[Peace-discuss] Capturing Friedman

[David Green]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

The subject reference is to a movie about an accused child molester. Thomas 
Friedman is a pompous, pretentious, self-absorbed gasbag. But what he says 
indicates how (liberal) people who own the country think. Today's columan is 
important for a number of reasons: the promotion of a frightening "radical 
center" (analagous to Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s promotion 60 years ago of a 
"vital center" to favor the invasion of Korea, etc); and the specter of the 
cooperation of that proto-fascist, establishment "radical center" with whatever 
aspect of the Tea Party movement is more authentically fascist--i.e., TP leaders 
and publicists, rather than the inchoate populism of many of its adherents (with 
nowhere else to go). And Friedman's posturing that equates the "far left" with 
the "far right," without mentioning their common opposition to war. Unlike 
pundits like Walter Lippmann of an earlier era, Friedman has no measured 
conception of the use of our military--Lippmann actually opposed the Vietnam War 
as inconsistent with "containment", and was punished with obscurity late in his 
life for doing so. Friedman would not allow this to happen; thus he will support 
a Hindenburg cutting a deal with a Hitler, and will volunteer to write a book 
justifying it, which will be better than anything Goebbels could have come up 
with.

DG


      
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