9 Responses to “Right Again”

1. 1 1 Sub Specie Æternitatis
   April 27, 2016 at 9:03 am

   Thanks for the first laugh on a morning more politically bleak than usual.

2. 2 2 nobody.really
   April 27, 2016 at 9:59 am

   Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the eastern seaboard and watch it float out to sea.

   I so often hear analogous things said of Texas and California; this is the first I’d seen it said of the East Coast. Yea for equal time!

   But Goldwater is a font of interesting quotes — some more famous than others.

   I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

   Barry Goldwater, 1964, accepting Republican nomination for president, and channeling Kahlil Gibran who said “In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people’s wrath.”

   Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

   Barry Goldwater (November 1994), as quoted in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience (2006).

   The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they’re gay. You don’t have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that’s what brings me into it.

   Barry Goldwater, quoted in “Barry Goldwater’s Left Turn” by Lloyd Grove in The Washington Post (28 July 1994).

   I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.

   Barry Goldwater (July 1981) quoted by Ed Magnuson in “The Brethren’s First Sister,” Time Magazine, (20 July, 1981) in response to Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell’s opposition to Sandra Day O’Connor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, of which Falwell had said, “Every good Christian should be concerned.” However, the quote is contested; John Dean quotes Goldwater as saying “I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the nuts.” Dean, John (2008), Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches.

3. 3 3 Capt. J Parker
   April 27, 2016 at 6:00 pm

   How ’bout Mencken: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it – good and hard.”

4. 4 4 Advo
   April 28, 2016 at 2:20 am

   I wasn’t aware SL preferred Sanders over Clinton.

5. 5 5 Advo
   April 28, 2016 at 2:23 am

   I mean – surely you were referring to Sanders, right? You couldn’t POSSIBLY have hoped for a victory of Cruz, who wants to return to the gold standard, deregulate Wall Street and then refuse bailouts and impose austerity in the economic meltdown that is sure to follow, right?

   Surely no economist could support a candidate who wants to faithfully re-enact the Great Depression?

6. 6 6 Sub Specie Æternitatis
   April 28, 2016 at 9:23 am

   @nobody.really. A good collection of quotes, though everything reported by John Dean, convicted Watergate felon, probably should be taken cum grano salis.

   @advo:

   Ted Cruz has called for a “rules-based money supply,” an idea advocated by such famous lunatics as John Taylor and Scott Sumner. Nor does skepticism towards SarbOx, Dodd-Frank, and its guarantees of bailouts to banks to big to fail, render one an economic illiterate.

   As for austerity, perhaps a government that runs a $554 billion deficit in the 7th year of the current expansion as determined by NBER, could use some.

7. 7 7 mobile
   April 28, 2016 at 10:22 am

   Murphy’s ninth law: everything east of the San Andreas fault will eventually fall into the Atlantic Ocean.

8. 8 8 Sub Specie Æternitatis
   April 28, 2016 at 9:40 pm

   BTW, the Goldwater got it right on Falwell too. Jerry Falwell [Jr.] was an early Trump endorser.

9. 9 9 Advo
   April 29, 2016 at 1:52 am

   @SubSpecie:

   Cruz very specifically and repeatedly said he wants a GOLD STANDARD, tying the dollar in some way to the fickle price of an arbitrary commodity. The mind boggles. You are re-interpreting Cruz’s disastrous idea into something it isn’t.
   The gold standard, to my knowledge, is not something any economist of any prominence – indeed any economist at all aside from the nutty Austrians – has advocated in modern times.

   As regards deregulation – Cruz has said many times that he wants to abolish Frank-Dodd, and he hasn’t said anything about what he wants to replace it with. Presumably he doesn’t want to replace it with anything.
   Now evidently, the regulatory regime pre-Frank-Dodd allowed the financial sector to run itself and the economy off a cliff.
   Cruz wishes to return to that situation.

   If you need any details on what the outcome of this policy would be, you should re-read Rheinhard/Rogoff which demonstrate conclusively that financial meltdowns are the TYPICAL outcome of financial deregulation.
   Deregulation of the financial sector has historically virtually always resulted in massive disasters, there are only a handful of historic cases where it hasn’t.

   Cruz has displayed no understanding at all that he is aware of this fact. He has learned absolutely nothing from the 2008/2009 disaster, and neither have his supporters.