I flipped on MSNBC this morning, forgetting that until around 4pm MSNBC is the all-conservative-all-the-time channel, sort of a Fox light. Naturally, none other than Joe the Douchebag is on my screen. Today, his topic of conversation is Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.
Apparently, Mr. Krugman wrote an op-ed in the times where he was unkind to conservatism by pointing out that conservatives believe that 'greed is good'. Surely a mantra we've all heard approximately 2839429 times since the turn of the century... and, perhaps, a disputable point given that perhaps some conservatives do NOT buy into the whole greed über alles philosophy.
However, rather than disputing the thrust of Krugman's article, he goes directly after the man, calling him a "extreme lefty left of the left", an "angry little leftist blogger", and various other combinations of the terms "angry", "little", and "leftist" interspersed with dismissal of the fact that he won a Nobel prize for economics.
This is a major problem that I think we're going to face going forward. Many self-styled conservatives are not intellectually honest. They don't value logic or a reasoned opposition based on a rational, principled stance. They figure that so long as they "win" an argument that any means necessary to get to the win are acceptable, including but not limited to attacking the messenger (like joe), appeals to emotion and prejudice (limbaugh), sheer volume (o'reilly) or flat out non sequitur "Chewbacca Defense" style retorts (palin).
Where have all the principled, intelligent, erudite conservatives of yesteryear gone... those people who could you disagree with, but still count on mutual respect? Are the only ones left the demagogues and intellectual dilettantes?
Those of you familiar with the Morning Joe show knows that he often has feeble "defenders" of progressives for when he goes on a rant... today was no different. The defender (whose name escapes me because his performance was so pathetic as to be essentially meaningless [Edit: It was O'Donnell]) essentially clamped on to Joe's fixation on the word little, rather than calling him out on the fact that instead of disputing Mr. Krugman's message, he decided to attack the messenger. Limp noodles like that are completely counterproductive by letting people like Joe to conjure up weak, but emotional, arguments and giving them validity instead of saying outright "If you have a problem with the policy or philosophy, say so. Throwing jabs at the messenger is lame, says nothing about the point, and makes you look like a whiny blowhard."
... and if whiny blowhards and extremists are the only ones left, can any real cooperation take place?