More in reactive mode:
Via Dennis G., we get word that Douthat is upset that Hitchens calls him out as a hack for thinking Teabaggers are a voice of (fiscal) reason in modern America.
Leave aside for a moment the pleasure of watching one of the most banal and obvious of the opinionoid hacks take on someone with Hitch’s wit, intelligence, and love of the fight. It’s almost unfair — seeing some guy bring a knife to a gun fight.
__
__
Inevitable Raiders of the Lost Ark Scene
On one level, there’s not too much to see here.
What we learn following the jumps from Andrew Sullivan’s response to Douthat’s cri de coeur is that The New York Times’ beneficiary of preferential hiring practices for conservatives is unoriginal and almost pitifully rhetorically bland. E.g., to bandy insults back at Hitch, he recycles someone else’s wholly derivative and labored insult, labelling his goad a practitioner of “paranoid style in center-left politics.”
Oh, snap!
But, as always with Douthat, it’s not the flaccid language and lazy cliche mongering that matters. It is, rather, his use of numbingly familiar tropes to obscure the untruths he peddles. Throughout his “response” to Hitch, he argues (a) that it was “the “moderation” and “centrism” of the Western governing class” that has f*cked up the world so badly (i.e., it’s not all Bush’s fault); and, beyond that, (b) those who oppose this presumed monolithic elite are equally respectable.
That is, in his formulation Bernie Sanders = Jim DeMint.
To the quick and careless reader (Andrew Sullivan, for example, who writes that “I don’t disagree, [with Douthat’s catalogue of equivalences] which is why I have found the last eighteen months highly uncomfortable…”) this neat joining of opposites makes life easy: it can’t be my fault, or the fault of my allegiances, because they all do it.
Except, of course, that the pairings aren’t equal — not the Bush/Obama trope nor the Teabagger/DFH one. Not to give one of the least impressive members of the inner-circle of pundit hell more ink than he’s due, I’ll just pick out one howler:
Douthat writes,
It wasn’t the Tea Party that decided to create two new health care entitlements (Medicare Part D and Obamacare) just as America was about to go over a fiscal waterfall.
Well, yes-ish, or rather no.
In fact, Part D is a great big hole in the Federal budget — as of 2008, it was 17 trillion on the (unrealistic) “infinite horizon discounted value” calculation, according to Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher.
Health Care Reform? Well, none of the figures are reliable, given the various political and legal uncertainties attending the as-yet not fully implemented program, but the basic picture, as all reading this know, is that the plan reduces the deficit. By the now famous CBO estimate, that reduction adds up to real money, more than a trillion over twenty years.
In other words, one of the two programs Douthat cites (the one advanced by his side) pushes us over that fiscal waterfall he dreads, and the second, the one the other side passed, tugs us, just a little to be sure, but still, back from that abyss.
In sum? Douthat lives and dies by false equivalences. Sometimes you have to dig just a little (never that much) to identify the “which one of these is not like the other” in the multiple choice. Other times, as here, the deception is overt, obvious. To be as blunt as possible: Douthat shows his contempt for his audience in passages like these, his sense that we are either just too dumb or inattentive to notice the lie.
And that’s why I feel like I’ve written this before and gloomily bet that I will again: because the measure of Douthat’s success will be the degree to which he continues to be taken seriously by anyone. One of the tasks of preserving a civil society is making sure that this will not last.
What’s worse is that Douthat is nothing special. He is just more obvious than most in his use of tropes shared across a wide swath of the punditocracy. I still think it’s a virtue to strip naked the machinery of Village rhetorical chicanery — but more basically, playing whack a mole, you have to hit the rodent in front of you first, right?
Images: Artist unknown, De Wikkelkinderen (The Swaddled Twins), dated 7 April 1617.
Alexander Vladimirovich Makovski, I Am Bored With You, 1897
ruemara
Dude, Douthat is part of the cognoscenti. He can do both.
freelancer
We are men of Harvard!
PS
@freelancer: Same diff:
The clever men at Oxford
Know all there is to be knowed.
But none of them know half as much
As intelligent Mr. Toad!
Hippie Killer
False equivalencies are to the conservative punditry as the wah wah pedal is to Kirk Hammett’s guitar solos.
arguingwithsignposts
Reading Douthat’s wiki page just reminds me how much of a fatuous twit he is. Privilege indeed. As I mentioned on the last page, no two douchebags deserve each other quite so much as Sully and Douthat.
