Witness the Unbelievable Amount of Racism That Exists Among Conservatives and in the Tea Party

… there’s also … the stain that won’t go away

writes Paul Krugman darkly in his op-ed:

race. 

    This comes at the end of a column in which the New York Times' economist has castigated the right for "Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate" (Re-posted).

    Every time I read a column by Paul Krugman in which he laments the racism he constantly finds among conservative groups (A War on the Poor, New York Times, November 1), I wonder if he has ever heard about Tim Scott.  Given that for awhile, the legislator from South Carolina was the only member of the United States Senate who is African-American, one would think that his name might be — almost — as renowned as Barack Obama's.

    The explanation for Scott's relative obscurity is that he is a Republican — one who is backed by Tea Partiers (endorsed by Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint, Scott's Senate predecessor) and one from a Southern state to boot.  And were Scott better known, it would be far more difficult for people like Krugman to bewail the racism of Republicans and Tea Partiers, not to mention Southerners. 

    You would think that this black pauper's rise from rags to the halls of the U.S. Senate is a living memorial to Martin Luther King's dream.  But because leftists (conveniently and self-servingly) define themselves as the valiant fighters against the racism they (conveniently and self-servingly) constantly find throughout the ranks of the Republican Party, it comes as no surprise that South Carolina's conservative Senator did not even receive an invitation to participate in the 50th anniversary commemorations of MLK's Lincoln Memorial speech.

    Should Krugman need more evidence of his own prejudices, one could also mention Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal, Republican governors (both of Indian heritage) backed by the Tea Party whose skin is about as dark as, if not darker than, that of Barack Obama. Yes, they too were elected in states from the former Confederacy.

    As for blacks who are favorites of the Tea Party, either nationally or locally, they include Herman Cain, Allen West, Darryl Glenn, and Mia Love as well as Thomas Sowell (the Stanford economist who deserves the Nobel Prize in Economics at least as much as Krugman), Walter Williams, Larry Elder, and Stacey Dash.  But all these African-Americans must be ignored, because for the Left, the only good "Negro" is the martyred "Negro" — the one who constantly thinks he and his like are victims and therefore votes for the victimization party (i.e., the Democrats).

    Currently, one favorite of the Tea Party crowd for presidential candidate in 2016 is Dr Benjamin Carson, a neurosurgeon who is offering a free-market alternative to Obamacare that would keep prices down and Washington's brand-new army of bureaucrats out of the health care system.  His skin, too, is darker than Obama's.

    But all these inconvenient facts must be ignored or belittled by media people like Krugman in order to push the narrative that America is an intolerant hell hole of prejudice populated by hordes of despicable racists.

Note: The initial text of this post held that Tim Scott was the only black member of the United States Senate; that was true at the time of the writing of the post, over several weeks, but 12 days before this post was posted, Cory Booker had become New Jersey's junior senator.

Update:  one year after the original post was written, Tim Scott won South Carolina's 2014 mid-term Senate election — in a landslide

Witness the Unbelievable Amount of Racism That Exists Among Conservatives and in the Tea Party

… there’s also … the stain that won’t go away

writes Paul Krugman darkly in his op-ed:

race. 

    This comes at the end of a column in which the New York Times' economist has castigated the right for "Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate".

    Every time I read a column by Paul Krugman in which he laments the racism he constantly finds among conservative groups (A War on the Poor, New York Times, November 1), I wonder if he has ever heard about Tim Scott.  Given that for awhile, the legislator from South Carolina was the only member of the United States Senate who is African-American, one would think that his name might be — almost — as renowned as Barack Obama's.

    The explanation for Scott's relative obscurity is that he is a Republican — one who is backed by Tea Partiers (endorsed by Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint, Scott's Senate predecessor) and one from a Southern state to boot.  And were Scott better known, it would be far more difficult for people like Krugman to bewail the racism of Republicans and Tea Partiers, not to mention Southerners. 

    You would think that this black pauper's rise from rags to the halls of the U.S. Senate is a living memorial to Martin Luther King's dream.  But because leftists (conveniently and self-servingly) define themselves as the valiant fighters against the racism they (conveniently and self-servingly) constantly find throughout the ranks of the Republican Party, it comes as no surprise that South Carolina's conservative Senator did not even receive an invitation to participate in the 50th anniversary commemorations of MLK's Lincoln Memorial speech.

    Should Krugman need more evidence of his own prejudices, one could also mention Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal, Republican governors (both of Indian heritage) backed by the Tea Party whose skin is about as dark as, if not darker than, that of Barack Obama. Yes, they too were elected in states from the former Confederacy.

    As for blacks who are favorites of the Tea Party, either nationally or locally, they include Herman Cain, Allen West, Darryl Glenn, and Mia Love as well as Thomas Sowell (the Stanford economist who deserves the Nobel Prize in Economics at least as much as Krugman), Walter Williams, and Larry Elder.  But all these African-Americans must be ignored, because for the Left, the only good "Negro" is the martyred "Negro" — the one who constantly thinks he and his like are victims and therefore votes for the victimization party (i.e., the Democrats).

    Currently, one favorite of the Tea Party crowd for presidential candidate in 2016 is Dr Benjamin Carson, a neurosurgeon who is offering a free-market alternative to Obamacare that would keep prices down and Washington's brand-new army of bureaucrats out of the health care system.  His skin, too, is darker than Obama's.

    But all these inconvenient facts must be ignored or belittled by media people like Krugman in order to push the narrative that America is an intolerant hell hole of prejudice populated by hordes of despicable racists.

Note: The initial text of this post held that Tim Scott was the only black member of the United States Senate; that was true at the time of the writing of this post, over several weeks, but 12 days before this post was posted, Cory Booker had become New Jersey's junior senator.

Update:  one year after this post was written, Tim Scott wins South Carolina's 2014 mid-term Senate election — in a landslide

When Demonizing Billionaires, Leftists Like Paul Krugman Conveniently Ignore the Left-Leaning Statists Who Donate (Far More) Millions to the Left

Paul Krugman implicates all billionaires as smug, selfish, pathological and Republican

notes James Gerard, referring to the New York Times columnist's “Privilege, pathology and power” (Jan. 2-3).

Hence they are without empathy, out of touch, and use their money and power to influence elections. What about George Soros, Eli Broad, David Geffen and Tom Steyer? Are they without gobs of money, ego or the desire to inject their own “statist” principles into elections? Have they not sworn to spend countless millions in an effort to “re-shape” America? Mr. Krugman would do better to write about both sides of the billionaires’ battle.

