Sullivan Descends Into Mindless Drivel

Today Andrew Sullivan posted the 2nd part of his series entitled, “Why Libertarianism Taken to its Logical Extreme is Awful” (see my response to Part One here).

For someone that’s usually so willing to intellectually engage with ideas, his dogmatic adherence to the perfection of market capitalism is almost childlike. In his latest salvo he writes:

The point of capitalism is that actions have consequences. Once that market discipline is removed for a few of the worst, ill-managed, union-crippled companies in America, the stage is set for endless mediocrity, government-run industry (i.e. even more endless mediocrity), and a free-for-all at the government trough. A clear majority of Americans agree, in the new WaPo poll. If this intensifies the recession, so be it. Recessions are sometimes necessary for long-term economic health. And the bigger and sharper it is now the more time Obama has to recover from it. Let them die.

Again, I’ll highlight only the most ridiculous points, as going sentence by sentence would require too large a chunk of my workday. As an aside, if you don’t get a chuckle out of that 2nd sentence then you just don’t have a soul. Limbaugh should sue for copyright infringement.

Let’s start with our “clear majority of Americans” argument. A clear majority of Americans think all kinds of crazy things. I realize they’re picking up the tab, and that is important, but it’s the inconsistency of his argument that feels disingenuous. Neither in his last post on the subject nor this one, has he given any indication whatsoever that he’s inclined to put stock in public opinion. Remember, the public was far more overwhelmingly against a bailout of financial institutions, but Sullivan never mustered anywhere close to this level of opposition.

“If this intensifies the recession, so be it.” Yeah, so be it. Right on. Omelets and eggs, right? The callousness of this statement is really staggering. If you’re not going to attempt to explain why letting the auto industry fail is going to result in a net lowering of economic and personal misery (and again, I think a case could be made), then saying that just makes you sound like an insensitive asshole.

Next comes the whopper, “Recessions are sometimes necessary for long-term economic health”. Why? Because you say so? Are you even going to bother citing anyone? That may well be true, but it sure sounds counterintuitive (replace the word recessions with 'influenza' and eliminate the word 'economic'…still make sense?).

Now we get to: “And the bigger and sharper it is now the more time Obama has to recover from it.” Huh? I have no idea what this even means. Anybody want to hazard a guess? Is he saying that if it’s a really deep recession than it will take longer to recover from it? Well, right…but…

Then, finally, it’s “let them die”. Classy. Does he have some pent up anger against the auto-industry? It’s hard for me not to go back to the Chuck Todd corollary here. I won’t throw out the insinuation without asking the question: Andrew: Do you personally know a single blue-collar worker whose job would be threatened by the failure of the Big Three? Any families? Correspondingly, how many people do you know that work for financial institutions?

I wouldn’t have asked if he’d been 1/10th this hard on the rescuing of financial institutions, at the cost of 40X as much money, but the zeal with which he’s making this argument makes me wonder.

Update: One of you pointed out that after saying I wasn't going to analyze Sullivan's post sentence by sentence, I proceeded to do just that. They have a point. I guess I couldn't help myself.