BGinCHI
Here’s the nub of it:
When your critique is that “both sides do it,” you are NOT sitting in the center.
You are sitting on the side of privilege and power, since throwing up your hands and stifling analysis is a win for the side with hegemony.
tomvox1
Tow guys named Tom come to the same conclusion–what are the odds?
@#comment-2290310″>tomvox1:
BGinCHI
@arguingwithsignposts: From Douchehead’s wedding announcement:
You can just hear her during a row: What, couldn’t make summa!!??
twits
pragmatism
i, for one, can’t wait until the false equivalence trend fades and the “TRAITOR” branding trend re-emerges. seems like the pendulum has sped up.
lovable liberal
Douthat shows his contempt for his audience in passages like these, his sense that we are either just too dumb or inattentive to notice the lie.
The purpose of conservative media from Rush to Fox to the white douchebag affirmative action establishment media contingent is not to find and tell the truth. It’s to socialize their audience’s prejudices into something that sounds coherent and won’t get them laughed at around the neighborhood as a moron.
They don’t care if they’re right, just as long as they can insulate themselves from social pressure to change their minds.
arguingwithsignposts
Also, am I the only one who finds Douthat defending the Tea Party hoi polloi somewhat laughable?
ETA: that first painting is just creepy. thanks, tom!
Roger Moore
@pragmatism:
Blech. When the “TRAITOR” branding trend re-emerges, we’ll all be DFTs instead of DFHs. That doesn’t seem like anything to look forward to.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
The biggest problem with this statement is that it’s just flat out wrong. The Tea Party is made up of movement conservatives–it always has been. The idea that it’s a this heretofore silent group just now making waves is a lie. The Tea Party is who helped elect Reagan, for fuck’s sake. The Tea Party elected the Congress which passed Medicare Part D, which required, if memory serves, something very nearly bordering on bribery to get it passed on the floor of the House. Douthat is trying to rewrite history here, and Sullivan is helping him.
pragmatism
@Roger Moore:
we always were, and always will be DFHT. i’m just dead tired of the false equivalence canard. FE and traitordom both suck and blow, defying the laws of physics, but absence makes the heart do some strange things or something like that.
burnspbesq
I’m sorry, but with all due respect I must categorically and absolutely reject the implicit premise of your post, i.e., that dumb and duplicitous are mutually exclusive.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
OT: Military jury: Prison, dismissal for Army birther. 17 years of military service thrown away. Bet he regrets taking the advice of a birther lawyer in deciding not to deploy.
DougJ
Aside from the stuff about Medicare Part D and HCR being fiscally destructive, which is mostly nonsense (I don’t think Part D has been the disaster some predicted, to be honest), I mostly agree with Douthat here.
The teabaggers seem nuts to me, yes, but not as crazy as Hitchens. I don’t think they’ll invade Iran, which Hitchens would do in a heartbeat.
pragmatism
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): \
maybe he gets conjugal visits from orly?
Bnut
I’ll be the first to take the bait. That scene in Indiana Jones where he shoots the swordsman was not originally in the script. There was supposed to be a long fight scene, but Harrison Ford had dysentery during the shoot, so they shortened it to appease his balloon knot.
Calouste
“Douthat, Ross Gregory. (2005) Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class. ”
Good to see people writing about things they have extensive experience with.
joes527
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): What’s he doing wearing a keffiyeh? Does Michelle Malkin know about this?
Tonal Crow
Duplicitous, and smart as a whip at rhetoric.
Sko Hayes
Here is another equivalency that a lot of RW’ers use- treating the tea party as if it could somehow be separated from the Republican party. It’s the same people, the same ignorant ideas about the free market, the same ignorant Fox News fed right winger that we saw growing up during Clinton’s presidency. They voted for Bush twice, they voted for McCain, they’re republicans.
Triassic Sands
Douthat brings his asshole to a brain fight. That’s an even worse mismatch.
Emma
Only one small disagreement. Sullivan is not a quick and careless reader; he’s saying exactly what he believes. No more no less.
Stop making excuses for him. Just because you’re on their side doesn’t mean they’re on your side (thanks TNH!)
agrippa
Both, at the same time
A great achievement
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
In addition to: Douthat: dumb or duplicitous? there is a third possibility (quick, everybody get your Venn diagrams ready), which is that, to be as blunt as possible, his audience deserves contempt.
Calouste
@Triassic Sands:
__
It would be even worse of a mismatch of Douthat brought his brain to a brain fight.