This is how Jonah Goldberg puts it (thanks to Instapundit):

To listen to the Left, [those old devils, Charles and David Koch] are the closest thing we have to real-world James Bond villains. So what is their agenda? Is it to retreat to their orbiting harems, populated with fertile females, as they wipe out humanity below so that they can return to repopulate the planet? Or is to dupe the Russians and Americans into a nuclear squabble so that the Kochs can rule the ashes? 

Well, here’s [Jane] Mayer’s explanation of their dark and sinister ambitions. 

  “What people need to understand is the Kochs have been playing a very long game,” [the author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right] told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “And it’s not just about elections. It started four decades ago with a plan to change how America thinks and votes. So while some elections they win and some elections they lose, what they’re aiming at is changing the conversation in the country.”

Dear God, it’s worse than I thought! They want to change the conversation! They want to persuade Americans to vote differently! The horror, the horror. 

You might be forgiven for thinking that this is pretty much exactly what democracy is about. But no. For you see, only Hollywood, college professors and administrators, the ACLU, People for the American Way, the Human Rights Campaign, NARAL, Emily’s List, the Ford Foundation, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, MoveOn.org, the NAACP, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Steven Spielberg and, of course, publications such as the New York Times [including Paul Krugman], The New Republic, The Nation and Mayer’s own The New Yorker are allowed to try to change conversations and argue for people to vote differently.

For you see, only Hollywood, college professors and administrators, the ACLU, People for the American Way, the Human Rights Campaign, NARAL, Emily’s List, the Ford Foundation, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, MoveOn.org, the NAACP, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Steven Spielberg and, of course, publications such as the New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation and Mayer’s own The New Yorker are allowed to try to change conversations and argue for people to vote differently.

Ah, but those voices are open and honest — and progressive! — about it, while the Kochs are secretive, sinister denizens of the stygian underworld of “dark money” and the “radical right.” Except for the fact that the Kochs have been out in the open for nearly a half-century.

  … How, then, are the Kochs members of the radical Right? 

• They are pro-gay marriage. 

• They favor liberal immigration policies. 

• They are passionate non-interventionists when it comes to foreign policy. 

• They are against the drug war and are spending a bundle on dismantling so-called “mass-incarceration” policies. 

• They’ve never seized a national park at gunpoint. 

They are members of the radical Right for the simple reason that they don’t like big government and spend money to make that case.

 … And that’s their great sin. Liberals are constantly talking about how we need an “honest conversation” about race or guns or this or that. But what they invariably mean is, they want everyone who disagrees to shut up. (That’s why they hate Fox News, too.) 

The best working definition of “right wing” today has almost nothing to do with the ideological content of what right-wingers say or do. 

A right-winger is someone who disagrees with the liberal narrative, has the temerity to say so, and dares to actually try to change the conversation.

Another week, another lumbering, leaden polemic from Paul Krugman

From England's Fawley, one British reader of the International Herald Tribune has had his fill of the New York Times' star economist. Writes Robin Somes (second entry):

Another week, another lumbering, leaden polemic from Paul Krugman over the twin evils of Republicanism and the cutting of government spending (“The Mellon doctrine,” Views, April 4).

As a Briton, I object to Mr. Krugman's continual and inaccurate sneering at my government’s austerity policy. Imperfect as it may be, the alternative is to continue the never-ending and gargantuan cycle of debt foisted on us by Gordon Brown.

While the Republican Party may well be wrong, Mr. Krugman is not necessarily right. When, not if, the rest of the world tires of buying U.S. debt, who then will pick up the tab? It’s a simple question, but I see no answers from Mr. Krugman.

The Krugman double lindy

It's been a really entertaining to watch the spiraling intellectual decline of Paul Krugman.

Rich Tucker exposes Krugman's inability to identify the obvious:

«A favorite game in my house is called “Piggyback Ride.” One of my boys hops on my back, and we attempt to frighten their mother, who convincingly calls out, “Oh, I’m so scared.”

She’s just pretending.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman isn’t. He’s really frightened that conservatives … may start killing liberals.»

Then again there's also Krugman's nutty idea that Conservatives don't make good scientists and, ergo, shouldn't teach. The Harvard Larry Summers kerfuffle reveals that he may be partly right - conservatives refuse to stomp out in a huff in the face of impiricism, and don't see much use in pandering to committee and review panels of non-scientists who want to do things like find genetic determination for gayness but not reproduction, or that there's a stupidity determinant which is only found in their political opponents. hm. Real science...

Besides, wouldn't most conservative scientist try to start their own enterprise or do strictly praxis type real-life work in industry anyway instead of dealing with a horde of loopy 19 year olds?

From our comment section we’ve found one of his fellow travelers. We all know that his limited vision channeled through seeing a band in a club certainly is enough to provide a complete guide to life and the way of the world:

Et les ricains, je connais un trés bon groupe de punk-rock allemand qui s'appel Spermbirds. Vous devriez un peu l'écouter, ça vous déboucherait le cerveau et vous ouvrirait l'esprit.

Mais c'est vrai qu'il est facile de pointer du doigt les néo-nazis (que je ne cautionne en aucun cas), quand chez soi on a le taux de morts par armes à feux le plus élevé du monde. Et surtout n'oublions le KKK, ah oui c'est vrai c'est du folklore...
---
C'est quoi ces sites anti-français et anti-européens ?

Messieurs Mesdammes les ricains et autres crevures capitalistico-impérialistes, je vous pisse à la raie.

Mmm – no illumination there, the Klansmen went after Republicans and Catholics with the same spring-in-their-step as they did with black people who refused to submit to their forcedul proscriptive social policies. The kind of thing the left, guys like Democratic (the left) Party Senator Robert Byrd might force on your beloved 'sheeple.' Plus, I dont think you'll really illuminate anyone with that tune, but it does sound like you just learned a new ‘knock-knock’ joke. Nonetheless, I don't think there are roving bands of Marines herding innocent Europeans up and force feeding them McDo...


Not much is happening everywhere you find Socialistic practices and lefty though not having any sort of balance or complement. It’s a death cult of sorts, making a earthly utopia for only one generation…

Acid Flashback, Paul Krugman-style

Paul Krugman, 2005:

Americans tend to believe that we do everything better than anyone else. That belief makes it hard for us to learn from others. For example, I've found that many people refuse to believe that Europe has anything to teach us about health care policy. After all, they say, how can Europeans be good at health care when their economies are such failures?

Now, there's no reason a country can't have both an excellent health care system and a troubled economy (or vice versa). But are European economies really doing that badly?

The answer is no.

Paul Krugman, 2010:

Folks, this is getting ugly. And the US needs to be thinking about how to insulate itself from European masochism.

Hat-tip: the Statist

@NYTimeskrugman: "It's About Time" that the French Revolted and Voted In the Left

Paul Krugman writes that "it's about time" that Europeans like the French and the Greeks revolted against the system and brought back the left, presumably with all that that entails regarding raising taxes, increasing spending, and using generosity-tolerance-humanitarian-filled expressions and other leftist gobbledygook.

