Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Stuck on Stupid   [Jonah Goldberg]

I know there's this race to the bottom in certain quarters of the lefty blogosphere to make the most sweeping case possible for my stupidity, but it's really quite striking how often they over shoot the mark and make fools of themselves. Take this breathless post over at Crooked Timber by some guy named Henry (don't miss the typically edifying comments as well). There's the usual name calling, and knowing allusions to things not backed by evidence (for example, the supposed irony of a "National Review hack" criticizing toadying up to the throne or some such). But the whole post is aimed at a straw man. Any fair reader of my post (hint, that excludes Henry) would see that I was criticizing liberals and conservatives for not taking culture into account enough. Here's my opening statement:

We can have the argument about the best form of government for the other 364 days a year. What I find interesting about the liberal defense of European welfare states (They really work! No Really!) is how they leave culture out of the equation almost entirely. Conservatives, particularly free market types of the Kempian variety, have a similar myopia.

Here's a cue: When I say we can argue about the best form of government for the other 364 days a year, that's a hint I think governmental forms are worth arguing about. Obviously, my point was not that culture is everything, but that government isn't everything. When I say that conservatives have a similar myopia, I'm actually trying to be even-handed.

Then there's Henry's entirely legitimate, but entirely irrelevant, discussion of Marty Lipset. I don't really dispute anything the guy says about Lipset, I just don't see how it refutes anything I said — in my obviously tongue-and-cheek summary. I agree completely, for example, that the New Deal was a form of Europeanization of America, as it was hailed at the time. I'm just not for Europeanization of America. For the record, by my count I've read at least four books by Lipset, I don't how many articles, attended a half-dozen talks by the guy and actually had several conversations about the differences between Canada and the United States with him when he was consulting on some television shows I was working on. Henry may know more about Lipset, but who cares?

Meanwhile, Ezra Klein does pretty much the exact same thing as Henry, showing off all of the things he knows by listing what I didn't mention in that post. I do love this bit of pomposity: "... in case Jonah or anyone else wants to actually study the development of the American, Canadian, and European social welfare states, rather than just muse over them, I thought I'd offer up some resources on the subject." Golly Ezra, thanks. Who knew that "musing" in a blog post was now so outré?

I don't disagree with much of anything Ezra writes either, at least on the historical front. For example, after name-dropping a bunch of books for those who want to Get Beyond Musing, he says "There's nothing wrong, of course, with positing culture as a source of differences between different countries and continents.[ Shweeeooo! It's okay after all! — JG] But to try and tell the story of our divergent paths without mentioning the overwhelming role of race, the American Medical Association, the status quo bias of our particular system of government, America's comparatively weaker Labor movement, and so forth is really rather silly."

I agree. But, I do wonder: Where did Ezra get the idea I didn't? Is he really trying to suggest that I was trying to tell the whole story of European and American "divergent paths" in that one post? Come on. Though it's worth mentioning that race, the AMA, the status quo bias in our system of government, the role of labor etc all do have more than a minor relationship with this this thing called "culture." But conceding that incandescently obvious point would get in the way of his seemingly deliberate misreading of what I wrote.

04/10 11:03 PMShare