Tom Friedman’s Latest Book

By Rand Simberg on September 26, 2011 at 11:21 am
Posted In: Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary
Andrew Ferguson reviews it:

The slovenliness of our language, George Orwell wrote, makes it easier to have foolish thoughts, and while Mr. Friedman’s language has been tidied up a bit, the thinking remains what it has always been. The authors call themselves “frustrated optimists.” Their frustration is owing to the depredations of the last decade, which they call (Mr. Mandelbaum nods) the Terrible Twos. But self-contradiction is also part of the Friedman brand. In many other passages, the authors specifically trace the American slide to the end of the Cold War—though still elsewhere they remark that the 1990s were “positive for America.” It doesn’t help their argument, such as it is, that the evidence of decline they cite—crumbling infrastructure, a failing public-education system—predates both 2001 and 1989 by a long stretch. Our potholes and schools have been favorites of declinists for generations.

If the authors’ frustration is unoriginal and ill-defined, their optimism is terrifying. America will rebound—we will become the us that we used to be again, you might say and Mr. Friedman does—when we regain our ability to do “big things” through “collective action.” Collective action is a phrase that means “the federal government.” Among the big things that we will do are rework American industry, through regulation and taxation, to drastically cut carbon emissions. Another one of our big things is a big increase in the gasoline tax. We will also impose on us a new big carbon tax. We will use revenues to create a “clean energy” industry with millions of “green jobs” like the ones that were eliminated earlier this month at Solyndra. Readers will wonder, like the early environmentalist Tonto, “What do you mean ‘we,’ kemo sabe?”
Go read the whole thing. You know you want to.