{"id":42271,"date":"2011-07-27T17:45:19","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T21:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=42271"},"modified":"2011-07-27T17:50:09","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T21:50:09","slug":"the-cult-that-is-destroying-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/politics\/the-cult-that-is-destroying-america\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cult That Is Destroying America"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Paul Krugman<\/strong> | The New York Times<\/em> | Link to Original<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: I love reading Paul Krugman. He’s a great example of a well-informed columnist (read his bio here<\/a>) who has both editorial independence and a real following. He never sounds like a ‘pundit’, only like someone with good sense explaining something obvious. In this column, he identifies the ideological culprit in American politics: being middle of the road. We all were fed some version of the ‘golden mean’ theory of Aristotle, who I think was a dork; Krugman explains the issue as it relates to American politics and economics. –efc<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
T is not for Tea.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WATCHING OUR SYSTEM deal with the debt ceiling crisis \u2014 a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences \u2014 it\u2019s increasingly obvious that what we\u2019re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.<\/p>\n

And no, I don\u2019t mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are.<\/p>\n

No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.<\/p>\n

Think about what\u2019s happening right now. We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating \u2014 offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.<\/p>\n

So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent \u2014 because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president \u2014 actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform \u2014 his only major change to government \u2014 was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else \u2014 including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment \u2014 is according to the conservative playbook.<\/p>\n

What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what\u2019s really going on.<\/p>\n

You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won\u2019t do it, nothing will.<\/p>\n

And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The \u201cboth sides are at fault\u201d people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it\u2019s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Paul Krugman | The New York Times | Link to Original Editor’s Note: I love reading Paul Krugman. He’s a great example of a well-informed columnist (read his bio here) who has both editorial independence and a real following. He never sounds like a ‘pundit’, only like someone with good sense explaining something obvious. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[762],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}