Monday, December 07, 2009

A year of magical thinking

Stephen den beste is back on the intertubes with a column on hot air.


On hot air he's writing about Obama as a Teleological thinker, how he expects
magical thinking to work to transform the USA:

It explains his economic policy. Teleologists inherently don’t believe in unintended side effects when it comes to implementing their idealistic policies. Obviously it should be possible to provide free health care to everyone without wrecking the economy; it’s just how things really should be, so that’s how it will be. Where will the money come from? That’s the kind of question that materialists ask; teleologists don’t concern themselves with such trivial. It’ll happen somehow, because it’s obviously how it should turn out. To say we shouldn’t do it is to be heartless, uncaring — and those things are more important than mundane claims that it won’t work. If you just believe, it will work.
Jimmy Carter was similar and we see how that turned out. Jimmy Carter described
the congress as the ravening wolves, and we're seeing the wolves running free now
as they create 2000 page healthcare bills. Depending on the kindness of congress
or the kindness of governments that don't like us is a bad idea and likely to have
bad results in the non-magical world.

Den Beste was one of the four horsemen of the ablogalypse, and his USS clueless
blog was one of the first must reads for clarity of thought. Here's a blog on the
mean green meme that explained so well the way that different groups of people
think post 911. I'm glad he's back.

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