Category: New York Times

Dear Feminists: You Think Too Much

Posted on Comments

Not everything has meaning. Not everything requires critical analysis. Not everything is in need of a theory to explain it.

Some things are really simple. They are what they are, and the temptation to intellectualize everything should be resisted. Consider, for example, a New York Times column by Emily Witt:

Who could be cynical about the rise of friendship? In recent movies, female friends have banded together to shoot guns from trucks (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) and sing a cappella (“Pitch Perfect”). On TV, they have spooned in Greenpoint (“Girls”) and found common ground in prison (“Orange Is the New Black”). Their stoner antics (“Broad City”) have liberated us from the slob dads of sitcoms. Once limited to sassy supporting roles, female friends are now the primary source of romantic tension themselves: making passive-aggressive phone calls, taking baths together, serving as sugar daddies, lying to each other, busting ghosts. Unlike traditional romance, friendship doesn’t force us into archaic gender roles or complicate our professional or sexual independence. It’s now the boyfriends who are vestigial, appearing only in bit parts like “timid suitor” or “obnoxious co-worker.”

(This is because feminist bloggers now instantly attack any movie that doesn’t pass the lesbian-approved “Bechdel Test,” and everybody in Hollywood is scared to death of feminist bloggers. In order to satisfy blogger demands, males can never be heroic in movies, nor can any woman be cast in the role of “hero’s girlfriend,” let alone “damsel in distress.” Third-wave feminism requires that males be “vestigial,” because women must be so “empowered” that men are either peripheral characters — clowns and tagalongs — or else sinister villains representing the Oppressive Patriarchy.)

Running parallel to this artistic phenomenon, however, is an anthropological one. Lately, we’ve been inundated with images of real-life best friends, triumphantly displayed. It’s difficult to get through a day on the Internet without looking at photos of women flaunting the depth of their intimacy by posing over dinner or watching television together in matching pajamas. We now flick through images not of celebrity couples but of celebrity friends: Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj eating hamburgers in matching varsity jackets; Taylor Swift with Karlie Kloss, Lorde, Selena Gomez, Ellie Goulding, Lena Dunham, her cat Olivia, the entire runway lineup of a Victoria’s Secret show; the U.S. women’s soccer team. The meme factories have responded to the popularity of pictures of best friends with maximum output, harvesting groups of women posing on beaches and in limos from celebrity Instagram feeds and presenting them in slide shows . . . and labeling these images as “#friendspiration” and “#squadgoals.”

(Note the use of the authorial “we” here. Who is “we”? Why does Emily Witt presume that everyone is plugged into the same Internet feeds, so that they are “inundated with images” and it is “difficult to get through a day” without seeing the phenomenon she describes?)

Picture-perfect groups of friends on Instagram make me wonder whether Bridget Jones’s idea of “smug marrieds” could also apply to “squads” and why “The Stepford Wives” hasn’t been re-envisioned with a friendship plot. The portraits seem to be asking a lot of impolite questions: Do you have as many friends as we do? How did you celebrate your birthday? Do you regularly drink prosecco over plates of fruit at Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar? Have you betrayed your gender by preferring the company of men? You don’t have a friend with whom you publicly exchange photographs of your manicures? What’s wrong with you? If female friendship is so uplifting, then why do these photos make us feel the opposite — unbalanced and unsure?

(Again with the authorial first-person plural. Emily Witt presumes to know how “these photos make us feel,” when she’s actually describing how they make her feel, i.e., envious of the lives of the celebrities whose photos she sees while obsessively checking the online feed that inundates her with these images. Clearly, “we” need to log off Instagram, get outside more often and, perhaps, ask “our” therapist to adjust the Prozac dosage.)

I used to think that friendship as performed for an audience would end with middle school, but the past 10 years of technology have changed that expectation.

(Obviously, she’s one of those unhappy-childhood types who are forever reliving their middle-school identity crises.)

In social media, friendship gets fixed and mounted. It loses its dramatic tension. It becomes a presentation of happiness, an advertisement for friendship rather than an actual portrayal of it. Sometimes, scrolling through photos of women I know looking carefully hungover in front of a perfectly composed brunch, or lying on a blanket in a park in crop tops, or posting screenshots of their exuberant text messages, I’m reminded of something Marnie once said on “Girls”: “I thought that this would be a good opportunity to have fun together and prove to everyone via Instagram that we can still have fun as a group.”