To quote Victor Davis Hanson (thanks to Instapundit):

In 2005, Paul Krugman was writing why Bush’s spending was going to crash the economy; in 2012, Paul Krugman is writing why Obama’s far greater deficit spending, on top of Bush’s debts, is not going to crash the economy, given that we need to borrow far more than our paltry $3 or $4 billion a day.

Meanwhile, Le Monde posts a table with the details of which segments of the French population voted for whom on Sunday.

Slicing and dicing 2008-style

One would think that winning the Nobel Prize for Economics would instill just a wee bit of self-confidence in the New York Times' op-edist Paul Krugman. As seen previously, Mr. Krugman tends to get his fingers a bit singed when pontificating on European affairs.

Never-the-less, todays effort:

So here’s the situation: the economy is facing its worst slump in decades. The usual response to an economic downturn, cutting interest rates, isn’t working. Large-scale government aid looks like the only way to end the economic nosedive.

But there’s a problem: conservative politicians, clinging to an out-of-date ideology — and, perhaps, betting (wrongly) that their constituents are relatively well positioned to ride out the storm — are standing in the way of action.

No, I’m not talking about Bob Corker, the Senator from Nissan — I mean Tennessee — and his fellow Republicans, who torpedoed last week’s attempt to buy some time for the U.S. auto industry. (Why was the plan blocked? An e-mail message circulated among Senate Republicans declared that denying the auto industry a loan was an opportunity for Republicans to “take their first shot against organized labor.”)

I am, instead, talking about Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and her economic officials, who have become the biggest obstacles to a much-needed European rescue plan.

Is Mr. Krugman aware that Germany has (unfortunately) a "grand" coalition of government of left and right? The slicing and dicing started above but really grates here:

As in the United States, monetary policy — cutting interest rates in an effort to perk up the economy — is rapidly reaching its limit. That leaves, as the only way to avert the worst slump since the Great Depression, the aggressive use of fiscal policy: increasing spending or cutting taxes to boost demand. Right now everyone sees the need for a large, pan-European fiscal stimulus.

Everyone, that is, except the Germans. Mrs. Merkel has become Frau Nein: if there is to be a rescue of the European economy, she wants no part of it, telling a party meeting that "we're not going to participate in this senseless race for billions."

Last week Peer Steinbrück, Mrs. Merkel’s finance minister, went even further. Not content with refusing to develop a serious stimulus plan for his own country, he denounced the plans of other European nations. He accused Britain, in particular, of engaging in "crass Keynesianism."

Anyone with a modicum (or a modem) of interest in European affairs knows that the person leading the charge on the German reluctance (not necessarily unwarranted) to jump in feet first and without thinking is indeed Peer Steinbrück. However, Herr Steinbrück is not "Mrs. Merkel's finance minister". Herr Steinbrück is the finance minister from the Social Democratic Party portion of the coalition government led by Frau Merkel.

The point of the post goes back to the beginning of Mr. Krugman's piece:

But there’s a problem: conservative politicians, clinging to an out-of-date ideology — and, perhaps, betting (wrongly) that their constituents are relatively well positioned to ride out the storm — are standing in the way of action.

Who knew, Peer Steinbrück and the left-wing Social Democrats in Germany are amongst the "conservative politicians clinging to an out-of-date ideology". Perhaps this post is rather dancing on the head of a pin, but shouldn't we expect more from our Nobel Laureates?

Just think it is sloppy work on behalf of Mr. Krugman, sure....

Paul Krugman to Europeans: "Long Live Spending!"

In a Le Monde interview with Claire Gatinois, Paul Krugman tells the Europeans that the debt ain't that bad; that we are wrong to think that the debt is what is most harmful for the future; that what matters is education and infrastructure; that price rises have been demonized, something which is an ideological trap; that austerity is destructive, even on a fiscal plan; that Obama's stimulus was not enough; that even FDR's New Deal was inadequate; that Hollande's 75% tax for the very rich is far from being a crazy idea; and long live spending!

