Taking Apart Paul Krugman
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Enron Advisors | Historical Illiteracy | History — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Brink Lindsey does the honors and performs his task remarkably well. At the end of his post, Krugman's arguments and his thesis are rightly viewed as being in tatters.
Pay particular attention to the following passage written by Lindsey:
In these clips we see, not subtlety or insight or analytical ingenuity, but the Manichean worldview of the true believer: one mass political movement, defined by its noble intentions, accomplishes unalloyed good, while a rival mass political movement, motivated by base and selfish values, works to undo that good.
Much of the critiques of George W. Bush, of course, revolve around the contention that he too holds Manichean views of just about every topic under the sun. Interesting then that Krugman lives up--or down--to the popular portrayal of the very President he so ardently despises.
Oh, and I am not sure that Krugman is all that smart, given that his arguments are so easily deconstructed. Then again, perhaps it is just that his intellectual talents do not lend themselves to punditry. I consider it a possibility as well that Krugman may be just as smart as Lindsey describes him, but so tremendously dishonest that his shading of the truth is called out with the greatest of ease.
Taking Apart Paul Krugman 8 Comments (0 topical, 8 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
He's just a rigid ideologue who castigates others for being rigid ideologues....all the while defending an ideology that so frequently doesn't live up to expectations.
There's a difference.
It appears that Krugman really ticked a bunch of people off (what else is new, I suppose). Here's another author---Clark Baker---taking Krugman apart in Paul Krugman's 1933 Worldview.
and thanks to Redstate for a great and influential site!
I just want to comment on this one phrase from his silly column:
(Romney) doesn’t say exactly who these jihadists are, but presumably he’s referring to Al Qaeda — an organization that has certainly demonstrated its willingness and ability to kill innocent people, but has no chance of collapsing the United States, let alone taking over the world.
The fallacy in this thinking is that it really doesn't matter whether or not AQ and their fellow jihadists have the wherewithal to "collapse the United States", etc.
The point is that they're trying to, that they'll inflict significant death and destruction in the pursuit of that goal, and the trend is towards more destructive capability, not less.
This makes me want to pull my hair out about the modern day left. They're falling into the seductive trap that terrorism sets: it's safe to let your guard down now...the problem's gone.
I shudder to think what wrath and calamity the detonation of a nuclear weapon on a Western city would wrought. It's hard to fathom. And the farther we get from 9/11, the more comfort we tend to have that we don't have to ponder it -- or, worse, we conclude that we shouldn't have to ponder it, but for our own suicidal foreign policies.
Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power — which aren’t even allies — pose a greater danger than Hitler’s panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.
I think one could argue that. It's a very different kind of danger. But I don't think it's hard to say that a jihadist armed with one nuclear weapon is more dangerous than the Stalinists armed with thousands of them.
After all, the Soviets never used their nukes. They never had any intention of using them. They were for them as they were for us, a deterrent.
Well, the nuclear weapon is most certainly not a deterrent for the jihadists. If/when they get their hands on one, there'll be no saber-rattling. They'll just figure out a way to detonate it, cause as much death and destruction as they can in doing so, and instill as much fear as possible in those who witness it.
Who's the more dangerous person: a guy who has a collection of 400 guns but never uses them for violent purposes...or Seung-Hui Cho and his two guns? Using Krugman's logic, it's the former. He's better armed and, thus, presents a bigger threat.
But that's insane. To properly evaluate a threat, you have to take into account the likelihood that somebody will use whatever firepower they have at their disposal.
There's no question that the Soviets had way more capacity to kill and destroy than the jihadists could ever dream of having. But what Krugman misses is that the jihadists' strategy depends not on how much they can destroy or how many they can kill, their strategy depends on how much they can demoralize those they don't kill.
It's about moving people to behave differently in a political sense. It's not about death for death's sake.
I'm tempted to say that Krugman should stick to economics. But maybe he should just find a new line of work altogether.
Especially
"It's about moving people to behave differently in a political sense."
The debacle of the Spanish elections after the Madrid bombings is particularly supportive of that view.
The "Third Worst Person in the World" and aiming higher.
he was a real economist.
I was an economics major, and we read two of his most well-known books -- "Peddling Prosperity" and "Pop Internationalism." These books were very well written and made good, intellectually honest arguments. They were relatively even-handed in their criticism of both Republican and Democratic administrations' economic policies. Krugman admitted that he was a liberal, yet he was honest enough to support free trade and admit that Europe's economic problems are largely the result of welfare policies that skew work incentives.
I don't know what happened to Krugman in the past five years. He apparently craves the attention of media and political elites, and is more than willing to betray his academic discipline in order to gain their respect. Some say Larry Kudlow did the same thing on the Republican side, but I don't see Kudlow's shift to media politics near as significant as Krugman's. It's a shame, really.
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The truth is, the more you tax profits, the more you undermine the American work ethic and the incentive structure that goes along with it. In fact, you demoralize the very system that has made this country great.
It is that he is a fanatic. His religion is some variation of progressivism/humanism/international marxism.
In his view, he is good, we are evil, and that's all there is too it. Therefore, all the data is made to fit into this worldview.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle