The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
Not content with being wrong about American politics, the New York Times prints a simpering and meretricious op-ed about British politics. It's all about budget cutting, you see. The people doing the rioting have one thing in common:
All are victims of what people in Britain call “the cuts” — the government’s defunding of civil-society institutions in order to balance the nation’s books. Before the riots, the government had planned to cut 16,200 police officers across the country. In London, austerity means that there will be about 19 percent less to spend next year on government programs, and the burden will fall particularly on the poor.
And then, of course, of course, the inevitable: it's the Tea Party's fault:
The American right today is obsessed with cutting government spending. In many ways, Mr. Cameron’s austerity program is the Tea Party’s dream come true. But Britain is now grappling with the consequences of those cuts, which have led to the neglect and exclusion of many vulnerable, disaffected young people who are acting out violently and irresponsibly — driven by rage rather than an explicit political agenda.
Nonsense, cries James Delingpole in the Telegraph -- and if there's some way to get this brilliant, no-quarter-given writer to join our ranks here on Ricochet, I promise to move heaven and earth -- he is fantastic -- and he proceeds to demonstrate why I'm glad he's on our side:
I surely can’t be the only Londoner for whom it sticks, ever so slightly, in the craw to be told by a Chicago-born professor of sociology and his Dutch sociologist wife in the New York Times is that the riots are kind of our fault because Britain has become such a hotbed of Tea Party values.
And about those cuts from David Cameron's government? They don't exist. They're like the "cuts" in government we get over here:
I’d love to know where American liberals get their misinformation. (The NYT’s resident faux-conservative David L Brooks labours under similar misapprehensions about the Cameron administration). Certainly they would have more of a convincing case if these “cuts” of which they speak actually existed. But as Fraser Nelson has pointed out, they don’t.
We are, of course, going to see plenty more such attempts by the left to pin the blame for riots on social deprivation, Tory cuts and all the progressives’ other favourite culprits...
Our job is to make sure they don’t get away with it, and, most importantly, to make sure that the Government doesn’t let them get away with it. For all of its existence, Cameron’s Coalition has behaved as if it’s far more interested in what the BBC and the Guardian thinks than in what real people outside metropolitan bien-pensant tofu-eating circles think.
This can’t go on. Our world is on the edge of a precipice. The last thing we need right now is to let the very media institutions which helped bring us to this pass – that means YOU, Guardian, BBC, New York Times, etc – drag us over the cliff with their irrelevant values, falling audiences and failed, suicidal ideologies.
Why has it taken me so long to discover James Delingpole?
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Sep '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
I think someone just sent him an email but I'm not at liberty to say who.
Apr '11
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
Great find Rob! There sitting around the NYT stewing that an actual Britt has the audacity to challenge their view of the world. When have facts and the truth been a part of their journalistic ethics lately anyway.
Dec '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
Delingpole would be a great addition, but I bet he'd decline the invitation once he was told he'd have to comply with the Code of Conduct.
Oct '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
I love this guy. I have two words for the idiot lefties: Foreign creditors. Also, "balance of payments crisis" (currency + banking collapse all rolled into one).
We Westerners have been sternly lecturing emerging markets on fiscal responsibility for hundreds of years, and overseen the cleanup as their economies collapsed again and again from not adhering to it. We only get away with deficit spending because those same emerging markets need us as an export market and are willing to finance it. It is, frankly, evil. Our creditors are not going to fund our deficits for much longer; why pay tribute to wealthy center nations if you can avoid it?
We are stealing the bread of poor people in poor countries to avoid pain in our own very rich ones. And Paul Krugman wants more of this.
Jun '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
"Curses, that infernal Tea Party!! They'll be the ruin of us yet! What's the matter with them anyway? Don't they understand how wonderful socialism can be? Why, if Tea Party ideas are allowed to spread around the world who knows what evil and mayhem will ensue? To the guillotine! The guillotine, I say!"
No truth to the rumor that this is being heard echoing through the West Wing...yet.
Jul '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
The facts simply don't enter into it. Riots always arise in response to failures of the authorities to appease the righteous disgruntlement of the masses. Any analysis along these lines is plainly self-validating thanks to its firm rooting in axiomatic truths. Every sophomore at Columbia knows that!
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
Rob, the Times isn't only wrong about American and British politics. It published a risible piece a few days ago about the shot in the arm the Arab Spring has allegedly given the Palestinian cause -- a claim that is fairly awe-inspiring for the bravura way in which it denies all the actual evidence. I considered giving it a good fisking but couldn't summon sufficient indignation -- a sign of how thoroughly I've given up on The New York Times.
Jun '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
In the 1930s, some of my relatives lost their farms to the bank, they went without meals sometimes, but they didn't conclude that rioting and looting was the solution. They had much bigger problems than today's Londoners have. But, they saved up what little they could, they moved to the West Coast, and they started over. Luckily, they had the personal freedom that comes with small government. There was no giant hand of government there to bite. Rather, you just cut your losses, prayed, and moved on.
Jan '11
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
So let me get this straight.
16 year olds who can't find Congress if they were standing on Capitol Street are likely to perceive the implications of cutting Medicare, and those perceptive 16 year olds will respond by going into a murderous rage.
Sure.
Aug '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
This is the reply I got when I challenged a contributor to a discussion about the Tea Party on an Irish political and news website who compared the TP to the Nazis;
"@Charles. Another contributor has mentioned some of the evils that illustrate the similarities. Other things they have in common would be rampant homophobia, unchecked militarisation and an increased subservience of the individual to the state."(emphasis added).
