A few days ago, Paul Krugman, NY Times opinion writer and Nobel laureate – a fact no one on the left will ever let you forget – wrote what I can only characterize as a screed denouncing Republicans and the right in general for the use of violent language that he claimed led directly to the tragedy in Tuscon. Now, two days later and after the President of the United States himself has denounced Krugman’s claims by noting – rightfully so – that a lack of civility in language had nothing to do with Tuscon, Krugman is back with another column. And, yet again, Krugman doesn’t get it.
In the latest column, Krugman engages in one of the favorite past-times of those in politics – willfully distorting your opponents’ position in order to create a strawman to knock down. Krugman laments the fact that there seems to be a deep divide between those on the left and those on the right on basic questions of morality. Apparently, it takes a Nobel prize winner to craft such a blinding flash of the obvious.
He writes, “One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.
The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.”
Wrong. Those of us on the right, even moderates like me, don’t object wholesale to the concepts of using the money we earn to help support others, no matter how needy. The idea that we selfishly wish to hold on to our earnings is simply not true. As noted by George Will and has been confirmed by at least one study, conservatives provide far more money in charitable giving than liberals do. When given the choice – which is really all conservatives want – we do the right thing. It’s the government’s belief that if they don’t take our money to redistribute, the poor will receive no help that many of us find most objectionable. But even when we object, don’t object to programs like Social Security and Medicare. I have no problems paying for social security, knowing how important it has been to members of my own family. Our biggest objections come when we think the money is being wasted or squandered, not that we’re paying it. We want the government to treat our money with respect – to treat the power to tax with respect and to use it only as a last resort.
Krugman goes on to say “There’s no middle ground between these views. One side saw health reform, with its subsidized extension of coverage to the uninsured, as fulfilling a moral imperative: wealthy nations, it believed, have an obligation to provide all their citizens with essential care. The other side saw the same reform as a moral outrage, an assault on the right of Americans to spend their money as they choose.”
Again, this is not accurate. Those of us who objected to health reform did so for a variety of reasons, not simply because it was an interference with our right to spend our money as we choose. We saw it as unnecessary – a trillion dollar or more program to cover the one-tenth of the population who aren’t covered with a health insurance policy, some – if not many – of whom are uninsured because they choose to be. With the myriad of programs to help the truly poor obtain health care, and the rest of us working hard and sacrificing to obtain it for our families, we did not feel the same moral imperative that Krugman and his friends felt. And, as usual, Krugman adopts the fallacy that those who cannot pay are turned away from essential care when they need it – that’s simply not true, and he knows it. The fact that those on the left need to obfuscate and distort reality to justify their policy positions causes much of the infuriation that he goes on to decry in his editorial.
He moves on to say “This deep divide in American political morality — for that’s what it amounts to — is a relatively recent development … When people talk about partisan differences, they often seem to be implying that these differences are petty, matters that could be resolved with a bit of good will. But what we’re talking about here is a fundamental disagreement about the proper role of government.”
As you all know, I hate historical inaccuracies and Krugman’s claim here is a whopper of one. Since the founding of the republic, the two major political parties of each era have always disagreed on the proper role of government. The question of what is the proper role of government has been absolutely fundamental to the core beliefs of every major political party that has ever existed in America, from the Federalists and Anti-Federalists of the founding era to the Republicans and Democrats of today. The Federalists and Anti-Federalists split on the question of the strength of the national government. The Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans (no relation to the modern Republican Party) split over questions over the same issues. The Democrats and Whigs split over whether the government should fund internal improvements. Democrats and Republicans in the Civil War era split over whether government had the right to interfere in the South’s institution of slavery. In the gilded age up through the Great Depression, it was whether government should interfere in big business and take active steps to regulate the economy. There has never been a period in American history when the two parties weren’t split on the question of what the fundamental role of government in our lives should be.
Krugman continues the column by talking about the abortion debate and tying it in to his last column about violent rhetoric. And, as usual, he gets it wrong. He argues “Yet we have, for the most part, managed to agree on certain ground rules in the abortion controversy: it’s acceptable to express your opinion and to criticize the other side, but it’s not acceptable either to engage in violence or to encourage others to do so. What we need now is an extension of those ground rules to the wider national debate.”
First, I have to take issue with his claim that there are now ground rules in the abortion debate – how he can say that when the murder of a prominent abortion doctor took place just as recently as 2009, I don’t know. But, second, even taking his premise at face value as true, he’s still wrong. No one on the right or on the left is seriously exhorting their followers to violence against the other side. When you put every statement into its proper context, even things as wacky as Catherine Crabill’s “bullet box” speech aren’t urging people to violence. They’re simply reminding people of our history – one that began with a violent struggle against tyranny. Krugman and his ilk don’t like to remember that, but it’s true. And reminding people of it isn’t inciting them to violence. It’s acknowledging our past, so we can learn from it.
He ends the column by writing “Right now, each side in that debate passionately believes that the other side is wrong. And it’s all right for them to say that. What’s not acceptable is the kind of violence and eliminationist rhetoric encouraging violence that has become all too common these past two years.
It’s not enough to appeal to the better angels of our nature. We need to have leaders of both parties — or Mr. Obama alone if necessary — declare that both violence and any language hinting at the acceptability of violence are out of bounds. We all want reconciliation, but the road to that goal begins with an agreement that our differences will be settled by the rule of law.”
Even after the President Obama told him he was wrong, Krugman can’t admit it and continues to parrot this nonsense. No one – not anybody of consequence or in a position to influence large numbers of people, either as an elected official or a member of the media – has been advocating violence or using “eliminationist rhetoric.” No one has been actively trying silence their opponents with violence. And, as Eric pointed out this morning, no one is trying to silence them any other way, either. Ask any Tea Partier who loves the Constitution is they would abridge the freedom of speech of Democrats, and I will guarantee you you’ll hear some version of the old saying that they’d fight and die to protect your right to advocate at the top of their lungs positions they would spend their lifetime opposing at the top of theirs.
The difference between the right and the left and the rhetoric we use is one of culture – not violence. But that’s a discussion for another post.
Edward R. Murrow said it best when he was speaking out against McCarthyism: “if we dig deep into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular.” Both Republicans and Democrats take that quote to heart and we aren’t afraid to defend what we believe, even if it’s unpopular and even if our opponents don’t understand why we do what we do or why we say what we say. But this claim that how we say things is somehow more dangerous than what we mean when we express ideas is patently ridiculous. I recognize Krugman can’t admit he’s wrong – he is an economist after all, one of the few areas of scientific thought where being constantly wrong is no impediment to winning a Nobel Prize – but his being wrong here both extends and advances this belief that somehow our heated rhetoric and passionate defense of ideas, which sometimes results in less than eloquent statements, led to the shooting of a Congresswoman and her constituents. That’s not true and his repeating it so often is, in my opinion, even more dangerous than the rhetoric he pretends had anything to do with Tuscon.
I, for one, would rather move to a future where both sides can be honest about the other side’s position instead of relying on strawman arguments, half-truths and bald-faced lies to try and win an argument.
There’s no Nobel Prize for political debate, Paul. Give it a rest.
