Puppetshow smackdown

I often read things out here on the interTubes and say, "I wish I could have written that." This evening, in fact, I read just such a piece by Rob Schofield at NC Policy Watch. After a short warm-up on the dynamics of public-policy decision-making, Rob throws a hard strike that's a beauty to behold.

Just as it’s a mistake to ignore the past, it’s also a mistake to be led by it exclusively – especially when the passage of time transforms history into mythology and so distorts one’s vision that he or she can’t accurately perceive present day reality.

Nowhere is this latter phenomenon better illustrated than in the absurd and overcooked opposition voiced of late by North Carolina’s market fundamentalists to the idea of collective bargaining for public employees.
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To read these attacks, you’d think that Jimmy Hoffa had risen from the grave and was leading a convoy of bat-wielding truck drivers down I-95 to take over the DOT offices. Not only do both articles make wild, sky-is-falling assertions, but some of the statements are just plain inaccurate and/or irrelevant.

Go study Rob's whole piece, and savor the systematic dismantling of JLF malarkey in all its gory detail. And when you're done, go read this and ask yourself whether you'd be willing to participate with the JLF government-haters in any kind of serious discussion about anything.

It's one thing to engage in constructive debate with the opposition. But when that opposition behaves like the Fox News channel by distorting reality to fulfill its ideological agenda? Well that's a different kettle of fish.