Paul Krugman’s America

Paul Krugman’s America is not your father’s America. It’s an America where conservatives have not shame, where they can, and do, lie, cheat, and steal with abandon and impunity.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we’re not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we’re living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

Because this is Paul Krugman’s America it is only conservatives, of course, who have abandoned the straight and narrow moral paths of the past, who have abandoned and betrayed their old values, who now refuse to change their minds even when confronted with “facts” that are undisputed by anyone Krugman knows.

In the actual America in which we live, by contrast, about the only thing today’s liberals have in common with their not-so-distant forebears is a hatred of conservatives. They have abandoned their earlier commitment to colorblind equality. They have abandoned their bedrock First Amendment absolutism on the inviolability of political speech. They and their labor union allies have abandoned their long-time position that unlimited immigration posed a threat to domestic workers.

Nor is their reversal of field limited to big issues of principle such as racial discrimination and free speech. For example, as I pointed out nearly two years ago (here), all of those like The Nation who are now leading the charge to have Karl Rove fired, or worse, for damaging “national security” bitterly and vociferously opposed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act when it was introduced, debated, and passed in the early 1980s. They argued that it was a threat to civil liberties, that it would have a disastrous chilling effect on the willingness of government officials to engage in whistleblowing, etc.

They were right, then.

As a test, imagine, if you can, what their response would have been if, say, a government official had revealed that the mission of a former diplomat known to be a right wing sympathizer to evaluate civil liberties in Chile under Pinochet — a mission that resulted in a whitewash report — had been instigated by that diplomat’s wife, an analyst but not an operative at the CIA (and that the former diplomat had subsequently been found by a bi-partisan Senate committee to have lied about that connection). My hunch is that they would have been about as sympathetic to a special prosecutor’s investigation of that whistleblowing government official as they were to Ken Starr.

UPDATE

In my post two years ago on this subject, linked above, I quoted examples of liberal opposition to the legislation on which liberals are now happy to rely in order to get the dreaded Rove. For example, Philip Agee, one of the targets of the legislation, writing in The Nation, argued that the legislation ” could easily be applied against the mainstream

media.”

The long-run result would be an end to practically all extra-official exposures in the media of scandals and abuses based on information from insiders-which is where almost all the important exposures originate.

Noted civil libertarian Aryeh Neier argued that Agee’s criticism was “thoroughly persuasive.” Tom Wicker of the New York Times agreed that the proposed act would “

Say What? (10)

  1. notherbob2 July 16, 2005 at 3:20 pm | | Reply

    I do not deign to discuss Krugman, even to call him an excrescence. However, your point about having

  2. actus July 16, 2005 at 7:48 pm | | Reply

    “They and their labor union allies have abandoned their long-time position that unlimited immigration posed a threat to domestic workers.”

    Oh. Lament lament lament.

  3. Chetly Zarko July 16, 2005 at 10:20 pm | | Reply

    Krugman’s statement:

    “Instead, we’re living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth.”

    This is largely true, but he fails to turn the point of analysis onto his own Party’s, and “liberals”, causes of this. The middle ground, and the idea that there is nonpolitical fact, is disappearing, and both parties are to blame, even as the winning candidates in each presidential election SEEM to move (or be the closest) to the middle, the rhetoric used to whip up radicals and the “base” on both sides is getting worse.

    Nonpolitical truth is also attacked when entities like the University of Michigan offer up such a vacantly untrue factual legal defense as they did for the scientific claim that “diversity” has educational benefits.” When this is type of thing is offered up as fact, people don’t have any faith in other potentially legitimate facts when they are offered up. Facts have no meaning in Orwellian conditions.

  4. John S Bolton July 16, 2005 at 10:32 pm | | Reply

    Liberals have also abandoned their old enthusiasm for national unity and integration, giving us literally hundreds of cultural maintenance, supposedly bilingual, programs for minorities. This shows a contempt for facts, as inconveniences which can be propagandized out of the way. Krugman is right, though, that the moderate right has by now become steeped in the same pragmatist indifference to truth. Liberals no longer speak of reason, as a special qualification that they had more of, or claimed to have more of, and thus they forfeit the opportunity to lambaste the religious right for its indulgences of faith. The fact remains, though, that a group which insulates itself from unwelcome facts, cannot just make believe them away.

  5. TJ Jackson July 17, 2005 at 7:22 am | | Reply

    The Left has abandoned patriotism, religious tolerance, and any vestigae of political and economic integrity inits qwest for power at any price. As others have observed this virius spreads from academia where the real world’s concerns do not intrude.

    Fortunately the nation has abandoned the Left and its mothpieces.

  6. TJ Jackson July 17, 2005 at 7:22 am | | Reply

    The Left has abandoned patriotism, religious tolerance, and any vestigae of political and economic integrity inits qwest for power at any price. As others have observed this virius spreads from academia where the real world’s concerns do not intrude.

    Fortunately the nation has abandoned the Left and its mouthpieces.

  7. Cobra July 17, 2005 at 10:24 am | | Reply

    TJ Jackson writes:

    >>>The Left has abandoned patriotism, religious tolerance, and any vestigae of political and economic integrity inits qwest for power at any price. As others have observed this virius spreads from academia where the real world’s concerns do not intrude.

    Fortunately the nation has abandoned the Left and its mouthpieces.”

    Waitiminute…”power at any price?” When corporate America (predominantly controlled by conservative interests) send jobs to Beijing and Bangalore they’re expressing “patriotism?” When conservatives fight to place THEIR personal religious creeds in courthouses and public schools they’re showing “religious tolerance?”

    “Economic integrity” as defined by you, is where this Republican adminstration engages in a tactic no civilization in recorded history has done…tax cuts in a time of WAR? That the RICHEST get BOON after boon, while we have servicemen and reserves dying in Iraq for as less than a Walmart door greeter’s salary?

    http://www.thecobraslair.com/National%20Issues13.html

    You’re kidding me, right?

    http://www.thecobraslair.com/National%20Issues7.html

    –Cobra

  8. John S Bolton July 20, 2005 at 10:25 am | | Reply

    The US moderate left has abandoned its commitment to a merit society, which shows distinct poverty of integrity in politics, economics and especially in morality. It means disdain for the truth and the facts of human character and abilities. The current moderate left here is all about feelings, especially racial feeling, and the opportunistic exploitation of these, with no truths allowed to get in the way of power greed.

  9. Roy July 20, 2005 at 3:27 pm | | Reply

    I will go out on a limb and blame the recent hyper-polarization squarley on the democrats. The republican message is clearly resonating with voters, and the democratic response has not been to change or more strongly advocate their platform. Instead the go on and on about the dangers of living in a 1 party nation. Their elctoral strategy is essentially to lock up this pity vote with fairy tales about the United States becoming some sort of monarchy.

  10. Cobra July 23, 2005 at 3:07 pm | | Reply

    Roy writes:

    >>>Their elctoral strategy is essentially to lock up this pity vote with fairy tales about the United States becoming some sort of monarchy.”

    As opposed to the Republican strategy of race baiting (Southern Strategy, recently ADMITTED and APOLOGIZED for by the RNC Chair), religious fundamentalist zealotry, and establishing an aristocracy through corporate idolatry?

    Come on, Roy. This type of strategy requires opposition don’t you think?

    –Cobra

Say What?