Ezra Klein has a new raison d'être.
He wants to get the politics out of everything.
Yes, the guy who set up a website to coordinate the attacks on Sarah Palin in 2008; the guy who used his blog on the Washington Post to argue many false arguments on behalf of Obama, including all the stuff he got wrong on Obamacare; the guy who cemented the Post’s place as the largely irrelevant, largely laughable post-internet dinosaur and press office for Democrat policies, says that everything has become politicized.
And he deplores it.
He quotes a report from Stanford:
"Partisans discriminate against opposing partisans, and do so to a degree that exceeds discrimination based on race," [the report from Stanford says]. Think about that for a moment, says Klein, at least under certain experimental conditions, our political identities now trump our racial identities.
You don’t say? Really?
Memo to dude who lives inside the DC bubble: You’ve just found out what conservatives have argued for years. And in finding it out, you’ve made the most compelling argument for smaller government?
What law are you going to propose to stop discrimination on the basis of party affiliation?
Oh, that’s right. There already is one.
It’s in the constitution.
It’s called free association, free speech, freedom OF religion.
You should look up the constitution. It’s a document written by irrelevant white guys like you, only they were older and wiser.
But if that doesn’t work there is also the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to look at. It was more popular with Republicans in both the House and the Senate than it was with Democrats.
In fact one Senator who opposed it on the Republican side at least did so for the RIGHT reasons:
“If I were a Negro” said Goldwater, who opposed federal intervention on matters of race, “I don't think I would be very patient either."
The Democrats who opposed it did so because they were incorrigible old racists. Were it not for them, there would have been no reason for civil rights legislation.
At least Goldwater knew why he opposed civil rights legislation, dear Comrade Ezra, even if you forgot to notice.
He was afraid that the Civil Rights laws would be abused to fit into neat little political bludgeons; bludgeons used to beat a majorities’ common sense. You know? Used to propose things like healthcare as a universal human right, where the government has the right to make you purchase insurance; or where men get to decide which restroom they use as a matter of civil rights. Yes, he thought that it would be silly to construct a body of legislation that would allow grown men to use the ladies’ room as a matter of civil rights.
Ok, I made the last part up. Kind of.
Because clearly Goldwater or any of the other Senators who voted on that legislation would have reacted violently if I were to go back in time and ask them with the utmost seriousness whether the proposed legislation would be abused to cover such foolishness.
But since you can’t even follow your own professional ethical standards, why would I expect you to follow a new law you profess to have discovered?
In coming full circle Klein seems determined to justify the old adage by Churchill: “Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.”
I don’t know exactly where Klein now fits on the continuum. He's still young, I guess.
I just know that Ezra Klein is still an idiot.
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