Paul Krugman, Prix Nobel d'économie 2008 et chroniqueur au New York Times, fait figure d'incompris. Jugeant « affligeante » la situation économique de l'Europe, cet Américain, keynésien convaincu, encourage la dépense publique. Une thèse présente dans son livre, Sortez-nous de cette crise... maintenant !, qui va à rebours des politiques d'austérité menées par la plupart des dirigeants de la zone euro.
En ces temps de surendettement public, pouvez-vous vraiment dire : « Vive la dépense ! » ?
Oui. La dette est élevée, mais ce n'est pas toujours un problème. Au Royaume-Uni ou dans les pays du coeur de l'Europe, les Etats peuvent encore emprunter à moindre coût. Et il faut rappeler que l'endettement public britannique était bien plus élevé entre les deux guerres, quand Keynes défendait une politique de relance. Nous avons des preuves concrètes que maintenir la dépense publique dans une économie déprimée ne dégrade pas considérablement les finances publiques. A long terme, cela peut même les améliorer : vous empruntez à des taux très faibles et l'économie, plus forte, permet d'engranger plus de recettes fiscales. Surtout, vous limitez les dégâts provoqués à long terme par la récession. En résumé, l'austérité est destructrice même sur le plan fiscal !
Pourtant personne ne vous écoute.
Mon avis n'est pas celui d'un marginal, c'est le résultat de recherches menées par Larry Summers [il fut secrétaire au Trésor de Bill Clinton] et par l'économiste Brad DeLong. Aujourd'hui, les gouvernements interprètent à leur manière la situation, et, jusqu'ici, ils se sont beaucoup trompés...
S'endetter, n'est-ce pas laisser un triste héritage aux générations futures ?
Laisser à la jeunesse un pays sans emplois, où les usines sont en mauvais état, n'est pas un cadeau. On a tort de penser que la dette est ce qu'il y a de plus nocif pour l'avenir. La chose la plus importante, c'est de permettre aux générations de s'instruire, de développer les infrastructures, etc.
Après la crise de 2008, le keynésianisme mis en place s'est traduit par un endettement planétaire, mais sans les succès que vous annoncez.
Les plans de relance ont stoppé la chute libre de l'économie. Mais leur ampleur était insuffisante et leur durée inappropriée. On a basculé dans l'austérité dès la mi-2010, quand la reprise s'essoufflait. Nous n'avons pas mené de véritable politique keynésienne. Tout juste avons-nous mis en place de brefs stimuli budgétaires. Même aux Etats-Unis, où le plan a été le plus important [787 milliards de dollars], la relance n'était pas suffisante.
On a pourtant comparé ce plan au New Deal !
Mais le New Deal était lui aussi inadéquat. Ce n'est pas lui qui a sorti l'économie américaine de la Grande Dépression. C'est la préparation militaire à la seconde guerre mondiale qui a relancé l'industrie de l'armement. L'équivalent d'un stimuli de l'ordre de 10 % du PIB. Aujourd'hui, nous ne sommes pas en « grande dépression », quoique... J'aurais été satisfait avec un plan de relance de 4 points de PIB renouvelé pendant trois ans. Cela peut paraître élevé, mais lorsqu'un Etat peut emprunter à des taux négatifs, c'est raisonnable.
Ce qui n'est pas le cas des pays européens.
C'est le cas de l'Allemagne et de la France. En France, imposer une cure d'austérité, c'est donc faire fausse route.
Justement, le gouvernement socialiste ne parle pas d'austérité, mais de « redressement dans la justice ». Une hypocrisie ?
L'hypocrisie est un trait de caractère universel...
Et que penser de la taxation des revenus à 75 % pour les très riches ?
Ce n'est pas une idée folle. Peter Diamond, un Prix Nobel d'économie, a évalué le taux optimal de la fiscalité des revenus les plus élevés à 73 %. Mais cette théorie est valable pour des économies qui, comme les Etats-Unis, sont relativement fermées. Ce n'est pas le cas de la France.
Il est exclu d'augmenter le déficit en Europe du Sud. Que peuvent faire ces pays ?
J'ai beaucoup d'empathie pour les chefs de gouvernement des pays de la périphérie de l'Europe. Ils n'ont pas beaucoup de marge de manoeuvre. Tout juste peuvent-ils plaider pour atténuer l'austérité en disant : « Hé, regardez à quoi mène 1 point de PIB d'économie budgétaire en plus ! » A rien. Leur sort se joue à Francfort et à Bruxelles... Oh non ! pardon, Bruxelles n'a pas de pouvoirs, c'est Francfort et Berlin qui en ont. Aussi longtemps que ces pays d'Europe du Sud resteront dans la zone euro, seule la Banque centrale européenne (BCE) peut les aider. Elle peut limiter les coûts de leurs emprunts grâce à une politique monétaire expansionniste et les aider à exporter : en installant un peu d'inflation dans les pays du coeur de l'Europe, ils gagneront en compétitivité.
Peut-on dire où se nichera la hausse des prix ?
Si l'économie repart en Europe, il y aura le plein-emploi dans les pays du coeur de l'Europe et des pressions pour des hausses de salaires, donc plus d'inflation dans le centre et moins dans la périphérie. Les pays qui souffrent regagneront en compétitivité.
C'est séduisant. Pourquoi ne le fait-on pas ?
Il y a un dogme. Il est évident que les officiels, notamment en Allemagne, ne pensent pas comme moi. Berlin est entré dans l'euro en imposant des conditions, notamment qu'il n'y ait plus jamais, jamais, d'inflation. Ils ont diabolisé la hausse des prix. C'est un piège idéologique.
L'inflation est souvent cause de révoltes populaires. Cela ne vous effraie-t-il pas ?
On brandit le spectre d'une inflation galopante. C'est un fantasme. L'hyperinflation surgit quand les gouvernements font marcher la planche à billets. Ce n'est pas cela ici. Je comprends le trauma allemand lié à l'hyperinflation de 1923, mais la déflation qui a suivi (baisse des prix et des salaires) a fait des dégâts aussi grands. Et personne ne parle d'autre chose que d'une inflation de 4 % maximum. Rien de terrible pour le pouvoir d'achat.
Le problème est donc idéologique ?
Le problème est économique, mais il requiert une action politique. Pour la mener, il faut changer les mentalités.
Vous parlez d'un « grand mensonge ». La crise est-elle instrumentalisée pour attaquer l'Etat-providence ?
C'est ce qui arrive dans beaucoup de pays. Aux Etats-Unis, au Royaume-Uni et en Europe continentale, la crise a été provoquée par le secteur financier et les marchés, mais elle a été réinterprétée en : « Tout cela, c'est parce que l'Etat-providence est trop gros. »
Nous serions victimes d'un complot ?
Aux Etats-Unis, le mouvement conservateur, relayé par de grandes fortunes qui contrôlent think tanks ou médias, influence les discours et les politiques.
Et en Europe ?
On parle beaucoup de réformes structurelles. Ce qui veut dire : remettre en question l'Etat-providence. Je ne suis pas forcément contre mais il est clair qu'une frange importante de l'opinion pense qu'il faut réduire la protection sociale.
Vous parlez des « austériens ». Qui sont-ils ?
La Banque centrale européenne, l'OCDE et, d'une certaine manière, la Commission européenne pensent qu'il est nécessaire de réduire les déficits, bien que les économies soient en récession. Quand je parle des « austériens », je pense notamment à Jean-Claude Trichet, l'ex-patron de la BCE.
Son successeur, Mario Draghi, trouve-t-il davantage grâce à vos yeux ?
M. Draghi a fait des choses très astucieuses. Je pense qu'il est plus souple que M. Trichet. Je suis donc prudemment optimiste pour la suite.
La BCE a beaucoup de pouvoirs, sans être une entité démocratique. Doit-on s'en inquiéter ?
L'euro est une monnaie unique sans gouvernement unique. Une création bancale. Le résultat est que la BCE, entité technocratique, joue un rôle central. On peut espérer qu'elle soit un jour relayée par une organisation élue démocratiquement. Mais cela n'arrivera pas avant une décennie. Au moins. Sans doute pas de mon vivant.
Vous voulez dire que l'Europe fédérale est une utopie ?
L'union bancaire est à portée de main. Pour le reste, ce sera compliqué.
L'Allemagne semble pourtant défendre l'union politique...
C'est une chose étonnante que de parler avec des officiels allemands. Ils vous parlent de règles budgétaires. Vous leur dites : « Mais l'Irlande n'avait pas de problème de déficits publics. » Ils répondent : « Il faut des règles budgétaires. » Il n'y a pas de discussion rationnelle possible. La bonne nouvelle est que l'Allemagne est de plus en plus isolée, notamment au sein de la BCE.
Comme nombre d'Anglo-Saxons, vous étiez eurosceptique. Cette crise vous donne raison ?
J'aurais aimé avoir tort. Je suis europhile dans le fond. Je veux que l'euro survive. Pensez-vous encore que la zone euro risque d'éclater ?
La BCE est consciente du danger. Mais en cas de faux pas, il ne faudrait pas longtemps pour mettre la zone euro au bord du précipice.
A vous écouter, nous traversons une situation comparable à celle des années 1980, où dominaient les théories néolibérales.
Cela y ressemblait, au sens où les gens qui s'opposaient à l'austérité n'avaient pas droit à la parole. Mais les choses changent. Mon avis gagne de plus en plus de terrain.

