Queen of Fleece

Dave Weigel penned a must-read about the flat-earther [1] who's driving the Republicans' anti-recovery strategy. It reminds me of my thoughts when Jonah Golberg published Liberal Fascism. I wanted to publish a three word review: "It will work." Because that's the only real relevant thing to say, about his book, and about Amity Shlaes's made-up story about the failure of the New Deal: the very fact that a respectable-looking, book-like object exists that says liberals caused all the world's problems will is cover enough for powerful people to claim that sound scholarship demonstrates that liberals caused all the world's problems.

Good arguments, bad arguments, it does not matter. For the next two generations at least, a considerable plurality of your literate fellow Americans will, upon hearing you're a liberal, believe you to be on board with eugenicism and will hold you responsible for the Depression. Get used to it. That's how the Big Con works. Like Vincent Foster said in his suicide note, about the Wall Street Journal editorial page: they lie with impunity.