This came in the e-mail the other day, from somebody whose byline you may know:

As a conservative writer in my twenties, I was really struck by what you wrote in your “Idle Words” post. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a serious discussion of this before, and it’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. I used to really love reading all that snarky, mean, witty writing, and then, as I’ve come to know more non-conservatives, I gradually found myself laughing less and increasingly troubled by the vitriol. I also wonder why, when so many of us have religious or moral beliefs related to charity, we’re fine doing this kind of writing without compunction.

Anyway, I’m curious if you have any thoughts about what a younger writer who doesn’t want to do that kind of writing can do. I’m increasingly concerned that, with the growing emphasis on obtaining a high number of hits (and the fact that when you’re starting out, you don’t have an audience base, aren’t wise enough to generally non-snarkily opine in a consistently interesting fashion, and aren’t well-sourced enough to get the kind of scoops that get widely shared), I may ultimately face a choice between staying in conservative journalism and refusing to write in that style. (Although I certainly hope it doesn’t come to that!) Anyway, knowing what you know now, do you have any advice or insight into dealing with this conundrum?

I’m not against snark in all cases. I just worry that one, the excessive amount of it in conservative culture alienates people who could otherwise be drawn to conservative beliefs, and two, I think snarking about individuals, as opposed to beliefs, is of real concern. Why don’t we assume liberals mean well, even if we disagree with their conclusions? I know that’s less entertaining, but seems more charitable.

Long-time fan of your blog and really loved your book about Ruthie. I’ve been really encouraged to see that someone like you — who writes about culture (both the social issues, and the things, like food and books, etc. that make up the fabric of every day life that I think we ignore at our peril) thoughtfully is able to have a writing gig.

I’ve been thinking about this over the weekend, trying to come up with something useful and encouraging for this writer, whom I’ll call N. And that is hard to do, because it’s hard to come up with something useful and encouraging for any young writer these days, given how hard the job market is. I will say that it’s encouraging to me to see that a young writer has such strong ideals, and such a robust conscience.

That said, I have to concede that my writing gig is totally dependent on the generosity of TAC’s donors. In that regard, I’m working within a false economy. If funding for my job dried up, I don’t know that I would be able to find a writing gig in the private sector (TAC is a non-profit enterprise). Believe me, I am acutely aware of how fortunate I am.

Now, to the main point of the writer’s e-mail. I am a fan of robust writing, and hate the eat-your-peas earnestness of some do-gooder types. There are times when a target well and truly needs to be kicked in the shins, and kicked in the shins with the most stylish pair of boots you can don. But a little bit of that goes a long way. The more you do it as a matter of course, the more it coarsens you, and it coarsens your reader. It can be so addictive to get that rush of pleasure from really having stuck it to the Other Side, and to collect the megadittoes from your own tribe, falling down on you like confetti. What does it ultimately mean, though? The ideological journalist Andrew Breitbart was a master of this, and sometimes pulled off some worthwhile journalistic stunts. But he dropped dead of a heart attack in his 40s, possibly because of the level of outrage he had to maintain to keep the hits coming.

In any case, one can’t help wondering what kind of legacy as a writer one will leave after one’s death. Granted, very few of us writers will write anything great enough to guarantee that we will be remembered by anyone at all. But being remembered as the snarkiest, bitchiest writer of his generation — is that really a thing to be sought after? For a religious believer, there is the added, and more important, dimension of the responsibility we have before God for our words. That is not to say that everything we write has to be solemn and pious — heaven forfend! — but only that one’s writing unavoidably reflects the qualities of one’s soul.

In my twenties and early thirties, when I prized snark, that wasn’t fake; that was who I was, and who, at the end, I felt compelled to be, because I was pretty good at it. Roger Ebert used to say that the worse a movie is, the easier it is to write the review, and the more fun it is to read the review. This implies that the more of a work of art a film is, the harder it is to write about. I found that to be deeply true in my work as a film reviewer. But I reached the point in which I would sometimes go out of my way to find the unredeeming qualities of movies, just so I could write something funny about them. You get into that habit, and pretty soon you’re seeing the whole world that way. It can be an entertaining way to live, but the older you get, and the more aware you become of how fragile and transitory life is, and the more suffering you see, the less excuse you have for such callowness.

All of which is to say that if it comes down to leaving conservative journalism to save your craft and even to save your soul, then do it. (I would say the same thing to young liberal journalists; the Right has no monopoly on self-righteous snark.) Ultimately, you and your audience become reflections of each other. Most of my friends in real life (that is to say, offline) are liberals who don’t read a lot of the partisan liberal press. They are wonderful, thoughtful people who are a pleasure to be around. We sometimes lament how cartoonish people on our political sides can be — how quick they are to believe the idiotic propaganda, and how much pleasure they derive from hating the Other. One liberal friend who found himself stuck in front of MSNBC for a few hours told me that if he had to do that every day, he would kill himself — his point being that it’s just such mindless partisan poison. I feel the same way about much of Fox’s programming. You stay in that world as a writer for long enough, and you may come to think that your job is not to bear witness to the truth, but to serve the Team.

This is a particular temptation we online writers face. How many times have I written and posted something in the heat of the moment, and backed down from it upon reflection? I did it just this morning, with a headline that had implications that I did not intend, but that didn’t occur to me when I wrote it last night, in a pique. Had I left that inflammatory headline there, I probably would have gotten far more hits for that blog entry. But it might have fed something I think is dangerous and ugly. Writing, like art, does not exist in a vacuum. It is extraordinarily difficult to figure out how to walk the blurred and constantly shifting line between lively, provocative, galvanizing writing and incendiary, vicious, destructive polemic. The late Christopher Hitchens worked both sides of the line all the time. He was many things, but he was not a humble man, it seems to me, and certainly not a man troubled by self-doubt. A morally responsible writer — or at least the writer I think we should all want to be — is a writer who is constantly checking his own premises, and trying to stand outside himself, judging himself, working to perfect his moral vision as well as his style, which are entwined more than you might think.

The bottom line is that the way you write is the way you are, and the way you will come to be. If you give yourself over to feeding the Internet beast, and (unavoidably) the beast within, you will grow ever more beastly. Besides, I can’t think of anybody whose mind was changed by spite and ridicule, can you?