Showing posts with label Ross Douthat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ross Douthat. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2022

Someone who takes her libertarianism far too seriously is haunted by a hobgoblin, amusingly faults so-called folk libertarians for inconsistency and channels her inner liberal Lionel Trilling to jeer at their "irritated" jerking

 Real libertarianism like hers is a creature of liberalism and the left, not of the right, and so is primarily critical in nature, distinguishing as she does no fewer than five different types in her short polemical foray against Ron DeSantis.

Put a hundred of these people in a room and none will find another person with whom to agree about libertarianism, except maybe that the buffet was OK. 


In The Daily Beast here:

Yet even linking this impulse to that new center may suggest a more formal political program than folk libertarianism entails. Douthat characterized it as “a reflexive individualism disconnected from the common good,” and the reflex is fundamentally reactive, a series of irritated jerks away from unwanted strictures as they come. Folk libertarians have “an instinctive dislike of being bossed around,” as my former colleague Samuel Goldman has observed in The Week, but they lack the broader principle of opposition to bossing others.

 

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Ross Douthat might as well write for The New Republic instead of The New York Times

Here, sounding just like Brian Beutler:

[R]ight now [Trump's] presidency is in danger of being very swiftly Carterized — ending up so unpopular, ineffectual and fractious that even with Congress controlled by its own party, it can’t get anything of substance done. ... [T]he more the Trump White House remains mired in its own melodramas, the more plausible it becomes that the Trump-era House and Senate set a record for risk avoidance and legislative inactivity.

Yeah, 23 days in and he's already a failure because there's no . . . wait for it . . . [infrastructure] spending bill and a tax cut bill, the two great incompatibles which Gallup says most people want.

Isn't The New York Times supposed to be wiser than that, admonishing that you can't have your cake and eat it too? Well, its so-called conservatives at least should be so wise.

The fact of the matter is the Gallup poll result, which is the same as the Douthat wish list, reveals the bipartisan nature of Trump's support. The people who support increased spending and the people who want tax cuts populate two different political parties. Perhaps Douthat has heard of them? Getting them to agree on this stuff is going to take a lot more time than 23 days. It took Barack Obama over four years to come up with his tax cut. Unfortunately for Obama it was Bush's tax cut, not delivered by Dingy Harry and San Fran Nan but by John Boehner at the dawn of 2013. What Harry and Nancy did immediately deliver was jacked up "infrastructure" spending within a month of 44's inauguration, adding a $700 billion increase to Bush 2009 fiscal year spending, making the one time stimulus a permanent part of the budget.

It is the biggest untold scandal since the Fed secretly lent trillions and trillions of dollars to the world at rock bottom prices on questionable collateral during the financial crisis from 2008-2010.

Because Republicans took the House in 2010, that additional $700 billion got no higher, but what do we have to show for it after increasing outlays $700 billion in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016?

Where's the fucking "infrastructure" after eight years and $5.6 trillion in increased spending?

Another trillion dollars will accomplish nothing.

Meanwhile Trump is delivering to his base, which is the first thing he must do, rescinding Obama executive orders, undercutting the ObamaCare mandate as Congress prepares its repeal, actually laying the groundwork to build The Wall (infrastructure!), rounding up criminal aliens (the horror) and trying to reduce terrorism threats which exist because of a chaotic immigration system, except the courts the enemy is trying to stop him.

He's also vilifying the media whom we also hate every chance he gets, and now the judiciary, the tag team which advances liberalism against the will of the people who overwhelmingly support Trump 2600 counties to 500 counties for the enemy.

And most of all, he's not being Hillary.

It's been a great 23 days. 

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Ted Cruz-Mark Levin-Rush Limbaugh conservatism UTTERLY REPUDIATED IN EVERY INDIANA CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

Where the true conservatism of American hearth, home and altar screamed "NO"! Indiana was a referendum on what Ross Douthat calls "True Conservatism", where it lost, in contrast to "ideological" Wisconsin, where it won:

In the days before and after the Wisconsin primary, with delegate accumulation going his way and the polling looking plausible once the Northeastern primaries were over, it seemed like Cruz could reasonably hope for a nomination on the second or third ballot. ... But it turned out that Republican voters didn’t want True Conservatism any more than they wanted Bushism 2.0. Maybe they would have wanted it from a candidate with more charisma and charm and less dogged unlikability. But the entire Trump phenomenon suggests otherwise, and Trump as the presumptive nominee is basically a long proof against the True Conservative theory of the Republican Party.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Wow, Ross Douthat joins PEGIDA, calls for Germany to close its borders, deport refugees and kick out Merkel

In The New York Times, here:

". . . [P]rudence requires . . . closing Germany’s borders to new arrivals for the time being. It means beginning an orderly deportation process for able-bodied young men. It means giving up the fond illusion that Germany’s past sins can be absolved with a reckless humanitarianism in the present. It means that Angela Merkel must go — so that her country, and the continent it bestrides, can avoid paying too high a price for her high-minded folly."


Friday, December 4, 2015

"Racist" isn't working against Trump, so now they'll try "fascist"

Ross Douthat, here, where else?, in The New York Times, attempting to lay the groundwork from the right:

'Whether or not we want to call Trump a fascist outright, then, it seems fair to say that he’s closer to the “proto-fascist” zone on the political spectrum than either the average American conservative or his recent predecessors in right-wing populism.'

The critique is almost entirely non-economic and preoccupied with Trump's style, tone and passions, which makes sense since Americans of all political stripes are blind to the essential character of America as a form of state capitalism. Our politics left and right has stewed in that soup from the very beginning when the colonies were formed as corporate instrumentalities of the British Crown, financed by the Bank of England. We can hardly imagine any other economic arrangement. It only comes up momentarily in our politics when our/their cronies get exposed, and then quickly fizzles away when the truth becomes too difficult to face, restoring business as usual.

Just ask the bankers.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Ross Douthat is insane, doesn't say a word about millions of dollars in damage done by rioters in Ferguson, MO

Ross Douthat in The New York Times calls for taking away the militarized components of police departments, here.

But Ferguson, MO, police effectively watched on the sidelines as millions of dollars in damages were inflicted on property owners by rioters there, and didn't use their hardware to stop it. They should have.

It would have sent a message across this country to cease and desist, or suffer the consequences. Law-abiding people everywhere want this in their hearts, but are afraid to speak up because of the intimidation they would suffer from an insane media allied with the race hucksters of this country. It's too bad Ross Douthat has joined them.

From the St. Louis Business Journal, here:

"QuikTrip, which saw its store at 9420 West Florrisant Ave. looted and burned, estimated Monday the damage total to be in the seven figures.

"More than a dozen other businesses along West Florissant Avenue were damaged and looted, including Zisser Tire & Auto, Wal-Mart, Taco Bell, St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store, and Toys R Us. Nu Fashion Beauty, Party City and Boost Mobile were also affected. The unrest spread beyond Ferguson Monday night, as a Shoe Carnival on Gravois near Grand was vandalized and looted."

In America, unfortunately, some property is more unequal than others.