Sam McManus ([info]_smammy) wrote,
@ 2007-10-06 21:42:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Milton Friedman wanted to spread his love of math
Wow, Naomi Klein is on BookTV talking smack on Libertarianism and she sounds terrrrrible. Stammerific. She seems pretty smart, though, if a little misguided. I'd like to read her new book.

EDIT: NM, she's a dummy. She's saying that free marketeers have a more top-down ideology as opposed to Socialism and Populism. Ridonkulous. To suggest that those at Cato are bought out ideologically by "all the richest families in the country" that contribute money to them is just plain untrue.

EDIT 2: HAHAHA, she was just all "it sucks for the Iraqis that they had this promise of liberation and then their economy gets revamped and Paul Bremer says 'OK, you can vote'" and the interviewer was like "so are you saying that the Iraq war could've turned out differently if it had been handled by a different administration?" and she just didn't know what to say. "I... I can't go into those hypotheticals"

Then she said $80 billion of federal tax money got "liberated" for New Orleans after Katrina

I'm turning on the Phillies, this is making me sad



(Post a new comment)


[info]zootm
2007-10-07 12:06 pm UTC (link)
Naomi Klein is incredibly clever, despite what you think of her politics. As is evident in her writings, though, she's an academically-minded sort. It's not all that surprising that she doesn't communicate well!

(Reply to this) (Thread)

smart as in good writing style != listenable on TV
[info]_smammy
2007-10-07 04:43 pm UTC (link)
I disagree, because she sounded like too much of a flack last night. I like her theory about global shocks being used as a cover for upsetting the previous balances, but she singles out capitalism as the main or biggest beneficiary of these changes. That's ridiculous. Look at the late 1920's and 1930's if you want to see disaster politics: the US responding Keynes-style to the Great Depression, the rise of Stalinism and of Fascism. Where were the free market reforms with THIS disaster? Or, more suitably, why doesn't Klein talk about FDR packing the courts and vetoing like everything? He was one of the most notorious power-grabbers in US history, and yet Klein points to the Chicago Boys in Chile instead. I think she unfairly focuses on my beliefs and the people who hold them, and therefore, I feel she's kind of intellectually dishonest. Smart or not, she has one hell of an agenda, and it is simply not compatible with mine.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…