After being raked over the coals by his own comments section for taking seriously his – girlfriend’s? I’m uncertain – fairly pointless observation that suspected traitor and terrorist Faisal Shahzad’s house was foreclosed, Ezra Klein huffed in a follow-up:

I thought I said pretty explicitly that speculating about why a terrorist commits a terrorist act is a mug’s game…

What he actually said was:

That said, you of course don’t want to speculate on why someone “really” did something. The hearts of men are opaque, and motives are complex.

Ah, ‘complexity.’  A favorite refuge of the intellectual who has realized, deep in his oh-so-opaque heart, that he once had to make a moral choice – and that he chose poorly.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.