Paul Krugman, four days ago, saying civility is not so important, in a piece called “Civility Is The Last Refuge Of Scoundrel”…:
The easy, and perfectly fair, shot is to talk about the hypocrisy here; where were all the demands for civility when Republicans were denouncing Obama as a socialist, accusing him of creating death panels, etc..? Why is it OK for Republicans to accuse Obama of stealing from Medicare, but not OK for Obama to declare, with complete truthfulness, that those same Republicans are trying to dismantle the whole program?
Beyond that, are we dealing with children here? Is one of our two major political parties run by people so immature that they will refuse to do what the country needs because the president hasn’t been nice to them?
Paul Krugman last January, re the Giffords shooting:
We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.
Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it’s been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing.
You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.
Krugman’s message; be civil. To Democrats.
Krugman is partly right. We are “dealing with children here”. He just doesn’t realize who they really are.
Krugman won his Nobel in situational ethics.
Kurgman is just a glittering jewel in the crown of Colossal Ignorance. Civility is for thee…not for me. The fact that this clown has a platform for spewing his brand of ignorance is just one more symptom of why the Dead Tree media is going the way of the dinosaur.
Krugman uses the phrase “odds are . . .” frequently. It really means “this is complete speculation coming from bigotry; that is, ignorance and prejudice”.
We are talking about a Nobel Prize winning economist who can draw a trend line from a single data point:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/europes-gap/
The man is a blithering idiot.
Why is it OK for Republicans to accuse Obama of stealing from Medicare […]
You mean besides the fact that they took $300+ billion to finance Obamacare from Medicare?
Krugman is an interesting pundit in the same sense that the panhandler at the corner predicting the end of the world is.
Krugman uses the phrase “odds are . . .” frequently.
He’s an “economist” who uses his so-called science to validate his highly biased political views. You can’t expect the guy to be objective. His whole dogma would come crashing down on his head if he did.
I gave up Krugman for Lent. In a couple days I’ll have to start swallowing his bilge again.
Krugman’s position as a pundit of the left is a great example of the phenomenon of achievements in one field of endeavor not translating into coherent thoughts in another. He writes from an ideological perspective, justifying political dogma with an argumentative writing style. The same could be said of many commentators on both sides and there isn’t anything wrong with having an ideology. What bothers me most about Krugman is his assumption that anyone who disagrees with him is either 50 IQ points below the mean or inherently evil. I don’t intend that as an ad hominem slur: it is the way he argues. In another context I’m sure I’d get along well with Dr Krugman. I don’t hate him at all, just as I don’t hate the people who voted for Obama, Franken, Pelosi etc. Civility implies an ability to sit down and for a brief moment imaging the viewpoint from the other side, even as you are burning to disagree with it. I just don’t hear that coming from him, ever.
Krugman once said that his hero was Hari Seldon. For you non-SF fans, Seldon was a character in Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy. He was a psycho-historian, a secular prophet who synthesized all knowledge and from this synthesis predicted the course of history over millenia.
Seldon was a fictional character. Like all fictional characters he is a creation of the mind and the times of his creator. Asimov was a charming individual but his politics were deplorable, he was very much caught up in early-mid 20th century economic progressivism. The idea that there could be anything like Asimov’s psycho-history is contingent upon human choices being unpredictable in individuals but predictable in their aggregate. If this was true you would think that some highly motivated individual — like a utopian idealist or a Wall Street trader — would rule the world by now.
BTW Asimov’s contemporary SF writer Robert Heinlein was opposite of Asimov in many ways. Heinlein’s politics were generally of the type preferred by libertarians (albeit more nationalistic than most libertarians are comfortable with), but in personal life he was not, shall we say, sunny, outgoing, and willing to suffer the questions of people he thought were fools.
It is Krugman’s misfortune that he has adopted the politics of Asimov and the public persona of Heinlein.
Paul Krugman is a jackwagon.
Terry, Krugman has more in common with Vonnegut than Heinlien. See the cat? See the cradle?
Kermit, Krugman may be a different kind of cat altogether. Liberals think that they would be happy in a society designed by dreamers. Conservatives think that they would be happy in a society designed by doers. Krugman could only be happy in a society designed by Krugman.
Happy and liberal have never been compatible concepts.
More eliminationist rhetoric form the krugmeister:
The claim that only rich people pay taxes is a zombie lie — something that keeps coming back no matter how many times it’s killed by evidence.
So, let’s try another shot to the head.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/zombie-tax-lies/
Krugman also says:
” . . . the payroll tax — the other major federal tax — isn’t; and state and local taxes are strongly regressive.”
Being Krugman, he doesn’t ask why the payroll tax and local and state taxes are regressive. He just blathers on, blaming conservatives and rich people for everything.