< And the truth is that the Reaganauts were a pretty grotesque bunch too. Look for the golden age of conservative intellectualism in America, and YOU KEEP GOING BACK, and BACK, and BACK, — and eventually you run up against William Buckley in the 1950s declaring that blacks weren’t advanced enough to vote, and that Franco was the savior of Spanish civilization. >We second Mr. Krugman's assessment: the ENTIRE Ayn Rand/Leo Strauss/Milton Friedman "conservative" ideals are PURE intellectual FRAUD, economically LARCENOUS, and based on the DICTATORIAL (Nazi-lite) notions that AMERICAN DEMOCRACY can not, and DOES NOT WORK, because "the people" truly are ignorant, unworthy peons who don't deserve to be informed on matters critical to their well being - much less on matters of "State Security."
As a reminder of the GROTESQUE nature of this Right-Wing "Conservative" ideology, here is
#1. uber- PNAC war-mongering Likudnik Neo-Con BILL KRISTOL saying "If AMERICAN SCHOOLCHILDREN DON'T have PREMIUM HEALTH-CARE, and if they come down with an undiagnosed illness or potentially fatal illness beyond their health-care coverage, THEY SHOULD JUST GO AHEAD and DIE already"!
(what Kristol actually says is "Whenever I hear of a HEARTLESS ASSAULT on our [American] SCHOOLCHILDREN, I tend to think it is a GOOD idea" and specifically SNEERING at a child appearing on Democratic radio appeals, a child who was SAVED from dying by surgery - but only after his mother relentlessly played the paper game, until she got SCHIP coverage for the operation)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqObdWSv5lg
#2. and Here is Mr. Krugman's fellow op-ed writer (but intellectually dishonest) TOM FRIEDMAN DEFENDING and WHITEWASHING TORTURE - 500 years of JEWISH CONDEMNATION of SPANISH INQUISITION torture, and 65 years of thumping the "Nuremberg trials proved America's dedication to rule of international law" nothwithstanding -
http://firedoglake.com/2009/04/29/thomas-friedman-torture-and-invading-iraq-have-prevented-another-911/
(here is Freidman's original, pathetic column) -
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29friedman.html
#3. And here is Friedman's fellow, OSTENSIBLY "MODERATE" op-ed 'twin' columnist at the WASHINGTON POST, RICHARD COHEN offering up the same lame "BUT OUR STATE SECURITY is at stake!" rational for, and whitewash of, Torture:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/051209.html
What all three of these Neo-Cons psuedo "intellectuals" - Kristol, Friedman, and Cohen - share is a deep intellectual dishonesty, intellectual laziness, and a right-wing elitist sense of ENTITLEMENT.
Thankfully Mr. Krugman is up to the challenge of pointing out just how cheap, callow, tawdry, and transparent the (their) Neo-Con "intellectual" version of the Right-Wing pre-Civil Rights era agenda is
(i.e. the Neo-Confederate, low-wages, authoritarian, rigidly intolerant, SEGREGATION, state-sponsored violence, & lynch-mob/"midnight visit from sheriff" applied-terrorism agenda).
Related: How America's "elite" colleges & Universities - ESPECIALLY THE IVY LEAGUE - has Led America OFF A CLIFF, using intellectual dishonesty and a REFUSAL to CONFRONT facts which would undermine the rule of the elites, by Chris Floyd at alternet.org -
http://www.alternet.org/story/111376/the_best_and_the_brightest_have_led_america_off_a_cliff/
Note: Here uber- Right-Wing Neo-Con "economics guru" MILTON FRIEDMAN defends "GREED" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
but in fact, Friedman is CONFLATING America's GOOD FORTUNE, to not only remain all but physically untouched from WWII (except Pearl Harbor, Aleutian islands, and U-boat sinkings of US merchant ships off of US coast), but economically, WWII was a huge engine for economic & industrial growth for America.
As if that fact alone wasn't enough to take some of the smirk off of Friedman's arrogant, self-righteous face; the very US technological "superiority" that Americans have come to take for granted over the past 5 decades, was in many cases GIVEN TO US by EUROPEAN SCIENTIST, because America had the good fortune to be removed from the devastation that wasted much of Europe and Asia during WWII, America's good fortune in getting the VERY BEST "Old World" Europe had to offer including not only the cream of European nuclear physicists and (Werner von Braun's Nazi!) rocket scientists, but cutting-edge research in jet engines & radar from Britain, and computer research as well. (America's first large electronic computer, EINAC, was built at MIT during WWII based on POLISH, FRENCH, ENGLISH, and other European scientists research efforts to break the GERMAN Enigma code machines.)
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Prodigal intellectuals
Paul Krugman's blog, May 19, 2009
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/prodigal-intellectuals/
So I see Richard Posner has decided that modern conservatism is intellectually bankrupt. And Bruce Bartlett has a new book saying it’s time to let go of Reagan.
At one level it’s good to see decent people showing some intellectual flexibility (Bartlett, in particular, has always come across as someone with whom one can have honest disagreements.) And yet — WHY, exactly, SHOULD WE LISTEN TO PEOPLE who by their own admission completely MISSED THE STORY? I mean, anyone who actually listened to what Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey were saying in 1994, let alone what passed for thought in the Bush administration, should have realized long ago that if there ever was an intellectual basis for modern conservatism, it was long gone....
....So the idea that we should pay any attention to people who somehow FAILED TO SEE ALL THIS until very late in the game — and, in the case of Posner (not Bartlett), waited to express their doubts until conservatism had lost power ….
