Same Old Megan

Would it kill Megan McArdle to prove her statements? So far the main source of information for Miss Megan is her gut, and we all know that it is as empty as her head.

Now, I think a lot of liberals often mix up these claims with simple outrage that those CEOs are not, in fact, reduced to total penury.

Prove it, troll. Who is outraged that CEOs aren't beggered? Name names. Otherwise you're just another Michelle Malkin, but without the funny cheerleading video to give you entertainment value.

Evidently I must continue saying this over and over until it penetrates thicker brains. Put up or shut up. If you want to assault the majority political party with accusations of immorality and spite, you had better provide quotes and names, because we don't have to listen to you anymore. When Glenn Greenwald eviscerates conservatives he addresses people directly and provides copious evidence to support his accusations. However, Greenwald works hard on his blog and has standards of honesty and professionalism.

Elections have consequences. The conservative way of doing business utterly destroyed our economy, violated our land and laws, and built up a well-spring of hatred that poisons the country. Conservatism ran wild and free for eight years and was a massive failure.

Why would McArdle make vague, unpleasant accusations about liberals that (for all anyone knows) are not even true? So she can do this:

Now, I think a lot of liberals often mix up these claims with simple outrage that those CEOs are not, in fact, reduced to total penury. But the justice and the incentive problems are separate problems. It may well be totally just to take every last dime from them (and I imagine that shareholder lawsuits will do exactly that). But that frequently morphs into a muddy complaint that if these CEOs had suffered more, we wouldn't have had the crisis. The one does not follow from the other. There are many injustices in the world; almost none of them cause financial crises.

I know that my trolls are already mentally penning long whines that I have entirely missed the point--that their wealth is outrageous, that justice is important! Indeed it is. But it seems to me that it is also important to settle the empirical question of how such excessive risk taking could be prevented in the future. If we allow our outrage to convince us that taking every last dime from the bank presidents will help with that task, and this is not actually true, then we are simply setting ourselves up for more problems in the future.

McArdle doesn't want people to think about the reasons for the financial crisis. She doesn't want the privileged few to have to answer to anyone else. She believes the rich are innately superior to those will less money. For those reasons she doesn't believe in regulation and tries to discourage anyone from finding out the reasons for the financial troubles, which she declares are too complicated for anyone to understand and would have happened no matter what CEOs did.

Finally, we see McArdle will fill her posts with ad hominem attacks and then accuse anyone who criticizes her of being a whining troll. She has no idea how unprofessional her behavior is, and therefore will continue to embarrass herself with her venom and attempts to justify her own support of a failed regime.

McArdle might wonder why she should change her ways or soften her speech. She should take a good look around her. The smarter conservatives and quasi-conservatives have slowly and carefully backed away from Republican failure. Yglesias decamped the Atlantic. David Frum and Christopher Buckley left National Review. Kathleen Parker is doing the same and is now appearing in the Washington Post criticizing the far right. I warned her, and now it's too late. She can't do anything but double down, and inevitably throw away the influence that she so carefully cultivated.

ADDED: Some people do not have a problem understanding the financial crisis, or assigning blame where it is due.