When I joined TAC back in 2012, I explained in advance, first to the editor and publisher and then to my prospective readers, that I was “off-side” on a host of issues relative to where TAC‘s readership was. I wanted to be sure that everybody understood what they were getting before I agreed to give it to them.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that nobody cared.

Nobody cared whether I held the “house” opinion on any particular issue, or whether I would be appropriately deferential to “members of the family.” Nobody even cared that I used the phrase “off-side” in a manner that betrayed comprehensive ignorance of the rules of both association football and cricket. Because they cared about something much more important for the future of American intellectual life.

Journals of opinion are generally founded to advance a backer’s particular intellectual agenda. That agenda may be closely tied to the fortunes of a political party or faction, or it may not, but people generally don’t spend the kind of money it takes to put out a serious magazine, an enterprise that hemorrhages cash in the best of circumstances, unless they have something specific to say.

Well, TAC, when it was founded, did have something specific to say. It was founded in opposition to one of the most colossal blunders in the history of American foreign policy, and in defiance of the determination by the mainstream American Right to expel from its company anyone who voiced that opposition. It was founded by people who, at the time, I thought were wrong about just about everything. But on the most important issue of that time, they were right, when much of the rest of the intellectual class was solidly wrong.

Now, that experience could have led TAC to champion a conservative counter-movement, a faction determined to “win back” the America for a set of views that all “right-thinking” sorts already believed in their hearts. After all, they had been right when it counted, weren’t they? Surely the thing to do was to push the line that was “right from the beginning,” as hard and as fast as possible.

But that isn’t how TAC developed. Instead, TAC grew into something much more precious than another factional rag. TAC is that very rare journal of opinion that is more interested in exploring and developing ideas than in promoting them, more interested in getting people to think well than in getting them to think “correctly.” There is unquestionably a TAC sensibility – a gut-level skepticism about grand projects and schemes; and a conviction that the core political principle is love, and that we love best what we are closest to and know best. But there is no TAC “line” on any issue. Even on matters closest to the heart of the magazine’s founding, TAC has been willing to publish articles – even cover stories by the editor – that, instead of flattering its readers’ views, challenge them on a deep level.

TAC is currently in the middle of a fundraising campaign, the catch phrase for which is “realism and reform.” And, as catch phrases goes, it’s not bad. Who, after all, is going to come out in favor of “delusion and sclerosis”? But realism, before it narrowed to mean a particular theory of politics and foreign affairs, meant seeing reality with open eyes, and analyzing it with an open mind. And reform, before it was corrupted to mean progress in a politically predetermined direction, meant the restoration of form to what had fallen into chaos, the restoration of peace after a period of conflict. These are not really liberal or conservative concepts, because they are not about what to think. They are about how to think.

TAC doesn’t measure its effectiveness simply by number of page views. Those matter, to advertisers and as some measure of the breadth of our readership. But fundamentally, we measure our effectiveness by looking at whether we are in the conversation, nationally, and whether we are shaping that conversation in a more considered, thoughtful direction.

By writing in this space, I’ve tried to do my small part to promote that kind of thoughtful conversation, about matters great and small. Partly because I still believe that the deliberative faculty is essential to a republic’s function. And partly because I just find a thoughtful conversation a lot more interesting than the bloodsport that passes for discourse in so many corners of the internet.

But like everything else on the internet, our conversation here isn’t really free.

As I said, most people who fund journals of opinion do so to advance their preexisting views. If you are reading this, you’re the sort of person who wants to have their views challenged, complicated, deepened. Somebody other than the typical backer needs to provide the funding to make that experience possible. Ultimately, that somebody is you.

So: if you like what you get to read, in this space and elsewhere on the site and in the magazine, please give what you are able, so that we are able to keep publishing the kind of work that brought you to TAC in the first place, and continues to bring you here today.