http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/opinion/01brooks.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Here is the opening paragraph of Cockeyed Platonist’s (CP) column for February 28^th 2011:

‘We’re going to be doing a lot of deficit cutting over the next several years. The country’s future greatness will be shaped by whether we cut wisely or stupidly. So we should probably come up with a few sensible principles to guide us as we cut.’

If you are looking for something even resembling an apology or even the slightest contrition for his unstinting advocacy of ‘Free Market Economics’ and the resulting collapse of 2008, it is your own self-created mirage, a belief in a nonexistent political/intellectual good faith.  CP sounds the note of ‘shared sacrifice’, but his Republican allies are gravitating to the natural idea of the sacrifice of the many for the few. CP rehearses the notion of calm, reasonableness. The intellectual pose seems especially hollow.  Here is an example of his witless irony: ‘The future has no union.’ Yet he pleads for an ‘enlightened austerity’ to a party that has long since left the quaint notion of ‘reasonableness’ behind, as excess baggage, on the way to power. The Crash of 2008 is by omission argued as resembling a natural disaster instead of the watershed of unregulated markets lost in malfeasance, lawlessness and greed. But still the arguments for  the ‘Market’ as ultimate rationalization shines through the rather lamely constructed arguments as somehow credible, substantive and worthy of due consideration: after his bleak recital of the non-rational budget cuts being made at present. I’ll end with the two concluding paragraphs of this inexcusable, maladroit dreck.

‘During the fat years, nobody bothered to link pay to performance. Government workers and government programs got funding increases no matter how they did. This model is anathema to most Americans, especially those under 40.

This period of austerity will be a blessing if it spurs an effectiveness revolution. It will be a disaster if the cutting is done politically or mindlessly. Unfortunately, that’s often how it is being done now.’