(If you ever find yourself thinking about life in terms of lines from a Lena Dunham HBO series, it’s time to have that talk with your therapist about the appropriate Prozac dosage.)

Mimicking the advertiser’s strategy, these pictures of delightful fun inevitably provoke a feeling of lack or longing in the consumer of the image.
When I think of depictions of friendships that have moved me, I find myself thinking mostly of books — of those passages in novels that illuminate friendship by its moments of thorniness, by the heartbreak it can cause.

(Of course! It’s about characters in novels. People who read too much fiction think everything is about characters in novels, in the same way people who spend too much time on Instagram think everything is about people on Instagram.)

Real friendship is complex. It’s the sadness of Elizabeth Bennet when her friend Charlotte Lucas marries the odious Mr. Collins in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s Leah and Natalie’s complicated dance of haughtiness and need in Zadie Smith’s “NW.” It’s the once-a-week limit Vivian Gornick has with her friend Leonard in “The Odd Woman and the City” (because men can be friends too). The best works of art about friendship resonate by showing how our closest friends have a way of ruining our attempts to present ourselves as perfect; how those picturesque moments are belied by other truths.

(My friendships have never been “complex.” Never once in my life have I engaged in a “complicated dance of haughtiness and need,” probably because I don’t sit around reading novels, filled with a bittersweet nostalgia for middle school or obsessively staring at pictures of Taylor Swift on Instagram. Seriously, lady, you need to have that discussion with your therapist about your Prozac dosage.)

Friendship stories might have replaced tales of romantic love, but the best ones stop themselves from purveying easy clichés of their own — whether clichés about feminist solidarity or about mean girls (sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two). Close friendships are worth celebrating — but it is how they look at their least photogenic moments that proves their veracity.

And so concludes this New York Times mini-essay. Emily Witt is to Instagram selfies what Hannah Arendt was to Adolf Eichmann.

Curious as to who wrote this bizarre column, I found her online bio:

Emily Witt . . . has degrees from Brown, Columbia, and Cambridge, and was a Fulbright scholar in Mozambique.

Oh, that explains it. Those of us who went to state universities didn’t sit around reading novels or having “complex” friendships that were a “complicated dance of haughtiness and need.” Nor do our daily lives as adults consist of scrolling through celebrity Instagram photos, wishing we could hang out with Lena Dunham and her friends.

Only if your Daddy can afford to send you to elite universities (annual tuition at Brown, $46,408), followed by several more years of postgraduate education, can you indulge in that kind of stuff and then get paid by the New York Times to share your thoughts about it using first-person plural pronouns so that you presume to speak for a “we” who share your peculiar obsessions. Speaking of peculiar obsessions, Emily Witt (who got her bachelor’s degree at Brown in 2003, majoring in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Art Semiotics) wrote an 800-word article for the New York Times with the headline, “In Praise of Sensible Panties,” which included sentences like these:

“Good design is as little design as possible” is one of the famed German industrial designer Dieter Rams’s Ten Principles for Good Design, and in the underwear from Swiss brands like Zimmerli and Hanro, as in a Braun appliance from the 1960s, Rams’s mandate for elegant minimalism finds fulfillment. . . . .
A country’s underwear preferences say a lot about its ideas of the erotic. . . .
Ultimately, what intrigued me about the underwear I saw in Germany had something to do with its directness — the way it resisted gendered ornamentation of the body.

You see? Even your underwear must be subjected to critical theory, if you’re an intellectual with degrees from three elite universities.

You really have to feel sorry for her Dad. Just imagine Mr. Witt’s conversations with his golf buddies.

“How’s your daughter?”
“Fluent in Portugese and resisting gendered ornamentation.”

This is why you should keep your kids as far away from the Ivy League as possible. Even if you could afford the tuition, you’ll still have to pay for a lifetime of therapy and Prozac.





 

The Motives of Moody Loners

Posted on Comments

Last month’s shooting in Chapel Hill, N.C., sparked a raging online argument over whether it was (a) an anti-Muslim hate crime or (b) a dispute over a parking space. The insistence that the motive for the crime was either one or the other omits the possibility that it was (c) both or (d) neither. The victims — Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, her sister Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and the older sister’s husband Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23 — were all Muslims. The shooter, Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, expressed his enthusiasms online:

On his Facebook page, Craig Hicks had a huge and revealing list of “Likes” that shows him much more preoccupied with Christianity than with Islam. He does post a chart likening “Radical Christians” to “Radical Muslims,” but that is about the extent of his mentioning of Islam at all. He likes the atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Bill Maher, all of whom have criticized Islam, but his page includes none of their statements about Islam. He likes many anti-Christian groups but no groups that are critical of Islam, and he even likes a group praising Obama for supporting the Ground Zero Mosque.

