if called upon to name the most important thinkers since the year 2000, assessed purely for their influence, with no comment on quality, I might list (working my way backward in time) Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Jordan Peterson (14), Peter Thiel (70), Yuval Noah Harari, Steven Pinker (110), Tyler Cowen (2), Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexander, Slavoj Žižek, Andrew Sullivan (35), Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris (10), Peter Singer, Samantha Power, my colleague Thomas Friedman … at now we’re back at the turn of the millennium. Religious thinkers? Well, Dawkins and Pinker and Kendi, of course — but okay, more exactly, perhaps James Martin, Rod Dreher (104), Charles Taylor, David Bentley Hart and Tim Keller. (In another ten years I might add a post-liberal Catholic, but not yet.)
Some of these writers are impressive; some less so. Many are journalists, in practice or in spirit — an important occupation, but maybe not the ideal one for generating great works. Will many of them adorn a Great Books curriculum in 2075, if such an antiquated thing exists? I’m doubtful.
The numbers in parentheses are the numbers that they were chosen in the Fantasy Intellectual Teams draft I held on Saturday. Douthat himself was the 44th pick. Among columnists, he was picked ahead of Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, David Brooks, Paul Krugman, and Peggy Noonan, but behind Megan McArdle.
Of course, he does not use quantitative scoring criteria. His idea of “influence” probably correlates best with my “meme” category.
If I was a regular reader of the NYT or the WP I might encounter Douthat’s names more frequently and possibly expect them to produce pieces that score during the season. Other than Dreher though, my impression is that they are more likely to tweet than blog.
Douthat’s list seems very much a USA bubble. My daily news consumption generally consists of skimming the SCMP, BBC, DW, AFP, LAHT, and CBC and then a couple of the couple dozen other world news sites that I have pinned. I figure anything worth reading from USA news sources will show up in my daily blog visits (Althouse, Marginal Revolution, Instapundit, Cafe Hayek, Powerline). If the USA intellectual is not showing up very often in those sources, I just am not likely to share Douthat’s sense of their importance.
I also follow those US blogs far more than any news – in Slovakia I’d often rather see Russia Today over CNN or MSNBC (Fox not available on my cable); tho BBC is quite good on the world.
Funny your team didn’t include Cafe Hayek’s Don Boudreaux, tho if you were expecting to get Russ Roberts you (and I) were too late.
Along with your excellent blog choices are my two favs you don’t mention: ASKblog, and New Neo (on my team!).
Askblog is of course a daily visit but not really what I look for news of the world. I have New Neo pinned and visit her regularly. I originally had Don Boudreaux highly ranked but most of what I think of his steel manning is in response to letters from readers and I just wound up being too uncertain whether his essays would score. I am thinking I made a mistake with Tony Heller because even though he points out clearly the source of who he disagrees with and quotes directly, I am afraid he won’t get credit. I may have to switch for a free agent, but we will see how it goes.
That is a great idea about dropping a note to players although very few I imagine will take into account the scoring.