Carpe Datum

Stupid Intellectuals

Comments are working again. I'm still trying to figure out how to avoid future server shutdowns. If I'm getting "noticed" for the server load even if I successfully block 100% of spam attempts, then I'll have to just switch to something else that allows registration, I guess (which would still be 100% successful but wouldn't generate so many useless attempts).

Kevin Drum is as disgusted by Bush-supporting "principled intellectuals" (such as those in "The Economist") as much as I am. There is a certain class of people, often called "whores" or "Fox Democrats" in polite company, who are basically willing to take up for the wrong side just to demonstrate that they are willing to think outside the box, to be a maverick, to be "independent", to get paid lots as a frequent talking-head guest, whatever. These are people who, for example, think the principle of preemptive attacks by America is deeply stupid but somehow found it in their hearts to (reluctantly with a big sigh) support the Iraq War.

Now we're getting the same kind of crap on social security:

As good a magazine as the Economist is, its editors are schizophrenic when it comes to figuring out what they think of George Bush. The entire thrust of the piece is that Bush's privatization proposal might be OK as long as he listens to criticism and changes it in nearly every particular — even though this is something they know perfectly well won't happen since they've editorialized about this shortcoming of Bush's repeatedly over the past four years.

The last paragraph gives the game away:

Note that changes such as these — delaying the retirement age, raising the payroll cap, and so on — are the ones that will actually stop Social Security going bust. In that regard, Mr Bush's new retirement accounts are no help. Yet this misses the point. Giving people greater control of their savings is desirable in itself: that is why private accounts deserve their place in this reform. It is wrong that in the world's most advanced economy so many retirees should rely so heavily on the state. That idea is at the heart of Mr Bush's “ownership society” — and it is worth supporting.

In other words, there's no real crisis, the details of Bush's plan are all wrong, and it does nothing to rescue Social Security anyway. But we support it for the same reason George Bush does: because it's one of our ideological hobbyhorses.

And if it eventually becomes law as one of his usual bloated, policy-free, crony friendly monstrosities, they'll be able to point back to this editorial and piously say, We'd never have supported doing it that way. We endorsed the proper version of privatization.

And then they'll move on to enthusiastic support of his next plan.

Exactly. I read the same kind of thing in our local "liberal" newspaper's endorsement editorial of Bush this time around. We reluctantly support this great man, they say, because we are hoping he will do all these things that we want him to do (but probably won't), and we could never support a fire-breathing, fringe, pro-terrorist ultra-liberal Vietnam war criminal liar like John Kerry, after all. And now that everything continues going to hell, the paper can wash its hands of the matter and say, "Hey, we tried to warn you."

What a bunch of spineless whores.

Posted by Observer at February 18, 2005 07:06 AM