Authoritative

I like writing in the voice of someone who knows that he's saying, but addresses the reader as an intellectual equal.

So one can avoid the problem of faux-humility, having to over-qualify things that should obvious, hedging every statement in fifteen different ways.

But if the reader is an intellectual equal, then the writer does not condescend either.  Arrogance is equally avoidable.  It's not: t"his is what I know and you'll never understand the half of it," but, "this is what I've found, and you can do the same thing I'm doing." This is coming from my re-reading of Turner and Thomas, Clear and Simple as the Truth.

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I find myself becoming more conservative in this respect.  My politics have not changed per se. I am opposed to Trump and all he represents. But the idiocy of much of the forms that the opposition to Trump takes gives me pause. Surely the answer is not narcissistic identity politics.

But anyway, in academic terms I am conservative in that I like the theology of the classic style more than academic modes of over-qualification and specialized writing. I recognize that this theology is fiction that allows the work to be done. In this sense, I practice the classic style a bit ironically, and probably imperfectly as well.