On Facebook, Hicks criticized Rick Santorum and supported the Southern Poverty Law Center so that, as Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch said, “Hicks is hardly the right-wing anti-Muslim Islamophobic redneck” liberals imagined. Jonathan Katz of the New York Times has commendably done more reporting:

A motive for the shooting may never be known. But interviews with more than a dozen of the victims’ friends and family members, lawyers, police officers and others make two central points: Before the shootings, the students took concerted steps to appease a menacing neighbor, and none were parked that day in a way that would have set off an incident involving their cars.
If those accounts do not prove what kind of malice was in Mr. Hicks’s heart, the details that emerge indicate that whatever happened almost certainly was not a simple dispute over parking. . . .
The contrast between the paunchy, balding Mr. Hicks and the rest of the [condominium] complex’s residents was stark. Many were aspiring professionals and academics at a premier public university. Mr. Hicks was unemployed, taking night classes at a community college in hopes of becoming a paralegal. He spent long hours in his apartment with a collection of at least a dozen guns, including four pistols and a Bushmaster AR-15. Mrs. Hicks told her lawyer that Mr. Hicks would stare out the second-floor window, obsessing over neighbors’ parties, patterns and parking. . . .
The neighbors’ relationship became testier when Ms. Abu-Salha started spending time at the apartment after the engagement, said Mr. Barakat’s former roommate, Imad Ahmad. In October, Mr. Hicks came knocking while they were cleaning up from a dinner party where they had played the board game Risk. He growled that they had woken up his wife, lifting his shirt to reveal a holstered gun. The students did not call the police, but there was little the authorities could have done if they had. Mr. Hicks had a concealed-carry permit. . . .
On Feb. 5, Mr. Hicks got more bad news: A judge had ordered a March 19 hearing over $14,189.54 in unpaid child support to his first wife, according to court records. . . .
He was undeniably obsessed with parking. Each unit got permits for up to two cars, but only one assigned spot. Building 20 had 13 spaces. Mr. Barakat and Ms. Abu-Salha were assigned space 20B. The next, 20C, belonged to Mrs. Hicks. Five spaces in the middle were unassigned and could be used for extra cars. Drivers also regularly parked on the side street.
The housing association allowed residents to have improperly parked cars towed. But Mr. Hicks abused this power until the housing association asked him to stop, his wife’s lawyer said. According to a police search warrant, he kept “pictures and detailed notes on parking activity” on his computer. . . .

You can read the whole thing, but it seems to me the conclusion is obvious: No, this “was not a simple dispute over parking,” but neither was it what we usually think of as a “hate crime.”

This was a classic Moody Loner crime. Every so often in a nation of more than 300 million people, these things happen. There are lots of disgruntled kooks out there, and it is usually not easy to predict when of them is about to commit a heinous act of violence.

About 10% of Americans are afflicted with mood disorders (depression or bipolar disorder), 18% have anxiety disorder, 10% have personality disorders and 7% have substance abuse problems. There’s some overlap between these categories, so that about 25% of Americans suffer some form of mental illness, and we can’t afford to lock all of them into lunatic asylums. It’s only after one of these Moody Loner types commits an atrocity that people (many of whom are themselves not entirely sane) jump to conclusions about the killer’s motives. In the Internet Age, tribal instinct expresses itself in a mob mentality where liberals try to pin the blame on right-wingers and vice-versa, but as the case of Craig Hicks shows, craziness is not so neatly partisan.

Have we seen this before? Sure, lots of times.

Elliot Rodger’s Isla Vista murder spree became a cultural Rashomon last year, with feminists insisting that the Creepy Little Weirdo proved something about violent misogyny. Perhaps so, but it mainly proved something about Creepy Little Weirdos. Last June, I quoted  Daphne Patai’s 1998 book Heterophobia:

The sociologist Joel Best, in explaining how a social problem comes to prominence through the work of individuals who expand its definition and find ever more instances of it, labels this procedure the “just another example of X strategy” — where  “X” is the problem that is being dramatized. Thus, he contends, the “domain” of the identified problem “expands,” as greater and greater claims are made for the problem’s pervasiveness.