Requiring all citizens to purchase something, regardless of how worthy the cause, is a tax imposed on all the living

A reader of the International Herald Tribune puts one of the New York Times' star columnists straight:

Regarding Broccoli and bad faith (Views, March 31): Paul Krugman fears certain Supreme Court justices don’t understand how insurance works. I fear Mr. Krugman doesn’t understand how taxation works. It is not people who are taxed; rather, it is their income and their taxable assets. Someone with no income and no assets cannot be taxed merely for existing. Requiring all citizens to purchase something, regardless of how worthy the cause being funded, is a tax imposed on all the living, regardless of their circumstances. This cannot be compared to any principle of taxation.

Stanislas Yassukovich,
Oppède, France

And while you're at the IHT link, check the letter below his for one leftist European's proud tirade — he claims to "speak for many millions of Europeans" no less — against that terrible danger to humanity and to civilization, I am speaking (or Peter ten Hoopen is, rather) of… Starbucks!

Our self-styled bipartisan president is telling his critics to shut up, while his partners in crime are calling them un-American and Nazis

Our self-styled bipartisan president is telling his critics to shut up,

writes David Limbaugh (in his article about the "hubris, arrogance, and deceit of President Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership [which] are breathtaking"),

while his partners in crime, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues, are calling them un-American and Nazis.

… It wasn't enough for Pelosi to call us Nazis. She also co-wrote, with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, an op-ed in USA Today calling us un-American and projecting her own nefarious tactics onto her opposition.

… How can these government propaganda ministers sleep at night? They are the ones misrepresenting the legislation and closing their meetings to genuine dissent.

… Obama … obviously thinks that he has the unilateral right as president, with 53 percent of the vote, to use our money to impoverish and enslave us and destroy our health care and that we have no right even to object. We only get to speak every two years.

Meanwhile, Phyllis Schlafly says that "We are seeing a coordinated smear on those who oppose socialized medicine" while Dennis Prager writes that the

worst part of the liberal mantra, "Dissent is Patriotic," however, is not that is meaningless. It is that it is apparently meant solely to defend liberal and left dissent. Dissent against the right is inherently patriotic.

Dissent against the left is another matter. To Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and to the New York Times Paul Krugman and every other left-wing commentator I have read on the issue, those who dissent against the Obama/Democratic Party health care plan are not only not patriotic; they are Nazis, mobs, white racists (according to Krugman's non-sequitur thesis) and are always organized. They are activists sent by health insurance companies, the Republican Party, or by some other nefarious right-wing organization.

…Like most of the left since Marx, the American left today has created an image of the world to which reality is subservient. Left-wing theories define reality, not vice versa. And in that closed world, left-wing dissent is patriotic, while dissent against the left is fascistic at worst, or paid for by the greedy at best.

"If your policies are adopted, people will die" is worse than hyperbole; it is a kind of intellectual blackmail — anyone who resorts to such language isn't trying to engage in debate; they are trying to shut off debate

In his Arguable column, Jeff Jacobytakes on The intellectual blackmail of 'people will die':

PAUL KRUGMAN … recently commented on President Trump's hostility toward the so-called "deep state" and the new administration's restrictions on federal employees. "Donald Trump Wants You to Die," his Jan. 24 essay was headlined. He predicted that under Trump, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies will be "emasculated and politicized" and "banned from making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump. ... And many Americans will die as a result."

Around the same time as Krugman's piece was published on Substack, an article in The Appeal, a left-of-center news site that covers the criminal justice system, appeared under an equally dire headline: "'People Will Die' from Trump's Trans Prisoner Crackdown, Experts Warn." Over at Indivisible, another progressive website, Trump's short-lived order to freeze spending on federal loans and grants was described not only as a "dictatorial power grab" but as "chaos that will kill" and "a death sentence for millions of Americans."

I have long been struck by the popularity of such arguments on the left.

 … Once I started looking, I kept spotting examples of liberals playing the death card. There was the prominent Massachusetts welfare lobbyist, for example, who warned that if a 4 percent trim in the state budget were approved, "people will be dying in hidden corners all over the state. ... They may die slowly, but they will die."

 … At times it seemed as if liberals thought pretty much everything proposed by Trump or Republicans would leave the streets strewn with corpses.

Tax relief, for instance.

 … To be fair, conservatives have been known to do the same thing.

I have always been an admirer of Jeff Jacoby; but regularly, the Boston Globe columnist attempts to lump left and right together under his benevolent stare rising above all of them. "Well, the GOP is just, or almost just, as bad…" Or: a curse on both their houses. Thus, when Jeff Jacobyclaims that "The spreading willingness on the right to engage in over-the-top 'people will die' talk is one of the most disheartening ways in which the MAGA movement has perverted conservative discourse ", he ignores the fact that there is reason and there are facts behind, say, Trump's election contention that Joe Biden's "White House had admitted more than 13,000 convicted murderers, who were roaming the country." Or behind Sarah Palin's claim that "Democrats were pushing legislation under which the sick and the elderly would have to stand before a government 'death panel' and have bureaucrats decide if they live or die." Jeff Jacoby does go on to admit that Leftists — being Drama Queens, after all — are the worse perpetrators.

 … Much more often than not, however, it is pundits and politicos on the left who are quickest to play the death card. That reflects the attitude, long prevalent among progressives, that anyone who disagrees with their prescriptions is not just wrong but evil — someone to recoil from, not to reason with; not to debate but to damn.

"If your policies are adopted, people will die" is worse than hyperbole. It is a kind of intellectual blackmail. If you abolish rent control, people will die. If you cut taxes, people will die. If you confirm a conservative justice, people will die. If you modify Obamacare, people will die. If you don't seal the border, people will die. With rare exceptions, anyone who resorts to such language isn't trying to engage in debate; they are trying to shut off debate by invoking the ultimate moral trump card.

In a democracy, persuasion ought to matter more than panic. When politicians — or Nobel laureates, for that matter — think the way to win a policy debate is to claim their opponents are murderers, it's a good indication their position isn't as strong as they think.

Europe: the world’s tidy, slick, and chilly departure lounge

Joel Kotkin, writing in The American Enterprise Institute’s journal points out the simple fact of an overlooked aspect of immigration: that transiting between parts of the developed world.

