Here’s Paul Krugman talking to Christine Amanpour this morning about spending cuts:
“From the perspective of a rational person — in other words a progressive…”
If you want to foreclose on civil discourse, to go beyond argument to mere polemic, to whip up bitter factional antipathies, to make the process of democratic government little more than a civil war without (for the moment) actual physical violence, well, this is the way you do it.
Not only is Krugman going out of his way to be as insulting and provocative as possible, but in his foaming anger at all things conservative he also exhibits a gross misunderstanding of the very concept of reason itself, and of the difference between axioms and theorems.
“Progressivism” is a collection of axioms about what constitutes a desirable society. Once you have accepted those axioms, then you can use reason to evaluate policy on the basis of the foundation they provide. If, however, you build your worldview upon a very different set of axioms, as conservatives do, then the same process of reason — reason being what “rational” people do — will lead to different policy choices.
The choice of progressive vs. conservative axioms, as with any axioms, is not a matter of reason, but of temperament, intuition, and disposition. But so blinded by partisan rage is Paul Krugman, so besotted with ideological fanaticism, that he has rendered himself oblivious to this essential aspect of human reason.
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It was a snarky remark, but it has a lot of truth to it.
A majority of Republican Presidential candidates do not believe that Darwin’s theory of evolution has any more validity than “intelligent design.” Many on the right — perhaps a plurality — believe that global warming is a “hoax,” Obama was born in Kenya, and Shariah law is on the march to overthrow American jurisprudence. For the past few weeks, we heard Senators and Congressmen claiming that our credit rating would improve if we default on our debt, and that if we defaulted the consequences would be fleeting and unimportant. We had to destroy the village in order to save it.
It is true that these axioms are not “a matter of reason,” but not because they are a matter of temperament or disposition. They are not a matter of reason because they are demonstrably false.
To be sure, there are plenty of conservatives who are reasonable and eminently rational. One of them is George Will, who sat a few feet from Krugman. However, it is rare to see prominent figures on the right defend things that are known to be true, especially if they are running for office. Look at the scorn being heaped on hapless Tim Pawlenty for stating once that “climate change is occurring,” and watch him humble himself in his obeisance to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News for his inexcusable detour into the reality-based community.
Anti-intellectualism is a big driver of Michele Bachmann / Sarah Palin wing, where “elite” is a pejorative. They seem to think that Kansas farmers are as qualified as Harvard Economics PhD’s to offer informed opinions, because the farmers balanced their family budget.
As Pat Moynihan famously said, everybody has the right to his own opinion, but not his own facts. When a substantial part of a political ideology rests on unreality, it is perfectly reasonable to question whether it reflects ratiocination or delusion.
Pah. In Krugman’s fevered mind, “not a progressive” = “deranged evil person”. He’s made that clear enough.
Sure, there are religious conservatives who don’t believe in evolution. Obviously they are wrong about that, but belief or disbelief in evolution isn’t relevant in any way to choosing axioms about government policy (apart from determining the content of biology curricula, which arguably isn’t a Federal matter anyway, and is hardly going to have an effect on the economy).
They aren’t alone, though: liberals embrace plenty of counterfactual axioms of their own.
Sorry, but appeals to authority aren’t going to cut it here, because there is simply no consensus even among credentialed economists about the Keynesian dogma that Krugman routinely sneers at conservatives for questioning.
And frankly, it’s hard to see how a “Kansas-farmer” approach — where we simply don’t spend more than we can afford — could possibly have gotten us into worse shape than we’re in right now. It certainly made sense to Jefferson. (If you can make appeals to authority, well, so can I.)
I think it is a matter of vital national importance that we remain competitive with Koreans and Indians, which over the long term will have plenty of “effect on the economy. “ This starts with teaching math and science, not mumbo jumbo. It continues with scientific inquiry, not Christian theology.
Global warming is also a matter of both vital national interest as well as public policy.
Economists may disagree about Keynes, but there are reasoned and factual arguments on both sides. There is no prima facie case that it is right or wrong. However, there is a prima facie case that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and that a federal default will cause grave damage to our credit. Surely you can distinguish between that which is controversial and that which is flat-out wrong.
As for sneering: ever read a Wall Street Journal editorial?
As for a Kansas farmer being smarter than those who got us into this mess: I have to agree with you here. I don’t think many Kansas farmers would wage two wars without paying for them, give out lavish tax breaks, or let banks lend money to people who clearly were unable to pay them back.
Well, for the sake of brevity, I’m willing to leave unexamined just now the alleged existential urgency of global warming, the question of why banks night have been encouraged to lend money to blatantly unqualified borrowers seeking to “share in the American Dream”, and whether America’s eventual triumph over India hinges on every single person in the country agreeing about evolution, etc. (I hope you are too, because life is short.) I will also, in a spirit of bipartisan goodwill, refrain from trotting out a laundry list of idiotic liberal beliefs, opinions and axioms.
But if you can agree, as it seems you can, that spending no more than we can afford would be wiser fiscal policy than what’s led us to this catastrophe, then I’m willing to announce to the press that we have a deal.
Hell freezes over.