Ygnominious
July 29th, 2010This is a syndicated post, originally from der Blaustrumpf.
I can’t improve on what Charles Davis thinks of Matthew Yglesias’s “Priorities”:
“From a Keynesian standpoint, I believe that with the economy depressed it’s better to spend the money in Afghanistan than not to spend it.”
The above excerpt comes from a post noting the inconsistency of self-styled deficit hawks complaining about the relative pittance spent on social programs and its contribution to the national debt even as they vote in lockstep to drop another $37 billion on a failing nation-building exercise in Afghanistan. And as far as the point goes, it’s a good one…But there’s something wrong — something sick, really — with Ygelsias’ war-as-stimulus argument that strikes me as far more offensive than the fact that some fiscal conservatives are hypocrites when it comes to the National Security State…What you shouldn’t do in a debate over war, at least if you want to maintain your status as a Non-Despicable Person, is argue that bombing and occupying a foreign nation makes good economic sense. Even if it were true as an academic point, it’s grotesquely out of place in a discussion of matters of life and death. War, if it can ever be justified — and I have my doubts — can only be so on the grounds that it is absolutely necessary to protecting human life: there is no other choice, it’s a last resort. Yet Yglesias discusses the continuation of a major, bloody armed conflict as if it were just another jobs program; perhaps not the most effective one to his mind, but hey, it’s better that the federal government spend money on a pointless war than do nothing at all (like actually save money by ending said pointless war).
false dichotomy by charles davis: Beltway liberalism in 24 words.
A pretend war, a real war, it’s all the same to Yglesias, so long as it gives some relatively safe and privileged American his 9-to-5 back. The broken window fallacy is stupid and destructive enough, but to willingly swap it for some sort of monstrous broken lives fallacy is indeed about as sick and wrong as it comes.
Filed under: economics, War Tagged: charlesdavis, War, ygnominy
