Monday, August 28, 2006

Wal-Mart Cont'd   [Jonah Goldberg]

Ezra Klein ducks and weaves. Obliquely responding to my criticism he writes:

 

WAL-MART: ROUND 2. Sebastian Mallaby's obtuse column about anti-Wal-Mart sentiment among Democrats offers me an opportunity to expand on some comments I made last week. Then, referring to a Jonah Goldberg column on the same subject, I said that "how to handle Wal-Mart is among the two or three most important issues facing the country." A lot of folks ceased reading right there and began accusing me of not taking "Islamofascism" and health care seriously enough. Yes, if only I paid more attention to health care.

Me: Who said the issue was that Ezra doesn't write about healthcare enough? The question is whether he really believes how we deal with Wal-Mart is more important than healthcare, or the war on terror, or education or whatever. Also, it's interesting that anybody who disagrees with his concerns is "obtuse" or some such.  Anyway, I should say that I do think how we deal with Wal-Mart is very important. But only because folks like Ezra are so obsessed with the place that it's inevitable that we have a public policy argument about it. If I had my druthers, government would pretty much ignore the place. Which means there will be plenty of time to debate this, since it only takes one party to make something a political issue, and the Democrats have decided they're gonna do exactly that. 

Oh and since I may be away from the computer most of the day tomorrow, a head's up: my buddy Nick Schulz says that he's gonna have a good piece by Tim Worstall up at TCS tomorrow addressing a lot of this stuff.  

08/28 02:36 PMShare