The New York Times .. I could probably stop there, but Nicholas Kristof’s intellectually dishonest op-ed deserves rebuke.
Kristof’s post asserts that Republicans’ strategy will amount to turning the United States into a backwards, military-led, middle-eastern-like country (emphasis mine).
With Tea Party conservatives and many Republicans balking at raising the debt ceiling, let me offer them an example of a nation that lives up to their ideals.
It has among the lowest tax burdens of any major country:fewer than 2 percent of the people pay any taxes. Government is limited, so that burdensome regulations never kill jobs.
This society embraces traditional religious values and a conservative sensibility. Nobody minds school prayer, same-sex marriage isn’t imaginable, and criminals are never coddled.
The budget priority is a strong military, the nation’s most respected institution. When generals decide on a policy for, say, Afghanistan, politicians defer to them. Citizens are deeply patriotic, and nobody burns flags.
So what is this Republican Eden, this Utopia? Why, it’s Pakistan.
Now obviously Sarah Palin and John Boehner don’t intend to turn Washington into Islamabad-on-the-Potomac. And they are right that long-term budget issues do need to be addressed. But when many Republicans insist on “starving the beast” of government, cutting taxes, regulations and social services — slashing everything but the military — well, those are steps toward Pakistan.
Riiiiiight. Absolutist argumentation. If we cut government spending – at all – we will be living in squalor with a military-run government.
The truth is that Conservatives do not want to remove all government spending, in direct contradiction to Nicholas’ post. But, we don’t need to spend Americans’ tax dollars on abortions, art festivals, Libya, research on shrimp on treadmills, NPR, the NLRB, over a trillion in stimulus that went to fund Unions and democratic campaigns (and brought no jobs), Obamacare, and so much more.
According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans disagree with the Times columnist. 73% believe government spends too much on programs and only 22% believe the government takes in too little in taxes.
Government has been the only answer to almost every problem since 1965 and it’s being proven wrong. The postal system is going broke and can’t fix itself, Medicare can’t handle its costs and will be bankrupt in a matter of years, Social Security has been robbed by the spend-happy liberals for decades and their answer is to keep the status quo. That’s not an answer, that’s restating the problem and pretending it is its own solution.
No one disputes the facts that Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid will go broke if they are allowed to continue as-is. There simply isn’t enough money in the economy to pay for benefits when less than half of Americans pay income taxes. Conservative Republicans have led by offering multiple solutions – all of which the Democrats have simply defeated or refused to vote on. The only plan coming from Democrats is to keep things as they are.
The liberal assertion is that we can’t reform any entitlement programs because we will be heading down a slippery slope that will end in America turning into something resembling a third-world country. The truth is that bankruptcy is upon us and if we do nothing to reform our spending to levels that our economy can support – we will be envying those third world nations.
Kristof is a liberal…PERIOD! I’m not surprised as a conservative Republican by anything he says. Consider a recent bit of insincere excess in an article he wrote for his New York Times titled “Taking bin Laden’s Side”(1). He offered this:
“Why do so many Republicans find strip clubs appropriate for the ground zero neighborhood but object to a house of worship? Are lap dances more sanctified than an earnest effort to promote peace?”(1)
Have you heard any notable Republicans declare such? Of course not. Businesses in existence already are not the issue and he damned well knows it. A proposed ‘newcomer’ of dubious qualities coming to that neighborhood and the ‘true’ motivation for it IS THE ISSUE and he damned well knows that too.
This observation was relating his sarcastic excess to the opposition for the so-called Ground Zero mosque. In this same article our liberal bleeding heart offers that he is good friends with the folks behind the mosque effort.
“And this is an earnest effort. I know Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan — the figures behind the Islamic community center — and they are the real thing. Because I have written often about Arab atrocities in Darfur and about the abuse of women in Islamic countries, some Muslim leaders are wary of me. But Imam Feisal and Ms. Khan are open-minded and have been strong advocates for women within Islam.”(1)
Anyone who is familiar with Kristof knows he is an intelligent, worldly and well-educated fellow and one of his driving humanistic endeavors is the disaster that was and is Darfur in Africa. and how the UN and world stood by and watched a mini-holocaust take place. Having acknowledged that reality it is naive to place your respect and adoration on one because he pays some lip-service to a human rights women’s rights cause you have devoted yourself to. AND..it is definitively ignorant of the real record of history to equivocate on militant Islam like this:
“The second misconception underlying this debate is that Islam is an inherently war-like religion that drives believers to terrorism. Sure, the Islamic world is disproportionately turbulent, and mullahs sometimes cite the Koran to incite murder.”(1)
An intelligent person making one statement that contradicts the other back-to-back. Worse though in the same article he immediately goes on to minimize militant Islam and give his revisionist view of the immediate past history in the Middle East.
Enough of Kristof already. I despise disingenuous intellectual retards who parade themselves about as holier-than-thou messengers from Mount Olympus. This character and Paul Krugman are fallaciously motivated brethren of the Fourth Estate.
(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22kristof.html