Paraphrasing Art Carden: "I call people that don't agree with me elitists that are willing to watch people suffer and every once in a while they say mean things to me. So what gives?"
It's a paraphrase. I think it's a fair one. But note that accusing people who disagree with him of being "elitist" and "willing to watch people suffer" is a direct quote, not a paraphrase. So is the question at the end - "so what gives?"
Gee, I wonder!
Mr. Carden seems to be suffering from the early stages of CLOPS, AKA Conservative/Libertarian Opinions are Persecution Syndrome, in which other people exercizing their right to say unkind things about the conservative/libertarian individual suffering from CLOPS is unable to distinguish that from actual infringements on their rights, person, or property.
ReplyDeleteIt begins by experiencing outrage or befuddlement when other people vigorously dispute what you believe to be obvious or inviolate, but tends to degenerate into a total inability to distinguish even the mildest criticism or market sanction from actual persecution.
Square Rooted - I don't know who you are but I have a feeling you will like the most recent comment I left on the post :)
DeleteIf you want to fairly represent what he said, why did you paraphrase at all? The post is so short, simply linking to it would be sufficient. I think you've knowingly and wholly misrepresented him.
ReplyDeleteIf I've misrepresented him, it's not knowingly.
Delete- Did I misrepresent what he called people he disagreed with on things like the minimum wage? Nope - I quoted him directly on that to make sure I didn't.
- Did I misrepresent his question about being called an ideologue? Nope - I quoted him directly on that too.
In fact I made a point to quote him on those two essential elements. The rest was my commentary - that the source of people's frustration with him is how badly he treats them, not that he likes liberty. Who gets mad at someone for liking liberty? It's an obvious misdiagnosis IMO.
Now you may disagree with my assessment. I think you'd be wrong - it seems obvious that people are getting mad at the verbal abuse from Art - but you're free to try.
But disagreeing with me isn't the same as "misrepresenting him". So what could you possibly think I've misrepresented?
And btw, "wholly misrepresented" is obviously wrong, since I quoted and linked to him. I can't possibly have "wholly" misrepresented him.
DeleteUpon further reflection, I withdraw my complaint as mistaken.
DeleteI think the source of my somewhat knee-jerk reaction is that it seems there are two issues: people reacting to Carden possibly expressing himself poorly, and people reacting to citing freedom as a virtue in and of itself. Perhaps wrongly, I felt Carden's question was really all about the latter, with any reference to negative reactions to his rhetoric being, at most, parenthetical. However, I read your post as portraying him as saying "Hey, how come people don't like me? It must be the liberty thing!"
Also, I think the title of your post probably put me on the defensive before I started reading it. I'm guessing if someone titled a post "Ah, liberals..." and made it about an instance of Krugman's sometimes crappy attitude, it'd have the same effect on you.
However, even if all of this is right, it doesn't mean you wholly and/or intentionally misrepresented him, so I was wrong. Sorry about that.
Glass houses Daniel http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/06/tabarrok_on_the.html#267255
ReplyDeleteI think Art Carden is the worst EconLog contributor in recent memory. He actually makes me miss Arnold Kling.
ReplyDeleteReally? I don't think he's so bad. The Keynes/pizza one was pretty stupid, but he doesn't really do macro or history of thought it looks like.
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