«Yet even as the European masses headed to this side of the Atlantic for a better life, some intellectual and social elites insisted that Europe’s culture was better than anything found in the United States. As an intellectual, cultural, and artistic center, Europe was unsurpassed. That belief remains powerful today. Some, like American writer Richard Florida, have even suggested that some of the brightest and most culturally sophisticated young Americans—the much-ballyhooed “creative class”—may in the future seek their fortunes in Europe. Glowing journalistic anecdotes about cities such as Prague, Berlin, Paris, London, and Dublin have suggested that significant numbers of America’s best and brightest may end up expatriating themselves to the continent.
[ … ]
New Yorkers have a perfect one-word response for such claims: fuggedaboutit. Europe may be a great place to visit, but U.S. emigration to the continent is paltry—while the reverse flow from Europe to the United States remains at consistently high levels even with the somewhat bothersome screenings imposed after 9/11. While Europeans are no longer the primary immigrants to the U.S. (that role having been taken over by Latin Americans and Asians), they remain an important factor in the continuing re-invention of America.»

It’s awfully hard for proponents of the European social model (whatever that is this week) to argue the inferiority of the US as they always seem to lead to when the numbers don’t bear it out.

«The future doesn’t look much brighter for the continent. Under current conditions, according to the European Central Bank, the Euro Zone’s overall growth potential is roughly half that of the United States. The wishful notion that the E.U. would overtake the United States as the world’s “most competitive, knowledge-based economy” by 2010, much discussed at the time of European unification, has now been dismissed, even by many Europeans themselves, as wildly over-optimistic.

Under such circumstances, the United States remains a tremendous lure for many Europeans, especially younger, educated individuals. This is particularly true in technological fields, where Europe’s best brains are leaving in droves. Some 400,000 E.U. science and technology graduates currently reside in the United States, and barely one in seven, according to a recent European Commission poll, intend to return. “The U.S. is a sponge that’s happy to soak up talent from across the globe,” observes one Irish scientist.
Similar perspectives can be found in a host of other cutting-edge industries, including financial services, where, with the exception of London, New York has an almost unparalleled global appeal. Attempts to build a new European financial center in Frankfurt—sometimes called “Mainhattan” after the river running through the western German city—or in Paris, have failed to meet even modest expectations.
[ … ]
Amidst all this, it is perhaps not surprising that a powerful new wave of European immigration to the U.S. is taking place. This trend began in the 1980s, with fashionable affluents from West European capitals, and expanded to include many Eastern Europeans after the fall of communism. The wave has gradually grown to include Russian Jews, refugees from the Balkans, and new Italian, German, British, Greek, Polish, and other immigrants. Eastern European immigrants constituted one out of four New York immigrants in the late 1990s. They have also become an important factor in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston. Even relatively out of the way places like Utica, New York and St. Louis have been revitalized by waves of European immigrants from new places like Bosnia.
All told, European immigration to the United States jumped by some 16 percent during the 1990s. Europe’s percentage of total immigrants to the U.S. rose crisply between 1998 and 2001. Visa applications dropped after 9/11, but then increased last year by 10 percent. The total number of European-born Americans increased by roughly 700,000 during the last three years, with a heavy inflow from the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, Romania, and France. These new immigrants have dispersed across many parts of the country, but have been especially drawn to New York, California, and Florida. Today’s westward human flow across the Atlantic is more critical to the future of the United States than mere numbers can indicate. In contrast to many of our other immigrants, newcomers from Europe, particularly those under 40, tend to be highly educated. And while frivolous “Eurotrash” socialites may gain the attention of the press, most young European migrants are hard-working, professionally serious, and ambitious.»

Olaf Gersemann writes in the same edition that:

«BERLIN—They call themselves “The Happy Unemployed,” and they fight “the dictatorship of wage dependency”—at a very leisurely pace.

Europeans who are unable to get work find the experience as stressful as Americans do. A German government report describes the personal afflictions that have sprung up amidst the country’s economic stagnation: “Depressive moods, general dissatisfaction with life, fear, helplessness and hopelessness, low self-esteem, resignation bordering on apathy, a low level of activity, social isolation, and loneliness.”

The inescapable reality is that the economies of the major countries on the European continent are basket cases: They produce the unemployed by the millions. Even more frightening, European economies are creating a new kind of stratified society, in which a substantial and growing minority is shut out from the labor market permanently through absurdly high minimum-wage requirements and overly strict regulations (like the employment protection laws that can make it almost impossible to fire people).»

It also doesn’t help that leftists ion the continent take comfort in the statements of an American economist who is so incredibly tainted by his political feelings as to be misleading:

«Princeton economist Paul Krugman, when recently comparing Europe and the U.S. in the New York Times, wrote that: “The big difference is in priorities, not performance.” Krugman’s assertion is basically this: The income gap is not the result of lower efficiency in Europe. It is the result of Europeans working less than Americans. Not because they can’t find work, but because they work fewer hours, preferring to spend more time with their families and on leisure activities. »

The cultures are diverging, and seemingly for good. The problem is that the Unites States is accomplishing socially what lefty Europe is intending to do, and failing at. At the same time pointing to the U.S. as failing the poor and the week when it’s succeeding in raising the standard of living of huge numbers of people.

Even over the course of 20 years of this pattern, many still maintain that same argument while a puzzled European public senses more distance with the ‘class in charge’.

«True, measured simply as GDP per hour worked, productivity is not much higher in the United States than, say, France. But what Krugman doesn’t mention is that America is close to full employment, whereas in Europe millions of poorly educated people can’t find an employer willing to pay them the artificially high minimum wage or willing to take a chance on such hires because they may be impossible to fire in the future. In other words, Europe seems to be so productive only because a large portion of its people are simply left out of the productivity statistics (and working life).
If labor productivity in Germany and in the U.S. continues on the same path as from 1996 to 2003, per capita income in Germany will grow by only 44 percent by the time American incomes double in 2026. Put differently, within a generation, Americans will enjoy twice the economic status that Germans do.»

Sooner or later the Old Europe’s political class will notice, and likely face their greatest fear – to be replaced by a different view. The public is not likely to look back kindly of those who held on stubbornly to social policies that grew unviable for so long. Perhaps a self-interested concern for their own legacy is what is lacking.

French MP Ties Romney's Negative Reputation in France to French Anti-Americanism

As Le Monde is forced to admit that Mitt Romney is gaining momentum in the polls, and as Corine Lesnes feels it necessary to point out that Barack the "Magical Negro" (she uses the two-word term "Nègre magique" herself, as well as that of the "super-hero black man" or the "Noir super-héros") may have been overrated, Olivier Dassault pens an op-ed in which the UMP Member of Parliament (MP or député) ties Romney's negative reputation to anti-Americanism.

S'il est un courant de pensée toujours très vif en France, c'est bien l'antiaméricanisme. Plus ou moins latent, notre antiaméricanisme traditionnel s'en donne à coeur joie lors de l'élection présidentielle américaine. Il y a quatre ans cependant, la victoire de Barack Obama semblait l'avoir fait disparaître mais l'état de grâce n'eut qu'un temps.

