Look: I am eager to learn stuff I don't know--which requires actively courting and posting smart disagreement.

But as you will understand, I don't like to post things that mischaracterize and are aimed to mislead.

-- Brad Delong

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Saturday, May 14, 2011

Noah, and Krugman, and Goats . . .

Oh, my!

Well, I've been a bit out of touch, so I missed Noah Smith's half assed hearted attempt to semi-defend Casey Mulligan (for which I will grant him a Mulligan, since, as Krugman put it, "It's nice to be nice.")  Here is an earlier part of the adventure.

Noah more or less recants before it's all over.  Really, he was straining much to hard for too little reward all along anyway.

Krugman get's the last, trivial word.

I’ll repeat myself: Mulligan is critiquing something he heard about Keynesian economics somewhere, maybe in a bar, without bothering to inquire at all whether that’s how it really works. And I stand by my equally well-sourced assertion that Chicago economics relies on goat sacrifices.

IMHO, if you're going to criticize somebody or something, that's fine.  But argue against something on it's merits, or lack thereof.  Don't focus on trivia, engage in straw man arguments, or worse yet, make shit up.  But this is increasingly the kind of distraction you get from the crooks, liars, and dupes who erroneously call themselves "conservatives."

They are reduced to that level, by their own actions and words, because they have nothing  -  NOTHING  -  real or positive to offer.

I am skeptical that there has ever been a valid intellectual basis for 20th century American political conservatism; but now there is close to a total absence of anything even remotely resembling thought, knowledge, or even coherence.
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