In other words, when academics or journalists develop a sensitivity to something identified as a social problem — whether it’s “Islamophobia” or “rape culture” — they are always looking for examples of that problem. And this is where the overwhelming liberal bias of academia and media becomes a social problem of its own. Studies have shown that Democrats outnumber Republican at least 4-to-1 in newsrooms and university faculties, and this lopsided partisanship (which is certainly not accidental) yields compound interest over time.

Liberal hegemony in these influential institutions discourages conservatives from pursuing careers in academia or journalism, so that liberals within those institutions usually come to believe that All The Smart People agree with them.

If every textbook is edited by a liberal, if all newspapers are edited by liberals, if every major TV network news broadcast is produced by liberals, there is no reason for any liberal ever to doubt the correctness of his worldview. Therefore, the pet obsessions of liberals — e.g., the concern that Muslims are at risk of “Islamophobia” — take on the air of reality, so that liberal beliefs seem justified, no matter what the data actually show. Yet however great the harms produced by Islamophobia, the grand total of deaths in anti-Muslim hate crimes is much less than the death toll from Islamic terrorism. Americans’ fear of Islamic terrorism is far more rational than liberals’ fear of “Islamophobia.”

It is only because of liberal bias that people become so obsessed with the motives of crimes committed by Moody Loners like Craig Hicks or Creepy Little Weirdos like Elliot Rodger.

Dangerous kooks are usually just dangerous kooks whose “political” beliefs do not intersect with the political categories of non-kooks. Conservatives know, however, that,if any crime seems to confirm the liberal worldview, the media will rush to publicize the “right-wing” motive of the criminal — and will then mysteriously lose interest in the motive if evidence proves otherwise, as it so often does.

Remember the Tucson Massacre of 2011: Because the shooting targeted a Democrat congresswoman, it was instantly assumed by the media that Jared Loughner must be a right-winger. It turned out, however, that Loughner was a psychotic who had become obsessed with a left-wing 9/11 “Truther” video called Zeitgeist. Because I spent several days researching the Zeitgeist phenomenon in the wake of the Tucson Massacre, I can assure you that this would have been a fascinating subject for the New York Times or one of the major networks to do an in-depth report about. However, once it became clear that Loughner was not a right-winger, liberals instantly lost interest in his motive and there was never any real media follow-up on Loughner’s Zeitgeist obsession.

It is good that Jonathan Katz has devoted time to reporting on Craig Hicks’ motives, but a careful reader will notice that Katz isn’t very curious about the possible connection between Hicks’ avowed atheism and Hicks’ general anti-social attitude. Of course, this connection may be entirely random, and I don’t mean to suggest that we could be facing a wave of mass murders committed by deranged atheists. Yet when Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998, the media wasted no time in generalizing that crime into a crusade against “homophobia,” despite the lack of evidence that Shepard’s killers were homophobes.

There are many fascinating phenomena in our society that are ignored by the media because these phenomena contradict the liberal worldview, fake rape accusations and fake “hate” incidents, for example. Liberals are often eager to jump on certain stories — e.g., the University of Virginia “gang rape” hoax — but lose interest in the story once the fakery is exposed, never bothering to explore what motivates such hoaxes.

In-depth reporting on lesbian sex offenders? No, the New York Times will never study their motives. All criminals are created equal, but some criminals are more equal than others.

 

Gail Collins Can’t Erase The Irony

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Instapundit misses the bigger gag:

THIS MORNING I MENTIONED THAT GAIL COLLINS STILL HADN’T CORRECTED HER COLUMN. Now it bears this update:

An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated that teacher layoffs in Milwaukee in 2010 happened because Gov. Scott Walker “cut state aid to education.” The layoffs were made by the city’s school system because of a budget shortfall, before Mr. Walker took office in 2011.

So basically, it’s now an Emily Litella column. Never mind! I’d love it if Greg Gutfeld or someone would do a Gail Collins as Emily Litella skit with this. . . .

What was the title of the column, though?

Scott Walker Needs an Eraser

If I were Governor Walker, I’d do a fundraiser selling commemorative Nebbishes Yearning for Truth (NYT) erasers. You could no more make this stuff up than you could shame the NYT into journalistic integrity. But he might as well turn their sloppiness into some campaign cash against the day Her Majesty and JEBush get around to making their aristocratic decrees about why you peasants should elect them in lieu of Walker.

Update: welcome, Instapundit readers!

