I went to graduate school with Mark Lilla. Even then you could tell he was smarter than the average bear and a real deep thinker. The school had a talent show one year, and Mark wrote and performed one of the funniest parody songs since Tom Lehrer, called "Policyman," about the then-fashionable use of quantitative analysis to attempt solutions to real public policy problems. It was so funny that I can remember some of the lyrics 20 years later - one line was "help us, we are in a stew - if you don't have ideas, numbers will do."
In the mid-80s Mark helped to start a neo-conservative policy journal that only lasted a few years and he did some brilliant writing in it. Then I lost track of him. I am glad to see him surface in this kind of forum. I am sure this article will generate a lot of consternation among the literati.