Friday, January 21, 2011

Indiviglio-McArdle Award Nominee

The Atlantic just can't stop. First they make a failed attack against Ron Paul. Now, The Atlantic's top blogger, Andrew Sullivan, has been sent to the frontlines to do battle against key Ron Paul supporter, Lew Rockwell.

In a perfectly reasonable comment, Rockwell wrote:
No one should be fooled. Any Republican representative or senator who votes to raise the debt ceiling is voting to continue business as usual, to expand warfare, welfare, foreign aid, bank bailouts, and all the other criminal enterprises. Forget talk of the Tea Party, fiscal conservatism, some face-saving agreement with the Democrats. It is a sell-out, a pledging of allegiance to the Pentagon-CIA-Fed-bank-Wall Street regime that runs this country. Shame.
For this Sullivan nominated Rockwell for the "Malkin Award". Rockwell easily defended himself (with probably one hand, while replying to emails with the other) this way:
Famous blogger Andrew Sullivan has nominated me for his “Malkin Award,” for daring to post this comment. Michelle Malkin is a neocon advocate of the empire and the DHS state, who even defended concentration camps for Japanese Americans, Given her rhetoric, she may even want them for Muslim Americans. A Malkin Award for Rockwell?Makes perfect sense. (Thanks to Ben Chaput)

UPDATE Mr. Sullivan responds to readers here, but no, I am not a far rightist or a far leftist, I am a libertarian anarchist. I agree with some right-wingers on some things, and with some left-wingers on some things, but all libertarians are outside the political spectrum as it is normally discussed. For us, liberty is the highest political goal. And note that Mr. Sullivan identifies the nation with the state, so when he says “America,” he means the government. Though this is a common error, it is highly unfortunate, and revealing.
But beyond Rockwell's very valid points, I find Sullivan's economic analysis curious. He writes in defense of his attack on Rockwell's call to not raise the debt ceiling:
Because, you know, forcing the issue could devastate America's fiscal standing and create economic global chaos and uncertainty.
For this comment alone, I feel I must nominate Sullivan for the 2011  Indiviglio-McArdle Award. Does Sullivan have any clue about what he is saying? Global chaos?

If Congress followed through on Rockwell's recommendation to keep the ceiling on debt where it is, not only would this not hurt the fiscal standing of the United States, the value of U.S. government securities  would soar, as a result of the fiscal responsibility. The dollar would, also, soar. The Chinese in all the excitement might end up buying another trillion dollars in U.S. debt! The exact opposite of what Sullivan suggests. This is Government Debt 101, everyone understands this (Well, I guess, almost everyone.).

Some economic team they have over there at The Atlantic.

3 comments:

  1. Two quick points:

    1. I have to disagree with the implication that the Atlantic has decided en masse to attack Ron Paul and other like-minded libertarians. As far as I can tell, it's more of a case of general sense of cluelessness than anything akin to a coordinated attack.

    2. As for whether Sullivan has a clue as to what he's saying, when it comes to economics, the general answer is a big fat no. While he's praised Ron Paul's stance on things like the drug way and civil liberties in the past (hell, Sullivan endorsed him during the 2008 Repub primaries), consistently ain't his strong suit, especially on economic matters. His conservatism (which does show up from time to time) is informed more by a general skepticism than a strong desire to have a internally consistent worldview. While his skepticism does focus correctly on government actions and policies, sometimes his emotional attachment to a person or cause overrides it. Whatever you think about him, though, at least he has read and is aware of Hayek, even though he doesn't agree with him. The same certainly can't be said about McArdle.

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  2. Sullivan confuses causes with consequences. He doesn't realize the global economic chaos is the past few decades of continual bailouts and intervention we've seen, and the recession and stock market collapses are the inevitable consequence thereof-- not the other way around.

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  3. Andrew Sullivan is a socialist parasite who thinks he is entitled to other people's lives and incomes. He is a bratty little runt who refuses to be a man because it scares him.

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