Op-Ed as Stupidity

Ross Douthat

Bloomberg, LaPierre and the Void

By ROSS DOUTHAT

Published: December 22, 2012 123 Comments

FOR a week after the Newtown shooting, the conversation was dominated by the self-righteous certainties of the American center-left. In print and on the airwaves, the chorus was nearly universal: the only possible response to Adam Lanza’s rampage was an immediate crusade for gun control, the necessary firearm restrictions were all self-evident, and anyone who doubted their efficacy had the blood of children on his hands.

The leading gun control chorister was Michael Bloomberg, and this was fitting, because on a range of issues New York’s mayor has become the de facto spokesman for the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite. Like so many members of that class, Bloomberg combines immense talent with immense provincialism: his view of American politics is basically the famous New Yorker cover showing Manhattan’s West Side overshadowing the world, and his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole...

The fantasies and metaphors of a fool are once again forced upon us by a media that is too ignorant for its own good, much less for ours. We have enough idle baggage in our minds without Op-Ed columnists who are as obtuse - or more so - than we ourselves.

If it is not a certainty that the destruction of children is evil, then what is to a mind like Mr. Douthat's which is prepared to accommodate itself to any Lord of the Flies that happens by.

Prepare yourself now for Vile Lie to be heaped upon Vile Lie by the running dogs of death on the installment plan.
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