Zifnab
@DougJ:
Lulwhat?
The Tea Baggers have elected a crop of Republicans far more bellicose, ignorant, and racist than the crop of Republicans they replaced. They’ll happily authorize unlimited funds for another Middle Eastern Adventure on thinner grounds than we passed IAUF over. Hell, they’ll push a new war purely on the grounds that it’ll piss liberals off.
Hitchens at least looks at the Middle East and has a cognizant, ideological reason for his hate. He sees a bunch of religious zealots and enemies of the Empire. He had some crazy notion that an invasion would Westernize and conquer the territory and every now and again you can get him to admit that he made a big mistake.
The Tea Baggers admit no mistakes. They ask for no more reason than allowed by the latest Glenn Beck conspiracy theory. They don’t THINK. It will be cake getting them to sign off on a new war. Cake.
Warren Terra
On the topic of Hitchens, I think he’s a massive prick, even on those subjects where I agree with him. Still, when he’s on form and on his good behavior he can be extremely effective. One example of this, on a subject where I happen to mostly agree with him, was in a debate with Tony Blair on whether religion is a good or a bad thing, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 last weekend; the full-hour version should be up at this link until Saturday evening GMT, and a 45 minute version should be up at this link until Monday afternoon GMT.
DougJ
@Zifnab:
When has he admitted it?
He’s cut from the same cloth as the teabaggers.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@DougJ:
You know it is possible for somebody to be hopelessly reactionary and stupid in one area of policy and on the side of the angels in another area – c.f. Churchill and the British Raj in India.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
[too late for ETA]
And note that I’m not comparing Hitch with Winston, rather that the latter was most extreme example I could think of right off the top of my head of somebody who was very right about one area of policy and very wrong about something else, a principle which applies in smaller doses to other political actors.
Restrung
man, this post is sublime. I’m sincerely impressed with Levenson’s wire-walking between statement and question. And it gives me hope that these moles will start getting whacked more. ‘Course I don’t watch the TV.
Mike Furlan
Just lazy.
Why tax your brain when you get paid the same to write what he does?
MarkusR
I can haz weekly column in NYT?
Zifnab
@DougJ:
He’s a Dick Cheney neo-con. I’ll give you that.
But he’s no where near the fundagelical, tax-o-phobic, FOX News junkie that makes up the rank and file of the Tea Bag brigades.
Of course, if you’ve got a picture of Hitchens stepping on a woman’s head at a political rally or suggesting “2nd Amendment Remedies” if his party doesn’t win an election, I’ll be happy to revise my opinion.
Comrade Kevin
@DougJ:
That is the single stupidest thing you have ever written on this blog, DougJ.
Omnes Omnibus
The answer is yes.
bk
Sorry, but the worst of all is that Cornell Law School professor (Jacobson?) who pens that “Legal Insurrection” blog. An embarrassment to my profession.
eemom
man, that twins painting is creeeeeeepy.
As for Doughtwat, it never ceases to amaze me how the most brazen assholes end up having the thinnest skins…..e.g., No-Boner taking offense at Obama’s calling him out for his stupid hissy fit over the poor dead middle class tax bill.
BGinCHI
@eemom: You never saw Judge Smales cry like that after he’d dished it out.
I think this sums it up nicely:
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Kevin: He came out against the teaching of long division, but that was probably trolling.
matoko_chan
Douthat is simply a toxic person….he is intellectually dishonest.
He spreads eumemes, propaganda and disinformation.
The worst eumeme he spreads is the same one Kain spreads…that there are sane reasonable conservatives….and that there are “good” conservative ideas still.
Conservatism is an empty purse.
Hayek was wrong….Oakeshott was wrong, Burke was wrong, Hume was wrong.
The Econopalypse that Ate Americas jobs was conservative thought made policy.
Most Americans dont realize how synchronized the right wing reality distortion field is.
Consider Dr. Tiller’s murder…first Coulter, then Douthat and McMegan say the exact same thing— that liberals are too blame because we wont overturn roe. Sully says, amg that is horrible and links Douthat to rationalize the “sane” conservative position.
Sully is a fucking shill for a moribund reeking zombie ideology because he cant bear to admit that his doc dissertation is crapology.
Like Exum pretending A-stan is “winnable” so he can keep up his fucking tabletop wargaming long enuff to defend his dissertation.
/spit
Exum knows if the Garani massacre goes live before hes done, hes toast.
That is what those fuckers ALL do.
