What good is a conservative columnist…

…even just a token conservative columnist, filling what amounts to an affirmative action position in a newsroom otherwise overrun with liberalism – a columnist hired in token fashion because, to that overrun newsroom’s bosses, he looks like a conservative by comparison…

Even this caricature of an upright and conscientious conservative – what good is he, if he can’t bring himself to denounce even third-trimester abortions?

It’s Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times (free registration required to view online). His column is such an absolute mess of…well, I can only describe it as a mess of misleading and misdirecting gobbledegook. One second you think he’s going to take some kind of actual moral stance, and then he seems to go entirely the other way.

Here’s a small taste:

The argument for unregulated abortion rests on the idea that where there are exceptions, there cannot be a rule. Because rape and incest can lead to pregnancy, because abortion can save women’s lives, because babies can be born into suffering and certain death, there should be no restrictions on abortion whatsoever.

As a matter of moral philosophy, this makes a certain sense.

It does? Because babies can be born into suffering, there should be no restrictions on abortion whatsoever?

That’s morally sensible?

Ross Douthat: a tool, maybe, but not the sharpest tool.

This thing is a complete mess. It’s like Christopher Dodd answering questions about his little bunch of financial incongruities: saying absolutely nothing while saying a great deal. It reminds me of that old story about the guy who wrote a few thousand words of meaningless babble, and got it published in a leading scientific journal.

Ross Douthat, ladies and gentlemen. The babbling faux-philosopher who’s fooled the New York Times into giving him a column. And I’m still writing for free. Geez.

UPDATE - Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money calls Douthat “an alleged conservative intellectual.”

UPDATE II – Now that I’ve read this thing through several times, I think Douthat is coming down on the pro-life side. Note to Ross: people shouldn’t have to read your column several times to get what you mean.

But it’s hard to reach that conclusion – that he’s writing from a pro-life perspective – when he’s writing things like:

…whatever the verdict on Tiller’s practice, most abortions in the United States bear no resemblance whatsoever to the hardest third-trimester cases.

Depends on what he means by “hardest” third-trimester cases.

Aw, hell, I’m tired of this now.