“Paul Krugman, in one of his more inflamatory statements, claimed that congressmen who voted against cap and trade were guilty of “planetary treason.” The bill contains substantial support for biofuels, including a five year moratorium on letting the EPA decide whether, on net, producing ethanol actually reduces carbon dioxide. Converting food crops into fuel drives up the price of food. Driving up the world price of food results in more people in poor countries dying. Krugman is, no doubt, opposed to world hunger in theory. But he has come out passionately in favor of it in practice. Treason or murder, take your choice.”
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Jonathan, sorry, but with all due respect I don’t like the way he framed it: it seems to imply that he concedes the ‘treason’ argument, while posing a supposedly stronger argument of ‘murder’ to supersede it. While what he should have done first of all is ask: what f…ing treason?! Or, since I haven’t read the article, he may have done that, and you just happened to pick the wrong quote?
Not really Alisa, all Friedman is doing judging Krugman by Krugman’s own yardstick, a useful way indeed to examine someone’s moral calculus.
Perry, exactly; if you scroll down the comment thread on DF’s item, that is the point he makes.
If Krugman wants to use heated rhetoric to defend his views, he cannot be surprised if the other side pays him in his own coin, so to speak.
Well, context can be everything, and apparently I should read the entire link, including scrolling down the comment thread – sigh:-) Fair enough, but I thought that the point of SQOTD was that it can also stand on its own – was I wrong?
Well I figured it out without poking the links 😛
Yes Albion, but you are part of the choir:-)
Surely the penalty for “planetary treason” would logically be planetary firing squad?
Either way, poor Mr. Krugman is going to have a lot of blood on his hands. Woops! I forgot — he is a leftie; he already has a lot of blood on his hands, like that of all the African children who die each year unnecessarily because of the lack of DDT.
I am so looking forward to sitting at the base of the guillotine, watching the heads bounce off the pavement.
I realize that this piece is a way of mocking Krugman et al for their methods, but, in fact, it also is very accurate regarding the kinds of moral dilemnas that collectivism forces on anyone trapped within that lunatic spider’s web.
Recall the movie “The Lives of Others” for a quick reference to something recent in our memories.
What was the critical choice forced upon everyone in that story? Betray someone close to you, or forfeit everything you care about in your own life.
In effect, choose murder or suicide, destroy someone you love, or lose the opportunity to function as an artist.
Why is the fundamental moral commandment of the collectivist that each person must surrender their ego to the needs of the commune?
Because, if their is nothing left inside you that is finally, absolutely, truly you any longer, what does it matter if you betray someone else?
Remember the argument between Thomas More and his friend, the Duke of Norfolk. More asks Norfolk “Isn’t there anything inside you that is not a desire or need, but just Norfolk?”
When you have jettisoned all that you are, down to your last ideal, your last moral precept, your last principle, of what meaning and value is the husk that remains?
It is an empty shell, flotsam on the stormy seas of living in this real world, which will not go away, no matter how hard you wish that it would just bend, just a little bit, like you did.
This is the final price, the bill presented which must be paid, the blank check that the collective requires…all that you are, all that you could ever have been.
The next time you hear some classroom or bar debate on the difference between capitalism and socialism, or liberty and social security, remember, it’s not job creation, or medical care, or negative rights vs positive rights.
Those are just pieces, squares of fabric that will be sewn into the final quilt. Will it be a comforter, or a burial shroud?
Collectivism demands, not just allegience, but unconditional surrender of all that you are, of the Norfolk tucked way down deep in every person, the part that is “just Norfolk”.
What was found in all those Stasi files, not the dates and times and who said what, but the essence? What was the fundamental commonality?
It was the choice each of these poor, trapped flies was given by the spider. Murder or suicide, betrayal or forfeit, treason or murder.
Yardstick etc.
And those who voted FOR it are guilty of G8+ economic treason.
Can a Nobel Prize be revoked, the cash impounded, and the medal “recycled”- by virtue of eminent domain?
Can certain “awarding judges” be impeached, excommunicated, and perhaps- ALSO recycled? (soylent green)
Good comment Veryretired.
As for the “Cap and Trade” Bill.
It pushes hundreds of billions of Dollars in the direction of various politcally connected corporations – which is why they, and the Congressmen they influence, support it.
Obama and co are evil (very evil), but they are not stupid – they know the writings of “Lenin” well. They believe that some businessmen are such greedy pigs that they will “sell us the rope with which we will hang them” and they are correct. Leftist politicians never have any problem getting financial support from both some corporations and from wealthy individuals – often in return for favours subsidizing the business enterprise involved and/or hitting its rivals.
Of course in the longer term these “useful idiots” (who actually have very high intelligence – just very low wisdom) will get destroyed as well – but they do not think in terms of their leftist “friends” turning on them when they have served their purpose.
Sometimes I think the people in charge of corporations like General Electric and Goldman Sachs are so unwise (no matter how intellgent they may be) that Mr Obama’s AmeriCorps thugs could be shoving them into gas chambers and Mrs Obama could be popping their childrens eyeballs between her teeth – and they would still be saying “but what is in this for you?” and “can we not make a deal?”
“But the environment Paul – the environment”.
Oh yes – producing stuff in China and India (rather than United States) and then shipping it back.
So one has the C02 emissions of the production process (at least as high, and most likely higher, than it was in the manufacturing industry that “Cap and Trade” would destroy in the United States) and then the C02 emissions of the transport back to the United States.
So Paul Krugman’s claim that the “Cap and Trade” Bill would reduce C02 emissions is false – actually it would increase C02 emissions (as well as destroy what is left of American manufacturing).