This is my reply:
"John,The two central tenets of the Tea Party are fiscal responsibility and small government so on the latter point your opinion is the exact opposite of reality.It is not a militaristic movement although like most Americans it’s members individually probably are in favour of a strong military.They are not in favour of adventurism or nation- building.The Tea Party does not take positions on social issues.Many supporters undoubtedly are social conservatives but many are libertarians.Tarring the TP movement as such with "rampant homophobia" is unfair.By the way if your test for "rampant homophobia" is opposition to gay marriage then remember that a majority in California,no TP bastion to put it mildly,voted against."
Sep '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
Delingpole is not quite correct. They could be rioting in anticipation of budget cuts. It's a rational expectations model applied to the welfare state. If beneficiaries believed budget cuts were coming — or, for that matter, if they believed that cuts had occurred even if they had not — rioters could be motivated by rational expectations of future austerity.
This should not be a controversial point. US business investment is depressed in part because of a well-founded, rational expectation of higher future (not current) taxes. Greek unionists did not riot because cuts in pay and pensions had occurred; they did so in anticipation that such cuts would occur, and they hoped that by rioting they could prevent this.
The Times op-ed is wrong analytically not because planned budget cuts (whether in the UK or the US) had occurred. It's wrong because the cuts thus far proposed are too small to ever have the hypothesized effects—unless, of course, rioters actually believe the claims of opponents (such as the Times) that seeking fiscal solvency means the end of the world.
Meanwhile, rioters' perspectives (such as they have appeared in the press) suggest that less sophisticated motivations dominate their calculations.
Feb '11
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
"Why has it taken me so long to discover James Delingpole?"
I've been reading Delingpole since before 2008. Very funny guy. He's had much to point out the absurdity of global warming and the conspiracy from (I think) Univ. of East Anglia to cook the books on data. Don't get him started on that.
Feb '11
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
the government’s defunding of civil-society institutions in order to balance the nation’s books
Was anyone else taken a little bit aback at this phrase? I always thought that once the government funded it, it was no longer (in any meaningful way) civil society. Wasn't part of Jonah Goldberg's argument that the 20th century totalitarian regimes were consistent in their attempts to subvert or co-opt such institutions of civil society as the family, the church, schools and replace them with government functions?
Sep '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
Great post, Joseph! It is, in fact evil, by which I mean l--i-v-e spelled backwards!
Joseph Eagar: I love this guy. I have two words for the idiot lefties: Foreign creditors. Also, "balance of payments crisis" (currency + banking collapse all rolled into one).
We Westerners have been sternly lecturing emerging markets on fiscal responsibility for hundreds of years, and overseen the cleanup as their economies collapsed again and again from not adhering to it. We only get away with deficit spending because those same emerging markets need us as an export market and are willing to finance it. It is, frankly, evil. Our creditors are not going to fund our deficits for much longer; why pay tribute to wealthy center nations if you can avoid it?
We are stealing the bread of poor people in poor countries to avoid pain in our own very rich ones. And Paul Krugman wants more of this. · Aug 15 at 11:27am
Jun '11
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
England's charming rioting class appears to have one very prominent characteristic in common: a rather wanton ignorance of how economies (well, and societies) actually work.
Most of these lovely people would seem, therefore, benefit greatly from a crash course in common sense -- something that Ricochet happens to be very good at.
Alas, because the rioters -- every single one of them, according to the NYT and Guardian -- is poor and downtrodden, I propose we waive the "price of a Grande Latte at the flagship Starbucks" entry fee for all British rioters who wish to become members of Ricochet. All they have to do is provide their name, address, and the nature of their participation in the riots, and they could become full members of our conversation without charge.
What say you, Rob?
Apr '11
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
Delingpole has been doing yeoman service tracking the anthropogenic global warming scam.
Oct '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
And rationally so. Now if you could just get Peter R. to give up his dead-tree nostalgia fix...
May '11
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
And here I thought the rioters were just thugs and refugees from A Clockwork Orange. Many thanks to the NYT for informing me that they are actually terrorists, engaged in arson and mahem to further their political agenda, rather than just to pick up a free flatscreen. Given our special relationship with the UK, I think President Petulant, er excuse me, Obama, should offer to house some of these terrorists in at Guantanamo. It seems like the least we could do.
Dec '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
Richard Belzer: Delingpole is not quite correct. They could be rioting in anticipation of budget cuts. It's a rational expectations model applied to the welfare state. If beneficiaries believed budget cuts were coming — or, for that matter, if they believed that cuts had occurred even if they had not — rioters could be motivated by rational expectations of future austerity.
...
You make a very good point, Richard. And all too true -- they could be rioting in anticipation of the cuts. However, I suspect they're rioting because they've been stewed in leftist secular humanist critical theory (aka Marxism) and, therefore, their values stink. As Dennis Prager often says, criminality doesn't come from poverty (or austerity), it comes from bad values.
May '10
Re: The New York Times Drowns in The Pond
Rob Long: Not content with being wrong about American politics, the New York Times prints a simpering and meretricious op-ed about British politics. It's all about budget cutting, you see. The people doing the rioting have one thing in common:
Why has it taken me so long to discover James Delingpole? ·
Rob- it';s because you don't follow the global warming debate very intensively. Delingpole is a regular on all the blogs and shows, including, if I recall rightly, appearances at the Heartland Institute's NIPCC conference.