Jonah Goldberg, Thomas Friedman and Chinese Communist Tyranny

Jonah Goldberg, commenting on Friedman's fondness for totalitarian tyrrany, China style,

If only the Founding Fathers had included an annual “Tyranny Day” in the Constitution. Every 364 days America could debate and scheme, pitting faction against faction, government branch against government branch, and on the 365th day the Supreme Soviet of the United States could simply “do things that are tough” and shove ten pounds of policy awesomeness into democracy’s five-pound bag.

Now, just for the record, China hasn’t banned plastic bags. Just ask anybody who’s been to China recently. But what a strange thing to sell your soul for. What was it Thomas More said — “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . but to ban plastic bags”?

Now, I bring all of this up for a couple reasons. The first is that I am mildly obsessed with Tom Friedman. He’s easily one of the most influential columnists in America, and he routinely and blithely expresses his envy for a barbaric police state that has killed tens of millions of its own people. I think pointing that out is worth a little repetition.

But it’s also worth noting that Friedman is hardly alone. He may stretch his argument to the point of parody, but he shares a widespread view that the “experts” have all the answers and the “system” is holding them back.

Such arguments are as old as they are dangerous. And they are arrogant beyond description. People like Friedman automatically assume that their preferred policies are so obviously right, so objectively enlightened, that there’s no need to debate them or vote on them.

The primary problem facing America today is that the Left is enamored or "experts" which is what got Obama elected. He of the Harvard education, of the promise to hire "experts" in all field, to bring "science" back to its rightful place. So what do we have from all the expertise: unemployment that exceeded their worst predictions, trillions of dollars poured down rat holes with no measurable impact on the economy, socialists and communists installed as government Czars, a politicized Justice Department making decisions based on arrant racism, corporations afraid to spend money because they don't know what bizarre changes the government is going to make, a Gulf coast polluted by oil because the Coast Guard is called to boats back to post to make sure they have life vests. This is the rule by "experts" and it’s a disaster. But the “experts” remain proud of themselves.  Show me an "expert" and I'll show your a member of the MSM who will fall all over himself to put him in charge.