We’re a partially pseudonymous blog (it’s an open secret that I write all Ari’s posts, for example, and mine are written by a collective of political prisoners forced, a la Clockwork Orange, to consume Atlas Shrugged and Pat Boone around the clock). So we have a stake in the outing of publius by Ed Whelan.

But the case looks pretty clear: Whelan, cross that Eugene Volokh had shown him wrong and noticing publius agreed with Volokh, outed publius—after publius told him he had professional and personal reasons for wanting to remain pseudonymous.

There isn’t even the problematic case for outing as presented in Outrage to justify this; publius’s secrets had no bearing on the argument at hand. I can see no reason at all except the desire to strike at an antagonist.

You can make a case for pseudonymity from first principles, and maybe our philosophers here would like to do it, but you know, if it’s good enough for Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, I guess it’s good enough for us historians.