But for me….the creepiest thing about Douthat is the anti-female vibe that radiates off him like like some depraved aura. I can just imagine him trying to inseminate his poor with a turkey baster while wearing gloves and clean suit.
euwwwwwwww.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Fix’t.
Mommy won’t let him play with the sharp scissors yet so what makes you think that she’d let him play with the knives? Oh, butter knife? Nope, too dangerous and he’d probably cut himself.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: Which bits of Burke are wrong? The pro-American things from the Revolution; the anti-French Revolution stuff? All of it?
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think it was all the cudlippy parts.
Dennis SGMM
In any other version of the universe, Douthat is an uncaught pedophile priest whose writings appear only in the monthly diocesan newsletter. It’s just our bad luck to inhabit a version of the universe where he has a column in the NYT.
Mike in NC
Apparently language isn’t the only thing that’s flaccid with Douthat.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: The essay “On Cudlips,” of course.
matoko_chan
@matoko_chan: poor wife.
@Tom Levenson.
Douthat is a mysogynistic creeper and Sully’s schtick is to link him an McMegan to show conservatism is not dead.
well it is dead.
its a reeking putrified zombie ideology shambling along like a monster out of a B movie.
Sully can’t bear to admit it is all.
change
BREAKING NEWS
Dingy Harry Reid pulls the omnibus spending bill!
Government shutdown on the way?
matoko_chan
AWS, Omnes, like i tole Alex, you have to read this critique of first culture intellectuals.
otherwise you dont have the backstory.
you may simply not have the substrate either.
:)
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: How does this answer my question? It doesn’t. BTW link no work, you fix.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
Was this ever a qualification for a thinking person?
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: m_c doesn’t know.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus:
because it’s WAI, as I tole cudlip WEC AWS!
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: Oh, that answers everything.
JimK
@Omnes Omnibus: Will Hunting moment?
Omnes Omnibus
@JimK: Just asking hacker grrl a question is all.
Dennis SGMM
@arguingwithsignposts:
It was, right about the same time that a wool blazer with leather elbow patches, a beret, and a long cigarette holder were also qualifications.
Triassic Sands
@Calouste:
Well said.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dennis SGMM: Two weeks in 1958, then?
Dennis SGMM
@Omnes Omnibus:
You could stretch it out to a month if you wore horn rimmed glasses.
Just Some Fuckhead
More like a guy bringing a small wooden ice cream spoon to a sword fight.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dennis SGMM: Goatee?
patrick II
@DougJ:
No, but I read somewhere not long ago that some of them would consider invading Mexico.
PeakVT
@Hippie Killer: Hammett says “The wah-wah is an extension of my personality.”
So, yeah, that analogy works for me.
Dennis SGMM
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL! Your last reminded me of the “Mad” magazine caricatures of intellectuals back then. I was ten in 1958 and my parents strictly forbade me to read “Mad.” I’m convinced that they forbade it just to make reading it all the more enjoyable for me.
DougJ
@patrick II:
You win this round, but I still think Hitchens’ is essentially a Trotskyite/neocon version of a teabagger. He explicitly rejects pragmatism and empiricism in the same way that they do.
WereBear
@BGinCHI: I feel my summa cum laude, from a state college no less, has been devalued.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dennis SGMM: Without having Mad magazine specifically in mind that was who I was picturing.
lamh32
No Open Thread yet:
Looks like the ball is beginning to roll guys.
If DADT passes, who will get the credit? POTUS, Pelosi, Reid, or Lieberman?
My 2cents: First, Nancy, 2nd, Reid, 3rd, Lieberman, and maybe 4th President Obama, but more than likely he gets no credit at all!
Latest Out of Senate
Update:
Dennis SGMM
We’re now seventy-something posts in and I can’t believe that no one else was low enough to post:
“Because I told you before,
Oh no you can’t Douthat…”
brantl
@DougJ: If you don’t think they’ll invade Iran, what will they have to puff their chests over in the next 10 years? The isolationist glibertarians in the teabaggers are decidedly in the minority, the macho inflate-their-testicles-with-a-bicycle-pump crowd are dominant.
arguingwithsignposts
@brantl:
They’ll invade Mexico first.
stuckinred
lamh32
But wait, there is more. Read the following article from TPM and try and tell me that you don’t want to just McCain across his rotten face. Dude is like 1,000,000 years old and still acting like a rotten brat!