Cop-Hater Kills Two Cops in Brooklyn Ambush; NY Times Obfuscates Motive

Posted on Comments

Michelle Malkin: “Sickos on the Left have been stoking hatred against cops for months now in the wake of Ferguson and explicitly calling for their murder.” They finally got what they wanted Saturday when a cop-hater named Ismaaiyl Abdulah Brinsley shot his ex-girlfriend near Baltimore, posted anti-cop messages on social media and drove to New York where he murdered two NYPD officers in an ambush in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The cop-killer then killed himself.

The killer participated in anti-police protests and, in his social media messages, referenced both the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the death of Eric Garner in New York. However, Weasel Zippers points out that the New York Times is attempting to obscure Brinsley’s motive by depicting him as “random crazy.” Liberals never accept responsibility for the evil results of liberalism, because the whole point of liberalism is the evasion of personal responsibility.

 

A NEW CHALLENGER APPEARS

Posted on Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Beating on the agitprop outlet formerly known as the National Newspaper of Record is a favorite pastime in the conservative blogosphere, and you could make a compelling argument that some blogs do little else. Which is not a criticism, mind you; it’s necessary work, and God bless the people that read the New York Slimes so I don’t have to. Still, I have to admire Elijah Lovejoy for his chutzpah in launching Stories They Forgot, a website dedicated to serving up all the news that the Gray Lady doesn’t see fit to print. It acknowledges its debt to Drudge, but the site is more than just a pile of links going off in all directions; instead, stories are organized by topic and it’s all news, without any opinion filler. Big Fur Hat at IOTWReport had some nice things to say about it, as did his commenters, and I think Mr. Lovejoy may have a hit on his hands here. Take a gander at it and tell me what you think in the comments.


The Schmuck-tacular Folderol Of Brooks

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Via Hot Air headlines, David Brooks continues to terrify rational people with the thought that this twerp is somehow a thought leader in our society:

Low idealism begins with a sturdy and accurate view of human nature. We’re all a bit self-centered, self-interested and inclined to think we are nobler than we are. Montaigne wrote, “If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.”

This invites the question of how Brooks got his drivel back in time to afflict Montaigne. Humans are overwhelming the scorpion in the tale of the hapless frog. That so many human frogs like to vote for scorpions can be seen as the passive aggression of Socialism bulldozing everything toward the mean.

Low idealism continues with a realistic view of politics. Politics is slow drilling through hard boards. It is a series of messy compromises. The core functions of government are negative — putting out fires, arresting criminals, settling disputes — and much of what government does is the unromantic work of preventing bad situations from getting worse.

Let’s be clear, Brooks: our homo bureaucratus infestation has metastasized into something worse, starting fires, employing criminals, engendering disputes. When Rahm said “You never let a serious crisis go to waste“, you’re a fool if you don’t think him perfectly capable of fomenting such.

Politicians operate in a recalcitrant medium with incomplete information, bad options and no sleep. Government in good times is merely dull; when it is enthralling, times are usually bad.

Hence the counter-Progressive idea that less government is preferable. Scope creep in the last century of our government has all of the appeal of scope creep in a software project. Except that, while Lois Lerner’s email can vanish in a puff of cyber-smoke, Lois and her ilk will continue to acquire and wield more administrative power until they are stopped. It’s their nature. Like the scorpion.

So low idealism starts with a tone of sympathy. Anybody who works in this realm deserves compassion and gentle regard.

Anybody who actually thinks that is a fool. Government is not parental in nature, and citizens are not children. Despite the efforts of Progress to paralyze our society with pap like your writings, Brooks.

The low idealist knows that rallies with anthems and roaring are just make-believe, but has warm affection for any politician who exhibits neighborliness, courtesy and the ability to listen.

No, Brooks: politicians are not the kindly figures you’re trying to sell here. I’m sure they put on a smile and toss out a Buckley quote for you when they pat you on the head. Nice Bobo, nice. You fling such pleasant poo in your column, Bobo. How is your ObamaCare policy doing, by the way?

The low idealist understands that those who try to rise above the messy business of deal-making often turn into zealots and wind up sinking below it. On the other hand, this kind of idealist has a full heart for those who serve the practical work of legislating: James Baker and Ted Kennedy in the old days; Bob Corker and Ron Wyden today. Believing experience is the best mode of education, he favors the competent old hand to the naïve outsider.

