LEONHARDT WANTS AN OUTSIDE GAME.
WHAT DOES THAT REALLY MEAN?
ARMED DISSENT IF THOUGHT PROPER BY DISSENTERS. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN JEFFERSON'S VIEW, AND IT WAS HIS IDEOLOGY. SO LEONHARDT IS ON SOLID FOUNDING FATHER GROUND HERE.
He is rather like an "it" Samantha Power, Samantha Paglia, an Androgyne Power, the US as an Androgyne Power, Androcracy, Androcrats advocating grass roots armed opposition if necessary against domestic or foreign regimes not democratic or gender neutral enough for it, in places like Africa; as David Kaiser noted some time ago now re Power!
HERE IT IS:
PATRIOTISM IS THE LAST REFUGE OF A SCOUNDREL
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
KRUGMAN TURNS ANCIEN REGIME ON ITS HEAD LAST REFUGE OF A SCOUNDREL
Rather like Marx turned Hegel on his head...
The original quote had to do with statistics being the last refuge of a scoundrel, or did it; and we all know that Krugman's wonkish economic statistics is legendary for being a refuge for an economics scoundrel like Krugman.
Statistics is the opposite of racial and religious bigotry, both ideologically and disciplinarily.
Thus, turning a quote on statistics into one on racial and religious bigotry is to vilify the opposite end of the ideological and disciplinary spectrum, turning the original intent and object of the quote on its head, and taking the heat off the statistical economist, where much of the fault still really lies.
Or was the original quote about civility, after all, rather than statistics, not racial or religious bigotry at all? Which was it?
Maybe it was some third or fourth turning kind of thing.
Or: The last refuge of a scoundrel changes with each generation.....
Or was the original quote about civility, after all, rather than statistics, not racial or religious bigotry at all? Which was it?
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Aren't statistics, then, the last refuge, after lies, and after damned lies?
Maybe it was some third or fourth turning kind of thing.
Or: The last refuge of a scoundrel changes with each generation.....
Saturday, April 16, 2011
"Civility is the Last Refuge of Scoundrels" PK
Civility certainly takes the pressure off a wonkish economist's statistics, as the likely refuge for a scoundrel.
It puts the hounds off the scent, temporarily.
So, what was the original quote, after all? Under postmodernism, one never really knows the truth.....
Oh, Samuel Johnson. Who in Hell was he, and why did he say something like that?
And then, why would Krugman, of all people, take it upon himself to quote something like that, in the context of secularism versus racial and religious bigotry, as a matter of constitutional law?
Is it just merely that the NYT has no Christian theologian, among the editorial board, or the op ed rostrum, who might take up this standard, attack this violation of separation of church and state.
Taking a deeper dive into Trump's base, assuming Krugman's wonkish statistics are right, reveals that Trump's base is not just religious folks of all denominations, but evangelical working-class whites.
Let's go back to the Samuel Johnson quote Krugman cites. What was Johnson getting at?
Were the patriot scoundrels Johnson was quite rightly villifying the American colonial rebel patriots, religious zealots for their concept of a republic and a kingdom of God over against the rule of the English King and His Ministers and Parliament, and The Church of England?
(The American Rebellion, you see, was not fundamentally a secular Enlightenment revolt about taxes or representation or the concept of contractarianism or suffrage at all, but about other things, for most all of the rebels. There were a few very radical quasi atheist secularist rebels among them, most notably Thomas Jefferson, but the rebellion was fueled overwhelmingly by religious zeal and the exhortations of unbridled radical ministers.)
If so, then Trump, and Barr, are reaching down to the kind of political base that goes all the way back to the American Rebellion, and to the same kind of patriots, with some of the same kinds of beliefs, who fought it, and were loathed by Samuel Johnson.
Samuel Johnson - Literature, religion and English cultural politics from the Restoration to Romanticism, J C D Clark
So, in criticizing Barr and Trump in specifically this kind of way, Krugman is repudiating the very origins of this nation in its patriotic religious revolt against Britain, and holding up to ridicule the concept of patriotism that animated both the founding fathers, most of them, and Trump's patriot followers today, according to Krugman's deeper analysis of his base.
Krugman, you see, thinks that Johnson was criticizing patriot scoundrels from the point of view of an ideological position similar in most respects to current secular humanist 21st century Krugmanesque principles.
Unfortunately for Krugman, even that is not true, or as he likes to say, flatly wrong.
Bad as this sounds now, with economics a real Tar Baby discipline, maybe it's better for Krugman, given this performance, in the long run, the long duree, if he sticks to economics. Go down with the ship.
Samuel Johnson - Literature, religion and English cultural politics from the Restoration to Romanticism, J C D Clark
So, in criticizing Barr and Trump in specifically this kind of way, Krugman is repudiating the very origins of this nation in its patriotic religious revolt against Britain, and holding up to ridicule the concept of patriotism that animated both the founding fathers, most of them, and Trump's patriot followers today, according to Krugman's deeper analysis of his base.
Krugman, you see, thinks that Johnson was criticizing patriot scoundrels from the point of view of an ideological position similar in most respects to current secular humanist 21st century Krugmanesque principles.
Unfortunately for Krugman, even that is not true, or as he likes to say, flatly wrong.
Bad as this sounds now, with economics a real Tar Baby discipline, maybe it's better for Krugman, given this performance, in the long run, the long duree, if he sticks to economics. Go down with the ship.
No comments:
Post a Comment