Ce qu'on a appelé "l'obamania" fit du nouveau président l'icône d'une Amérique que l'Europe pourrait aimer de nouveau. Mais, cette année, crise oblige, Barack Obama est redevenu humain, leader d'une puissance vacillante, économiquement affaiblie et divisée. Adieu les rêves, bonjour la réalité !

La réalité d'un monde où la montée en puissance des pays émergents, l'instabilité géopolitique et une crise financière d'une gravité exceptionnelle bouleversent la donne. Les Etats-Unis furent la première victime de cette crise.

En octobre 2009, le taux de chômage y était monté à 10 % de la population active, le plus haut depuis 1981. Depuis, il n'a cessé de diminuer pour atteindre 8,2 %, son plus bas niveau depuis avril 2009. Si cette embellie est à porter au crédit du président Barack Obama, on peut s'interroger sur le coût des moyens mis en oeuvre. Un plan de relance de 831 milliards de dollars (642,9 milliards d'euros) pour un pays qui a déjà une dette de 16 000 milliards de dollars, soit 107 % de son PIB, était-il raisonnable ?

Malgré cet effort, les thuriféraires de la dépense publique n'en furent pas satisfaits, comme le très keynésien Prix Nobel d'économie, Paul Krugman. Christina Romer, ex-présidente du conseil économique de la Maison Blanche, voulait, elle, en porter le montant à 1 800 milliards de dollars.

Solution à la crise

Attaché à la notion de responsabilité, il m'est impossible de souscrire à ce qui en est la négation, à savoir la dépense illimitée dans un contexte de ressources limitées. Et si "en politique, l'absurdité n'est pas un obstacle", comme l'écrivait Napoléon, les réalités budgétaires constitueront toujours des écueils sur lesquels s'échoueront les navires mal pilotés.

Prendre parti dans une élection étrangère depuis Paris n'a pas beaucoup de sens, mais je souhaite mettre en garde contre toute caricature de Mitt Romney et de son colistier, Paul Ryan, libéraux américains fidèles à leurs valeurs, que l'on ne peut juger à l'aune de nos critères européens si l'on souhaite les comprendre.

Républicain ou démocrate, le prochain président devra être celui qui récréera les conditions d'une économie prospère, car nous avons besoin d'une Amérique forte. A eux seuls, les Etats-Unis représentent 20 % du PIB mondial et un tiers des exportations et importations globales. Ils sont, hors Union européenne, le premier "client" de la France (22 milliards d'exportations françaises). Et les échanges euro-américains demeurent le moteur de l'économie mondiale, avec 610 milliards d'euros auxquels il faut ajouter les investissements directs de part et d'autre de l'Atlantique (près de 1 300 milliards d'euros), sans oublier les quinze millions de personnes employées par des sociétés européennes aux Etats-Unis et américaines en Europe.

C'est ensemble qu'Américains et Européens trouveront une solution à la crise, car nous sommes frappés des mêmes maux : hausse de la dette, fragilisation de l'économie et du lien social, réponses politiques inadaptées. La solution pourrait être la création d'une véritable zone de libre-échange regroupant l'Union européenne et les Etats-Unis, voire l'Accord de libre-échange nord-américain (Alena). Ce projet consisterait à tenter une synthèse de ce que chacun a de meilleur : la capacité d'innovation américaine alliée à celle des Etats européens d'offrir à leurs citoyens des conditions de vie et de développement personnel de très grande qualité.

Un subtil dosage entre le dynamisme américain et l'humanisme européen. Nous avons besoin de la capacité américaine de tirer vers le haut les économies du reste de la planète. A nous ensuite de nous adapter pour profiter de ce nouveau cercle vertueux !

The Story of Five Men Gunned Down Becomes Perturbing When It Goes Against the Narrative

My God isn't this horrible? Doesn't Fox News show its racism by showing the faces of the victim and of the killer in a case where the tragedy does NOT show white-on-black racism?!

Fox News isn't following the narrative!

As Kevin D. Williamson puts it (thanks to Instapundit), the

same people who literally blamed the NRA for the Orlando shooting while the blood was still being mopped up are today demanding that Black Lives Matter not be smeared by association with the violence in Dallas.

The people who blamed Sarah Palin’s use of crosshairs as a graphic-design element on a poster (“targeting” certain Democrats for electoral challenges) for the shooting of Gabby Giffords suddenly have nothing to say about violent and irresponsible rhetoric.

 I myself hold to the view that we hold criminals responsible for their actions and that speeches given by third parties are generally, at most, tangential questions. Maybe your view is different, and that’s fine: But pick one.

Leftists are not only not demanding that Black Lives Matter not be smeared by association with the violence in Dallas, they are also steadfast in their insisting that the entire left, including their post-racial healer-in-chief aka the activist-in-chief in the White House, have no ties to the Dallas killings…

Stephen Miller:

America finds itself rocked once again by post racial violence in the era of “Hope and Change,” stoked by a president content to fan the flames before facts or motivations are known in ongoing investigations.

Back-to-back shootings of young African-American men, this time in Baton Rouge and St. Paul, captivated social media. The shootings certainly looked bad, but judging what is on a Facebook Live video is something for social media pundits, not sitting presidents.

The nation then sat by and watched as police officers in Dallas were gunned down by a group of suspects, with one perpetrator reportedly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and angry at the shootings that led up to this.

Read the whole thing, i.e., read Stephen Miller's short history of Obama’s habit of jumping to conclusions when it comes to the police coupled with "the media’s love affair with race riots"…
John Ziegler has a question:

As the news media refuses, as it seems to have done so far, to even address the black online support for these soul-crushing murders, it will further prove this point. Can you imagine the outrage in the news media if the Charleston murderer Dylann Roof had been widely supported online by whites and no one in the white community, or conservative media, had immediately condemned that response? It would obviously be a huge part of the story’s entire narrative. In this situation that’s not allowed because, under the media’s absurd rules of political correctness, it would somehow be “racist” to criticize black people. 

Ben Shapiro weighs in by asking, point blank, what sort of responsibility does President Obama bear for the massacre: Is Barack Obama Responsible For The Dallas Anti-Cop Terror Attack?

First off, let’s point out the obvious double standard from the left: when a white racist, Dylann Storm Roof, shot up a Charleston black church, the left immediately blamed a widespread culture of racism, and insisted that states across the country tear down Confederate war memorials and stop sponsoring the Confederate flag at state capitols. When non-black cops shoot black suspects, the left insists – without a shred of evidence – that such killings are endemic among police officers, and that the entire system is racist. When anti-Donald Trump protesters riot against Trump supporters, the left blame Trump’s rhetoric. When a nutcase shoots up an area near a Planned Parenthood, the left blames the pro-life movement. When another nutcase shoots Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the left blames Sarah Palin’s Congressional targets map.

