I’m going to miss her. She wasn’t afraid to stand up to ideological bullies, particularly those on the far left. … In particular, I liked this graf in Paul’s farewell column: 

“In the memo I wrote three years ago when applying for this job after 11 years at The Times Book Review, I vowed ‘to write to Times readers rather than to Twitter or to Slack.’ I knew my positions, fundamentally liberal but often at odds with what had become illiberal progressive dogma, would ruffle feathers. But as I explained, ‘I want to write about that vast center/liberal space and to address what people really think and believe but are often too afraid to say.’”

Naturally, the mind drifts to W.B. Yeats’s famous “the centre cannot hold” line in ‘The Second Coming.’ Well, it’s not clear if the center will indeed hold in today’s polarized America. But at least Paul helped bolster the political center over the years with her dignified, common-sense views on culture and politics. As mentioned, she’ll be missed. ….