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Anne Appelbaum suggests a few changes to the United States’ public diplomacy towards the Islamic world: “[W]e need to monitor the intellectual and theological struggle for the soul of Islam, and we need to help the moderates win. This means making sure that counter-arguments are heard whenever and wherever [radical] Muslim clerics and intellectuals are talking, despite the impact of Saudi money.” Huh. Nothing clever to add, except that change a few adjectives here and you’d have a grand little argument in favor of publicly-financed election campaigns, the sort of thing lefty groups like Common Cause and Public Citizen have been championing for years. Suffice to say, it’s a good idea.
