Opinion page idiocy

I was so astounded by how much nonsense was printed on the Chicago Tribune's October 20 Commentary page that I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. I haven't had a chance to write about it until now.

Above the fold is a column by Jonah Goldberg titled: "Let the population grow." Goldberg is an editor at the right wing National Review, but lately the Tribune has been kind enough to give him regular space in their paper as well. What else can I say about Goldberg other than he is an idealogue, and quite possibly an idiot? Here's an example of his stellar discourse:

These days, overpopulation is primarily a hang-up for environmentalists, though suburbanites and feminists occasionally whine about it too...

Oy, those crazy environmentalists, suburbanites and feminists. If they believe it, we must reject it, regardless of whether it's actually true or not. Wait -- suburbanites??? Don't they make up the base of National Review subscribers? There's more:

What unites today's worriers and those of yesteryear is their common allegiance to Malthusianism. The British economist Thomas Malthus argued that population will always outstrip available resources. And he was 100 percent wrong.

Because people are, in the words of the late economist Julian Simon, "the ultimate resource." Given the right policies, intellectual and economic productivity trumps biological reproductivity.

Now, if his statement that Malthus was 100 percent wrong is itself wrong, what percentage wrong does that make Goldberg? As for productivity, it would be interesting to see how productive Goldberg would be if his share of global food production were to fall below 1,200 calories a day.

The other column on the page is by Victor Davis Hanson, a man I have criticized before. It is titled: "Liberals gone absolutely wild!" and is accompanied by a rogues' gallery of left-leaning celebrities such as Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore, and Jay Rockefeller. Rockefeller... what a wild man! Seriously, that's the best they could do?

The whole article is just a bizarre and grossly inaccurate rant. I could provide examples, but I'd end up tearing every word of the article to shreds. It might surprise the reader of the article to find out that Hanson publicly identifies himself as a Democrat. But he is not. He's employed by the Hoover Institution (a pressure vessel of willful ignorance) to produce flak -- in other words, to smack down anyone in politics or the media who speaks out too strongly against conservative interests. Usually he does this with a little more subtlety.