Betrayal

[stoutfellow]

Thomas Sowell has been recommended to me, on occasion, as a clear and thoughtful spokesman for modern conservatism. I have one of his books in my library, though I have done no more than glance at it.

In a recent opinion column, Thomas Sowell wrote the following:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

Words fail me. I mean that literally. I have been struggling to come up with something witty, something incisive, something coherent to express the fury with which that comment fills me. I have contemplated the satiric, the grave, even the obscene; nothing suitable has come to me.

I say this: that which could be "saved" of this country by a military coup... would not be this country. It would be a shambling hulk, an Alzheimer's nation; it would not be the United States in anything but name.

Comments

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

As a matter of curiosity, what did he do or say in 2000 that turned you off of him?

[selenite.livejournal.com]

He was part of a wave of Republicans attacking McCain on all sorts of bogus grounds. The Reps then had a desire unify behind a single candidate so they could get the White House back and thought having an uncontested primary season was the best way to do it. Sorta the same mechanism that had the Dems pick Kerry for "electability".

Anyway, IIRC McCain had talked of the need to run budget surpluses so we could pay off the national debt, then about $5 trillion. Sowell complained that zeroing the debt would destroy financial markets by removing US treasuries as benchmark securities and causing chaos. I figured a less than $1 trillion debt would probably provide enough benchmarking to keep Wall Street happy.