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The author is highly inconsistent. First, he contrasts classic political rhetoric with the modern left's "New Anger":

...The newspapers and pamphlets of 1800 are full of Jeremiads, hard-hitting satire, and libelous personal attacks, and the writers give the impression (usually behind the mask of a pseudonym) of enjoying the rollicking pleasure of their verbal extravagance.
But there it stops. As far as I can tell, the partisan writings of 1800 never venture into the logic of, "Listen to me because I am really, really angry," or, "The extremity of my anger proves the righteousness of my cause," or, "Behold my disdain! It is a thing of wonder." Those are some of the ways to tell the difference between the traditional forms of political anger and New Anger in its political manifestations....

OK; that's a readily understandable and clearly stated distinction. However, he then quotes "anonymous libertarian responding on a message board to a comment by Jonah Goldberg":

Yeah, I'm going to take advice from Jonah Goldberg about how the conservatives are more friendly to liberty.
"Don't go looking for someone who doesn't beat you honey. Nobody else loves you like I do. Especially not that suave Democrat. He'll just beat you worse. Trust me. I can change, we just need counseling."
Just say no to Battered Voter Syndrome.

OK; clearly an example of the sort of "Jeremiads" and "hard-hitting satire" Adams' and Jefferson's partisans launched at each other back in the day. (It clearly does not suggest any real identification of Goldberg with a wife-beating husband, and so doesn't qualify for the category of "libelous personal attacks".)

However, for some reason he doesn't attempt to explain, the author somehow categorizes this as "New Anger-ish vituperation", though not even Penumbral Emanation Spectacles, or even a Penumbral Emanation Hubble Telescope, could find any trace of a suggestion that the author is asserting that his anger proves his rightness.

But as anyone who has ever touched a libertarian nerve can testify, libertarians also tend to be argumentative, sarcastic, and rude.

Well, duh, you idiot! :-).

Perhaps that is the influence of Ayn Rand, or maybe it comes from the conviction that libertarians see the pure light of rationality but are doomed to be ruled by their purblind inferiors.

I really wish I could argue with this (because I tend to be argumentative), but that hit dead on.

This started out a good article, but Wood gets way too involved in the details of these dust-ups between second division pundits.

Wood's probably right about Brink Lindsay and Jonathan Chait, but those guys don't matter at all. It's the big picture which does.

If you're a writer for Reason or the Cato Institute you want to promote libertarianism and get libertarianism's nose in one of the big political tents in a major way, so you'd naturally promote such alliances. And if you're a writer at the New Republic you have to maintain the value of the property or franchise.

You have to promote "liberalism" or your own or your paper's version of "liberalism" so that you still have an influence. So of course you'll slight those who undercut your foundational myths (though you don't have to be nasty about it).

What you may see in the future is a socially entrepreneurial liberalism that's less connected to the current power bases of liberal ideology and the Democratic Party. But you can count on established liberals to fight such developments.

Here is a good dust up that deals more with the actual Chait/Lindsey liberal libertarian argument than the "anger" thing(which I could't give a damn about).

"Many have remarked on the tension in the coalition of religious traditionalists and libertarians on social views. But I've never really understood why religious voters would be partial to free market economic policies. There seems to be an obvious distrust of the amorality of the market there, especially as it often produces what religious voters obviously consider to be immoral entertainment and other products. Nor have I ever seen among religious folks a particular appreciation of the invisible hand process of the market, as their worldview seems much more comfortable with a constructivist rationalism than spontaneous order systems. To the extent that there is a coherent economic philosophy here, it seems to me that it is more naturally communitarian than free market. This is consistent with the more specific policy observations that religious voters seem perfectly content with economic policies like farm subsidies, steel tariffs, immigration limits, and distrust of the WTO and other international trade organizations. Note also that during this past election, support for ballot initiatives that increased the minimum wage drew overwhelming support in the red states on which they were proposed. That doesn't seem very consistent with a free-market worldview."

http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1165247590.shtml

Breaking a Taboo In September 2003, Chait notoriously opened an essay (“Mad about You,” The New Republic):

I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I am tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility [

Thats ok Chait. I hate you and all of your despicable democrat brethren. And if you guys try to drag us into abject socialisim the way you did in 1992-1994 then you will be pushing the county towards a new civil war. There I've said it.