Less than brilliant

A longtime friend posted a link on Facebook to a Paul Krugman column the other day, hailing it as “brilliant.”

In the spirit of fairness, I clicked the link and read Krugman’s New York Times column in which he sought to lay out, in the loftiest of terms, how liberals and conservatives have different visions of what kind of country the U.S. should be.

Of course, he couldn’t help but paint liberals as loving people who care passionately about the less fortunate and seek to create a level playing field for all Americans. And, in his view, conservatives are stupid, callous. greedy people who are willing to see the poor starve or freeze.

Strangely, he didn’t venture into the question of what the Constitution says about limits on how far government can go to take from the rich and give to the poor, i.e. redistribute wealth.

The subtext was that the Utopian liberal vision is the correct one and anyone who resists it is a criminal. That’s how it worked in the Soviet Union, you may recall.

My friend who admires this disingenuous steaming pile of horse shit will turn 68 in a few days. I find it astonishing that a seemingly smart guy can live that many years and still cling to the childish fairytale beliefs of the ‘60s.

I stewed over it for a few days – these things really get to me sometimes – and finally decided the best thing was to use the “hide” option and remove the offending Facebook post from my news feed. I’ve done that with another friend who posts liberal propaganda and I unfriended a bully who presumed to lecture me about journalism.