Krugman: The exemplar of the Liberal catechism

In an earlier post, I struck upon the theory of the Liberal catechism.  I got the idea from watching the film Brave New World.   Thinking a bit more about the word "catechism" helps understand not only the concepts that one wishes to put forward with the catechism, but that the use of the catechism helps you understand the person or group using the catechism for their teaching.

I seek to put that theory to the test.  So, here we are.  So called conservatives are struggling mightily against the Liberal onslaught.  Surely something is wrong.

Rush Limbaugh loves to say that he knows Liberals.  Does he really?  A failure to understand Liberals is like the general who doesn't know his opponent, as in Sun Tzu's axiom that a winning general knows his enemy.  Know him not, and your chances are at best 50-50.  How can Rush really know the enemy then if he cannot consistently beat them?  Blaming it on "low information" voters just shifts the blame away from the failed general onto the troops.

But this isn't about Rush, it is about Krugman.

It's about his latest article, about how wealth is bad for the soul.  Did Krugman have a revelation somewhere down the road to Damascus?  Not to worry, Krugman didn't get all religious on us.  Krugman is probably just using this as a rhetorical device to gull you into believing his thesis.  His real target isn't about wealth per se, or he would divest himself of all of his.  I'm pretty sure that Krugman won't take up a vow of poverty anytime soon.

He bases his latest thesis upon some of what he calls "serious research", which is a Time op-ed.  Sounds pretty doggone serious.

If attaining wealth makes one more narcissistic, then why write this as a part of a "serious" piece of scholarship?

...there is a difference between narcissistic traits, as measured in this study, and clinical narcissistic-personality disorder. The disorder is actually more common among the poor rather than the rich, according to other studies. That’s probably because at its most extreme, narcissism destroys relationships both in the home and workplace — and therefore, is more likely to lead to unemployment and poverty, not success.

If there's a correlation between narcissism and wealth, that paragraph just blew it up.  Even if there was a corrrelation, there is no claim to causation.  In fact, correlation as causation is a logical fallacy.  Indeed, poverty seems to breed clinical narcissistic-personality disorder, not the other way around.  But if being wealthy means that someone engages in its traits, but not the clinical disorder itself, isn't that more benign?  This seems to be an argument for getting wealthy.  It reduces the clinical disorder.  If the price paid is a bit of annoying traits, then that isn't necessarily a bad trade.  However, this is just a musing of mine, not a claim to "serious research".

Krugman, after admitting there's no connection, which means he is being somewhat dishonest, then launches into one of his sermons that demonstrates the second triad of the Liberal catechism-- untruth, Equality, and Peace.  We all must be Equal, gosh darn it.

Finally, he closes in on his real target- Trump and the GOP.  So, the real design of all this is not to share his revelation about soulful things, but to go after the leader in the nomination for the presidency.

Trump is eeeeeeeeeeevil because he is rich.  Rich is bad.  Equality is good.  If we all were equal, the Utopia would be at hand.  Peace and prosperity would reign forever and ever and ever.  Amen.

Too bad it is all just another Liberal fairy tale.