Bret Stephens writes today without irony: “The more serious problem today comes from the left: from liberal elites who, when tested, lack the courage of their liberal convictions.”
So according to Bret, “cancel culture” is worse than Trump. Yet his grotesquely irresponsible April 24, 2020 column is helping kill tens of thousands of people in Tennessee, Texas and Florida. Maybe if we “liberal elites” (such as Times editors) didn’t give free voice to the likes of Stephens, fewer people would die.
Lethal ideas don’t deserve a “platform.”
On April 24, 2020, Stephens wrote America Shouldn’t Have to Play by New York Rules, nearly every word of which is sufficient for him to lose his rarified spot in the media. This is not unfair hindsight. It was established science at the time not to return to “normal life.” Yet he wrote:
Americans are being told they must still play by New York rules — with all the hardships they entail — despite having neither New York’s living conditions nor New York’s health outcomes. This is bad medicine, misguided public policy, and horrible politics.
”Bad medicine, misguided public policy, and horrible politics.”
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
This supposedly rational “never-Trump” conservative was all-in for Trumpian policy on this one. Not a surprise, given Stephens’ well-known climate “skepticism.”
And the column got him another spot on the increasingly unwatchable Bill Maher Show.
It gets worse:
Right now, there’s a lot of commentary coming from talking heads (many of them in New York) about the danger of lifting lockdowns in places like Tennessee. Perhaps the commentary needs to move in the opposite direction. Tennesseeans are within their rights to return to a semblance of normal life while demanding longer restrictions on New Yorkers.
It’s all there:
- Sneering at “New York” talking heads. (Hyper anti-anti-Semite Bret should be a bit more sensitive to snide references about New York.)
- Contrarianism — the “hot take” that we need to move in the “opposite direction.”
- Perversion of “rights” into freedom to infect people, spread sickness and death, and overwhelm hospitals.
And what about Tennessee, where Bret advised people to get back to a “semblance of normal life?”
Yet today, Stephens dares to write about the grave threat of canceling Steve Bannon at the New Yorker. In a rational world, which apparently does not include the NY Times Op-ed page, Stephens would be writing a column begging for forgiveness, admitting how wrong he was, and pledging from now on to follow science and rationality on all subjects.
But then he couldn’t be a conservative anymore.