"The arts and literature are Burkean by default, as at the same time they are liberal also by default: they negotiate the contradictions between instrumentalism and introspection. Intellectual liberalism as a political and philosophical program does not do this.

Academic Platonism says the instance is the vulgarization of the general, that the idea is truth. This is where right and left rebel against utilitarian liberalism -the generalized idea of the individual- in defense of actual individual experience. [DeLong would argue that] if the experts work as hard as they should to be objective then actual individual experience is irrelevant. BDL's anger is most often at members of the press who fail at that goal."

In comments. Let's see how long he lets it stay up.
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more notetaking;
"The rule of unintended consequences and arguments in literary criticism against the intentional fallacy are both arguments against the rule of experts as such. Arguments for defining the rule of law as the rule of textual interpretation rather than of unaided reason are arguments for the consideration of the most important forms of "expertise" as being those of language, history and contextualized knowledge, rather than merely technical know-how. The vulgar reality of politics as 'a popularity contest" protects us from the rule of condescending geniuses.
The rule of law is not the rule of reason any more than it is the rule of leaders, it is the rule of custom. Compared the rule of technocrats the rule of law is Burkean."