Aren’t you just a well-trained Bobo? That competent old hand feels good when it pats your head, no?
What we need is term limits and more frequent turnover. Ted Kennedy was not a sympathetic character. We need simpler systems that can be readily understood by competent outsiders. As Will Rogers put it:

Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.

Bobo, your lust for aristocracy is unbecoming an American. But so is pretty much everything you write. We all need to be our own statesmen, to our maximal ability. Govern ourselves, and quit thinking we can offload the need to grow up onto the state. The disastrous results of that surround you.

Brooks Threatens Gore’s Grip On “The Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Read”

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Saint Albert of Gore, Lord have mercy on him and his non-grasp of weather, has never recanted from his 2010 utterance:

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis — inconvenient as ever — must still be faced.

And really, thinking that we can legislate redemption has got to be the Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Read.
But let’s give Brooks discredit. He does know him some fail, from the same venue as Gore above, emphasis mine:

It’s important in times like these to step back and get clarity. The truest thing to say is this: We are living in an amazingly fortunate time. But we also happen to be living during a leadership crisis, and a time when few people have faith in elites to govern from the top. We live in a vibrant society that is not being led.

We don’t suffer from an abuse of power as much as a nonuse of power. It’s been years since a major piece of legislation was passed, and there’s little prospect that one will get passed in the next two.

This leadership crisis is eminently solvable. First, we need to get over the childish notion that we don’t need a responsible leadership class, that power can be wielded directly by the people. America was governed best when it was governed by a porous, self-conscious and responsible elite — during the American revolution, for example, or during and after World War II. Karl Marx and Ted Cruz may believe that power can be wielded directly by the masses, but this has almost never happened historically.

We offer our elites every bit of the faith and respect they’ve earned, Brooks. Our self-appointed quasi-aristocracy, and the throne-sniffing sycophants that support them (e.g. you) could all be replaced by a button marked “Crap” at significantly reduced savings.

“elites. . .govern from the top” What. Elites. Brooks? If George Washington and his troops could see the utter shambles the 1787 Constitution has been reduced to in the last century of Progressive elite deconstruction, I daresay he’d order the Colonials to fix bayonets. Technology happened. We grasp that our “elites” are a pack of self-serving louts. If you want to argue something useful, Brooks, tell me about term limits. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” as Acton noted, and lesser amounts of power produce Reids and Boehners, Pelosis and McConnells over time. Like any compost heap, Capitol Hill needs frequent turning. Am I being irreverent? Of course I am, Brooks: it’s a wholly American thing. Fear God; sneer at Caesar. It’s when these two objects become confused that we can arrive at the drivel you’re pushing, Brooks.

Karl Marx and Ted Cruz. . .did you really juxtapose those two, you little passive-aggressive twerp? Cruz pulled an all-nighter for liberty in the Senate, and this is all you’ve got? Really? Are you saying that Ted Cruz argued for Athenian democracy? You’re going with that? Well, I guess you’re located in the same dirty diaper of a newspaper that thought George W. Bush had no coalition to support the Iraq invasion.

You really are a discredit to your country, Brooks.

Krugman, Did You Just Argue Against People Exercising Basic Liberty?

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

. . .polling suggests that support for [Scottish] independence has surged over the past few months, largely because pro-independence campaigners have managed to reduce the “fear factor” — that is, concern about the economic risks of going it alone. At this point the outcome looks like a tossup.

Well, I have a message for the Scots: Be afraid, be very afraid. The risks of going it alone are huge.

Irrespective of the rational arguments that are to be made, Krugman you’re arguing against the advice of a man who’s boots you’re unfit to polish:

Never take counsel of your fears.

Had I a vote in Alba, I’d straight up vote for independence. Not because of the probability of anything in your cheap parade of horribles coming to pass, Krugman, but just because I can’t think of anything good ever occurring in history through heeding the advice of a craven little pecksniff such as yourself. Yours is the advice that the Orwellian hell of the day is preferable to possible greatness, if the slack-jawed academics can just succeed in dragging enough people into their gloomy swamp.

Fall off the planet, Krugman. The litmus test for any policy decision anywhere ought to be: is it increasing individual liberty and opportunity? If the answer is ‘yes’, then go for it, say I.

Where one could argue against Scottish independence is if the leaders are just planning to sell out to Brussels. However, I should think Krugman would be getting out his best pom-poms to cheerlead such a debacle. Is there a stupid idea under the sun that Krugman has not embraced?

via HotAir headlines