Krugman outkrugmans Krugman Tom Smith

Herr Doktor Professor Krugman may be a fine economist, but he is a poor propagandist.  Even given that his audience is the readership of the New York Times, and so presumably has a high tolerance for this sort of thing, all one need to do is read his latest -- what is the correct term? -- it's not sustained enough to be a screed; there's nothing that really qualifies it as an argument; it's just a collection of false assertions.  But take just the first:  

There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled “Freedom of Speech,” depicting an idealized American town meeting. The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s “Four Freedoms,” shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind.

That's right.  It is famous, and here it is:

Look at the picture. Do you see anything that suggests anybody does not like what the speaker is saying? To the contrary, the white haired gentleman looks appreciative, and everybody else looks somewhere between equable and approving. If anybody disapproves, there doing a good job hiding it. It is just confabulatory rubbish to say they "obviously don't like what he is saying." Krugman is just making things up to suit himself.  Given this, I don't see any reason to take seriously any of his other assertions in the article, which read as if written by some none too talented flack at the DNC, as it may have been.

BUT Peggy Noonan writes a very good column here.

What has been most unsettling is not the congressmen’s surprise but a hard new tone that emerged this week. The leftosphere and the liberal commentariat charged that the town hall meetings weren’t authentic, the crowds were ginned up by insurance companies, lobbyists and the Republican National Committee. But you can’t get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting with a congressman (of all people) unless they are engaged to the point of passion. And what tends to agitate people most is the idea of loss—loss of money hard earned, loss of autonomy, loss of the few things that work in a great sweeping away of those that don’t.

People are not automatons. They show up only if they care.

What the town-hall meetings represent is a feeling of rebellion, an uprising against change they do not believe in. And the Democratic response has been stunningly crude and aggressive. It has been to attack. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, accused the people at the meetings of “carrying swastikas and symbols like that.” (Apparently one protester held a hand-lettered sign with a “no” slash over a swastika.) But they are not Nazis, they’re Americans. Some of them looked like they’d actually spent some time fighting Nazis.

Then came the Democratic Party charge that the people at the meetings were suspiciously well-dressed, in jackets and ties from Brooks Brothers. They must be Republican rent-a-mobs. Sen. Barbara Boxer said on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that people are “storming these town hall meetings,” that they were “well dressed”, that “this is all organized,” “all planned,” to “hurt our president.” Here she was projecting. For normal people, it’s not all about Barack Obama.

The Democratic National Committee chimed in with an incendiary Web video whose script reads, “The right wing extremist Republican base is back.” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse issued a statement that said the Republicans “are inciting angry mobs of . . . right wing extremists” who are “not reflective of where the American people are.”

But most damagingly to political civility, and even our political tradition, was the new White House email address to which citizens are asked to report instances of “disinformation” in the health-care debate: If you receive an email or see something on the Web about health-care reform that seems “fishy,” you can send it to flag@whitehouse.gov. The White House said it was merely trying to fight “intentionally misleading” information.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on Wednesday wrote to the president saying he feared that citizens’ engagement could be “chilled” by the effort. He’s right, it could. He also accused the White House of compiling an “enemies list.” If so, they’re being awfully public about it, but as Byron York at the Washington Examiner pointed, the emails collected could become a “dissident database.”

All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect.

This is also pretty good.

Comments

[dearieme]

Good to know that there's something peculiarly FDRish about freedom of speech.

[krome]

When a government becomes too big and oppressive and controling, and too unresponsive to the people, it does indeed create revolutionaries.

However, unlike the Democrats, I am not thinking Timothy McVeigh when I ponder that, I am thinking the likes of Washington, Jeferson and Franklin (who, by the way, were generally fairly well dressed for the most part).

[Brian]

Tom, your hatred of Krugman has gotten the best of you. It was Rockwell himself who described the inspiration for the painting as a town hall meeting he had attended in which someone expressed an unpopular opinion yet his neighbors listened respectfully. See:
http://www.best-norman-rockwell-art.com/norman-rockwell-saturday-evening-post-article-1943-02-20-freedom-of-speech.html

So Krugman's account of the painting is consistent with the painter's own explanation of it.

Tsk, tsk!

[Tom Smith]

Maybe Krugman read the explanation but never looked at the painting.

[Brian]

You're reaching, Tom, you're reaching! At this rate, you'll end up in politics.

[dunk shoes]

what is the correct term? -- it's not sustained enough to be a screed; there's nothing that really qualifies it as an argument; it's just a collection of false assertions. But take just the first: dunk shoes
dunk low cl
dunk animazing