Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The shockingly bad "Shock Doctrine" of Naomi Kline.



Naomi Klein is the Anne Coulter of the Left. Neither bother to offer substantive research, both grossly and intentionally misrepresent their targets and both invent false accusations with glee. Johan Norberg discusses some of Klines egregious examples. I found it shocking that Kline simply lied to people and claimed that Milton Friedman was a supporter of the War in Iraq. Milton had spoken out in opposition to the war numerous times before died. But Naomi doesn't let a minor detail like the truth get in the way of her politics.

She spent a lot of time misquoting Friedman and stripping comments out of context to often ascribe to Friedman positions that were the polar opposite of those he was actually taking. Klein claimed that libertarians somehow engineer a crisis, like the Iraq war, to push for changes that they get through any other way. To do this she had lie about the position most libertarians took on the war -- for instance she claimed the anti-war Cato Institute was a "neo-conservative" think tank!

Interestingly now that the economy has gone into melt-down due to policies opposed by libertarians, it is the Left, particularly Obama and Bush, who are using the crisis to push through massive "reforms" guaranteed to turn the crisis into a long-term depression. So, in fact, the Left is happily using this crisis to push through "reforms" that would never pass under other circumstances. So who is using Klein's "shock doctrine"? Just the Left.

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