After Spending Bill Implodes, Reid Schedules Vote on DADT Repeal
Ughhh! McCain is disgusting. Dude is seriously a waste of space right now.
stuckinred
@Dennis SGMM: I was going to post ‘who the fuck cares” but everyone seemed to be having a great time.
Dennis SGMM
@brantl:
Mexico has oil, its army is a joke (comparatively speaking), and it’s become obvious that the lessons we taught it in 1848 and in 1916 have to be taught again. This is the new crappy little country that we have to slam against the wall just to show that we can win something. A side benefit will be the militarization of the US-Mexico border and all of the pork that will will come from that.
patrick II
@DougJ:
Agreed. And he is smarter than the average teabagger too. I don’t know if that is more or less admirable.
arguingwithsignposts
@lamh32:
And newly-elected Mark Kirk right there with him. Thanks a lot IL douchebags for electing a lying sack of shit to the Senate. (speaking as someone who voted for his opponent)
lamh32
@lamh32:
that should say “smack McCain across the face”
lamh32
@arguingwithsignposts:
yeah, just cackling along with that pathetic old man.
Ugh, sometimes I’m just glad, I don’t have the power to smite people, like the God of the old testament, cause damn sure a certain petty, sad, over-the-hill Senator would be on my smite list!
Redshift
Unfortunately, Douthat’s duplicity and idiocy isn’t a sign of anything new. Years ago, I stopped reading George Will when I realized that every one of his columns contained an obvious logical error that completely undermined the point he was trying to make. And he was considered an “intellectual,” not one of these talking-point spouting blowhards.
BonnyAnne
@Tom,
love the paintings, as always. If you ever get the urge, you could fill an entire post with nothing but 17th century Dutch paintings and I would be happy as a clam in butter sauce.
One tidbit about De Wikkelkinderen (The Swaddled Twins): it is thought to be an early depiction of what we now understand to be Twin-to-twin Transfusion Syndrome. That’s how cool old paintings are.
MikeJ
Sorry I’m late to the party, but Mr. Levenson, Why isn’t your agent peddling this post to the Time as an op-ed?
Bella Q
@DougJ: See, I suspect they’d invade Iran in a nanosecond. Which makes them just as nuts. Also, too, what would the right wing hue and cry sound like if Sherrod Brown invited Stephen Breyer to offer a Constitutional seminar? Though seeing Megyn Kelly’s on air aneurysm while reporting on it could be, well, gory.
burnspbesq
@Dennis SGMM:
Priceless: Shorter Douthat:
“I got something to say that might cause you pain”
Downpuppy
@freelancer: & Levenson is MIT.
2 skuls, about a mile apart. Nothing in between but dive bars & Indian Restaurants. You know why you don’t hear much about the rivalry?
MIT picks their spots. They won’t play ’em in football, they’ll just screw up stuff.
MIT student
Tom Levenson
Thanks to all for weighing in. Sorry for my absence from the thread. I just managed to sneak this post in between submitting my last grade and settling in for an evening with my kid, then dinner adult to adult.
@BonnyAnne: Too cool. I did not know that. I agree. Sixteenth to eighteenth century Dutch painting rocks.@MikeJ: Thanks for the thought. Not sure how eager the Times would be to take u p with someone who loves slamming BoBo and his sidekick as much as I do.
Jo
Sort of like the end of Trading Places: “Coleman, can’t we have both?”
Gene in Princeton
All the kewl kids are using “trope” to mean “cliche”. You are now a kewl kid.
lol
If DADT repeal passes, it’ll just be further proof of Obama’s homophobia and penchant for throwing the gays under the bus.
MTiffany
@lovable liberal:
Strike “social pressure to change their minds,” and replace with “reality,” what with its well-known liberal bias and all.
MTiffany
@brantl:
Change “bicycle pump” to “saline” and do a Google video search. I double-dog dare you.
mclaren
Why not both?
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: you know its not MY FUCKING JOB to educate your DUMB CUDLIP ASS.
the third culture.
i’ll do Hayek because he is fucking easy….this should be obvious to anyone with an IQ over room temperature.
