The Importance of Editors--and Friends

Jeebus save us! Does National Review have no editors? Does Thomas Sowell have no friends?

In National Review, Thomas Sowell writes:

Why Republican Infighting Matters: A quadrupling of the national debt in just one year... [is] not [a thing] from which any country is guaranteed to recover...

Ummm...

The national debt is estimated to be likely to increase by 17% in nominal terms over fiscal 2010. It is not estimated to quadruple. Is there nobody at National Review who will tell Sowell that +17% is not equal to +300%? Does nobody at National Review care to keep the magazine from embarrassing itself? Does nobody like him enough to care enough to keep him from embarrassing himself?

It gets worse after that:

Thomas Sowell: A quadrupling of the national debt in just one year and accepting a nuclear-armed sponsor of international terrorism such as Iran are not things from which any country is guaranteed to recover. Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War II. It is hard to believe that it would take much more than that for the United States of America to surrender — especially with people in control of both the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running in Iraq just a couple of years ago. Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.

The glib pieties in Barack Obama’s televised sermonettes will not stop Iran from becoming a nuclear terrorist nation. Time is running out fast and we will be lucky if it doesn’t happen during the first term of this president. If he gets elected to a second term  — which is quite possible, despite whatever economic disasters he leads us into — our fate as a nation may be sealed...

Tyler Cowen snarks:

Marginal Revolution: Knowledge and Decisions: Today I wanted to cover lots of different topics, so here is a thought from Thomas Sowell:

Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.

And to think that I was worried about high marginal rates of taxation.  The full article is here. Not so long ago, Yana asked me: "What does Thomas Sowell think of Barack Obama?"  I believe I now have an answer for her.

Matthew Yglesias is too dumbstruck to even snark:

Matthew Yglesias: Sowell: Obama Will Lead to Sharia: Via Tyler Cowen, Thomas Sowell argues that “Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.” And, yes, that was in National Review the flagship publication of the American right...

I hope I always have editors--and friends. It would be very sad to be without them.