On this solemn commemorative day, we at NewsBusters have made a point of holding our rhetorical fire against liberals as a gesture of respect to those who lost their lives that day and subsequently. There is much we could say and, starting tomorrow, will say.
An exception has to be made for one Paul Krugman, who seems, earlier life, to have been a decent and civilized person. Since he began writing a column for the New York Times, however, Krugman has experienced a veritable descent into madness, principally due to Bush Derangement Syndrome. Today, Krugman decided to proudly expose his neurosis for the entire world to see in an execrable rant on his Times blog. His post is preserved in full below:
September 11, 2011, 8:41 AM
The Years of ShameIs it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd. What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te [sic] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.
Please note the timestamp on this posting: September 11, 2011, 8:41 AM.
That means Krugman woke up on the tenth anniversary of the largest attack on this nation's homeland and decided to make an attack on three men forever linked to that moment, simply because he doesn't like them. Imagine if a New York Times columnist had done that during World War II on Pearl Harbor Day. Absolutely sickening.
Of course, one ought not be surprised to see such contemptible rhetoric from Krugman given his history of making numerous preposterous and hateful statements.
Having no respect for the dead—all 2,977 of them—is hardly the only sin evinced by Krugman today, though. His posting makes no attempt to make an argument and he didn't seem to even bother spell-checking it.
Cowardice is another. It takes a special kind of sociopath to make a hateful remark and then run away when sane people choose to make a response. Why else would he have disabled comments on his post?
It’s possible that Krugman’s rant was prompted purely by a venal desire to gin up hits for the pitiful collection of ravings otherwise known as his blog, “The Conscience of a Liberal.” Such types of shameless sociopaths do exist after all.
That can’t be the answer, though. Even shameless self-promoters are aware that going too far can harm their future ability to shill. Krugman’s rant came from something deeper and far darker than that.
We saw this facet of his personality most recently in January of this year when Krugman penned a column for the Times reacting to the shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords which was remarkably similar to the reaction of Fred Phelps, the deranged leader of the Westboro Baptist cult.
Both men immediately flew into apoplexy, eager to blame her near-death on Americans who dare to disagree with them. Both misquoted and lied about the actions and rhetoric of their enemies and then said they were not surprised that Giffords had been shot because of the societal environment created by said enemies.
As a militant liberal and atheist, Krugman didn’t blame the actions of Jared Loughner on the wrath of a God angered at the continued non-imprisonment of gays, instead he blamed Loughner’s actions on the “growing potential for violence” supposedly created by conservatives. Both, however, saw the attack as the logical consequent of a society that had been led horribly awry by evildoers who just won’t listen to the truth. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin was named by both men as one such individual. Krugman threw in GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann for good measure. Never mind that neither Palin nor Bachmann had anything at all to do with Loughner's rampage.
In using the very day during which we commemorate those who died to smear those he hates, Krugman has completed his embrace of Westboro Baptist liberalism, particularly with his utter inability to perceive the emotions of others. Does he really expect commemorations of the murder of thousands of innocent people to be anything other than “oddly subdued?”
When it comes to “hijacking of the atrocity” of September 11th, Paul Krugman has provided a far better example of the term than anyone else. The New York Times ought to be ashamed of itself for allowing Krugman’s vile rant to appear on its website on the very day the city it purports to serve is mourning the worst event in its history. What a shame it is that America’s most famous newspaper has become an enabler of a man in the throes of a mental breakdown.
Update 19:45. Ace of Spades has a superb essay about Krugman and other liberals who, instead of hating Al Qaeda, hate conservatives:
Those of us not smitten with this Only Hate Hate Itself dodge can admit we hate. We may not be proud of it, and may question ourselves when we give license to it, but we can in fact admit this ugly emotion lives in our hearts.
And we can admit then that we do in fact hate the murderers who killed 2,996 [sic] on 11 September 2001, and we hate their allies, and we hate those who dance in the street at the thoughts of men on fire plummeting a quarter mile through the air to their deaths.
But to the bien pensants, this won't due. This sort of hatred is base, and crude, and obvious; lower working class, is what they would really call it, if they had the supposed courage Kathleen Parker imagines they do in speaking uncomfortable truth. Not Quite Our Class, Dear, as the old saying goes, lacking in manners and savoir faire (knowing how to "do," and by "do," we mean comport oneself with the expected manners and opinions of the privileged class).
And what does a bien pensant in good standing about these these uncultured yobbos who feel no twinge of class-inculcated shame in hating mass-murderers?
Why, you hate them, of course. For what else can a good bien pensant, who has purged all hate from his heart by simple act of subscribing to Mother Jones, do when confronted with some benighted hatred, but to pour enlightened hatred on it?
We have never really been arguing about whether we should go to war, or whether we should hate. The only contention of these past 10 years has been whom we should go to war with, and whom we ought to hate.
Read the whole thing. It is excellent.