Hayek was wrong. duh.
the growth of the welfare state doesnt lead to socialism, it leads to secularism. In anglo-saxon protestant America (whick is not and has never been a secular nation), safety nets were originally manned by local churches….localized welfare. When blacks and women got the vote, the federal governemnt was forced to intervene to deliver citizen rights and citizen welfare to blacks and women in the South, creating an alternative source of power and of welfare to the White Patriarchy. Say what you like about White Patriarchy Social Cohesion Paradigm, it was working. But suffrage and civil rights blew that sucker out of the water. A government cannot exist without a social compact between the governing and the governed. So the new social compact that is evolving in America is social democracy. To get back to local welfare engines, the churches, suddenly there was a new competitive source of welfare. Federal welfare was far cheaper and anyone cuold get it, without the time/energy/social capital expenses of church attendance and conforming to a behavioral standard. This has largely already happened in GB, and you get the conservatards like Derbyshire whining about empty churches in Wales as harbingers of the apocalypse, hundreds of thousands of american conservative cudlips milling around lowing about Ayn Rand and “The Road to Serfdom” as an antidote to “soshulisms”..
Dead white guy FIRST CULTURE philosophy is charming in theory but pretty much always fails in practice.
The other thing Hayek blathers about is decentralization. Well the retard never got that decentralization is just localized mob rule.
wut a maroon.
matoko_chan
And…im in moderation again.
c u n d gulag
Baby Bobo sucks about as inspid as the original Bobo.
Well, Baby Bobo replaced Kristol, so there’s at least that in his favor.
matoko_chan
one more try without links.
google edge third culture or the actual book, The Third Culture.
i’ll do Hayek because he is fucking easy….this should be obvious to anyone with an IQ over room temperature.
Hayek was wrong.
duh.
the growth of the welfare state doesnt lead to socialism, it leads to secularism. In anglo-saxon protestant America (whick is not and has never been a secular nation), safety nets were originally manned by local churches….localized welfare. When blacks and women got the vote, the federal governemnt was forced to intervene to deliver citizen rights and citizen welfare to blacks and women in the South, creating an alternative source of power and of welfare to the White Patriarchy. Say what you like about White Patriarchy Social Cohesion Paradigm, it was working. But suffrage and civil rights blew that sucker out of the water. A government cannot exist without a social compact between the governing and the governed. So the new social compact that is evolving in America is social democracy. To get back to local welfare engines, the churches, suddenly there was a new competitive source of welfare. Federal welfare was far cheaper and anyone cuold get it, without the time/energy/social capital expenses of church attendance and conforming to a behavioral standard. This has largely already happened in GB, and you get the conservatards like Derbyshire whining about empty churches in Wales as harbingers of the apocalypse, hundreds of thousands of american conservative cudlips milling around lowing about Ayn Rand and “The Road to Serfdom” as an antidote to “soshulisms”..
Dead white guy FIRST CULTURE philosophy is charming in theory but pretty much always fails in practice.
The other thing Hayek blathers about is decentralization. Well the retard never got that decentralization is just localized mob rule.
wut a maroon.
matoko_chan
again moderated….this time with out soshulism.
i’ll do Hayek because he is fucking easy….this should be obvious to anyone with an IQ over room temperature.
Hayek was wrong. duh.
the growth of the welfare state doesnt lead to soshialism, it leads to secularism. In anglo-saxon protestant America (which is not and has never been a secular nation), safety nets were originally manned by local churches….localized welfare. When blacks and women got the vote, the federal governemnt was forced to intervene to deliver citizen rights and citizen welfare to blacks and women in the South, creating an alternative source of power and of welfare to the White Patriarchy. Say what you like about White Patriarchy Social Cohesion Paradigm, it was working. But suffrage and civil rights blew that sucker out of the water. A government cannot exist without a social compact between the governing and the governed. So the new social compact that is evolving in America is social democracy. To get back to local welfare engines, the churches, suddenly there was a new competitive source of welfare. Federal welfare was far cheaper and anyone cuold get it, without the time/energy/social capital expenses of church attendance and conforming to a behavioral standard. This has largely already happened in GB, and you get the conservatards like Derbyshire whining about empty churches in Wales as harbingers of the apocalypse, hundreds of thousands of american conservative cudlips milling around lowing about Ayn Rand and “The Road to Serfdom” as an antidote to “soshulisms”..
Dead white guy FIRST CULTURE philosophy is charming in theory but pretty much always fails in practice.
The other thing Hayek blathers about is decentralization. Well the retard never got that decentralization is just localized mob rule.
wut a maroon.
its not my job to educate your dumb cudlip ass Omnes.
read a book.
like The Third Culture mebbe.
its already a labor of Sisyphus to try to educate this commentariat, and the constant moderation makes it impossible….i simply cant push the boulder of reality up a near vertical IQ gradient.