But when obvious anti-white racists murder white cops, the left suggests that gun control is the issue; when obvious Islamic terrorists murder gay people in a nightclub in Orlando, the problem is white Christians who don’t support same-sex marriage and Republicans who defend gun rights.

In other words, for the left, rhetoric can only connect with murder when it’s rhetoric they don’t like. If they do like the rhetoric -- or at least if they want to defend the people responsible for the rhetoric -- then the actual motivation for murder will be [omitted].

But now let’s tackle the real question: when is rhetoric responsible for violence? Rhetoric is responsible for violence when it calls for violence. Radical Islam calls for jihad. Protesters chanting “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” calls for violence against cops. Barack Obama didn’t call for violence against cops.

That said, he did do three things that are particularly despicable:

1. He denied that murder charges require evidence;
2. He denied that charges of racism require evidence;
3. He ignored the actual cause of anti-cop violence.

Obama didn’t cause the Orlando shooting attack, but his failure to label it Islamic jihadism surely stopped America from fighting it properly. Obama didn’t cause the Dallas shootings, but his attempts to turn the conversation toward gun control or police brutality are just another way to avoid a real conversation about anti-white racism.

As usual, Jonah Goldberg presents some good commentary:

 … here is something particularly vile and disgusting in the way many of the leading masters of sanctimony keep changing their standards. When a registered Democrat and Muslim murdered people in Orlando in the name of ISIS, it was outrageous to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t point fingers at Christian conservatives or the NRA. When Gabby Giffords was shot by an utterly apolitical schizophrenic, Paul Krugman blamed it on Michele Bachmann’s “eliminationist rhetoric.” The Democratic party almost en masse blamed it on some crosshairs on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page. The Orwellians leapt out of their bunkers and started memory-holing martial metaphors.

But now, I gather, any suggestion that rhetoric from Black Lives Matter influenced these murderers is beyond the pale.

I keep repeating the old line: Behind every apparent double standard is an un-confessed single standard. The single standard here is that only the right people may politicize tragedy. Only the right people get to determine what sort of speech incites violence. Only the right people know when it’s a time for prayer and unity and when it’s time to take up action. Only the right people know when the blame falls solely on the murderers and when the murderers are simply a symptom of a larger problem. And when anyone disagrees with the right people, they reveal themselves to be the wrong people. Because you can only be right if you agree with the right people.

See also: What Is to Blame for Mass Shootings?
Does the Blame Lie with the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Missing the point

Today's offering from Paul Krugman is the usual. However, this bit still shows even our Nobel Laureates do not quite grasp reality:

The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.

The good doctor fails in Political Reality 101. Iron-clad rule #2 for politicians:

Use the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies

Iron-clad rule #1 is, of course:

Do or say anything to get elected and/or stay in office

The usual blather about "public service", normally near the bottom of the list, does come into play if it abets rules 1 and 2 above.

We really should expect more from our betters in the commentariat.

Just like in the 1850s and 1860s, the Democratic Party Embraces Political Violence in Response to the Election of a Republican President

If we follow the course we are on, we will see more unhappiness, more violence, more repressive national-security policies, less prosperity, less freedom, and less of anything that looks like the quite-good-enough America we already have.

"The American Left has embraced political violence" writes Kevin Williamson of what he calls "the modern answer to the beer-hall brawlers of the 1930s" while George Rasley wonders if the Left just started the Civil War that it has been threatening:

Democrats and their liberal allies in the media seem surprised that James T. Hodgkinson acted upon their calls for “resistance” and “taking it to the streets” by mounting an armed attack on a group of Republican elected officials.

They shouldn't be, because as our friend “Tyler Durden” of Zero Hedge documented back in March, senior Democratic leaders have not been bashful about encouraging the violence.

… However, it is not politicians who are the most violent and most influential advocates of violence.

It is a very short – and logical – hop from organized Leftists rioting and assaulting Donald Trump supporters in Chicago, to a Far Left university professor beating Trump supporters with a bike lock at Berkeley, to a Far Left activist shooting up the Republican congressional baseball practice.

CHQ's George Rasley goes on to present a short list of some of the more – and prescient – statements from Leftist advocates of violent resistance to President Trump and the Republican agenda, compiled by Nick Short of the Center for Security Policy. (Thanks for the link, Maggie.)

James T. Hodgkinson wasn’t a “nut.” He wasn’t “deranged.” And he wasn’t “sick.” He was a Leftist terrorist, just like Obama’s buddy Bill Ayres of the Weather Underground and Puerto Rican terrorist Oscar Lopez-Rivera, who was recently honored as a hero by New York's Democratic Mayor Bill DeBlasio.

Hodgkinson’s attack wasn’t mental illness. Read his writings, read the political manifesto in his letters to the editor and it doesn’t require an FBI investigation to recognize that this was the first “lone wolf” attack in the Left’s long-planned American civil war.

Back to NRO's Kevin Williamson:

“The old is better” may be a convenient caricature of conservative thinking, but it is not one without some basis. “To be conservative,” Michael Oakeshott wrote, “is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”

 … This is not a “both sides do it” issue: Paul Krugman can speak on any college campus in this country without enduring mob violence and organized terrorism — Charles Murray cannot. There is not anything on the right like the mass terrorism behind the Seattle riots of 1999 or the black-bloc riots of the day before yesterday. The Democratic party, progressive organizations, and college administrations have some serious political and intellectual housekeeping to do here — but, instead, they are in the main refusing to acknowledge that they have a problem. The line between “Punch a Nazi!” and “Assassinate a Republican congressman!” is morally perforated.

In another post, the NRO writer adds that

we have powerful political figures working to criminalize dissent. The same people who have spent the past 30 years cooking up ever-battier campus speech codes want to do the same thing for society at large in the form of so-called hate-speech regulation. 

They do this partly because they intend to win and to rule. They also do it because they have convinced themselves that we are in a state of national crisis, and that the dark shadow of fascism in descending on the United States. In reality, the only thing resembling a genuine totalitarian movement in American politics is the progressive camp from which emerged the man who shot Steve Scalise. 

Once you’ve accepted political violence as a legitimate tool in the context of American democracy — once you have concluded that the decision to use violence is only a matter of strategy, as Slavoj Žižek insists — then progress from pepper spray and bicycle locks to rifles and bombs is neither very long nor very difficult to anticipate.

Related, the 1850s and the 1860s:

• Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech".

• What Caused Secession and Ergo the Civil War? Was It Slavery and/or States' Rights? Or Wasn't It Rather Something Else — the Election of a Ghastly Republican to the White House?