No fear here

Re “Fear-mongering isn’t leadership,” Opinion, March 10

Although I understand Jonah Goldberg’s desire for revenge for all those years of attacks on his beloved President Bush, I do not get a sense of the fear-mongering to which he alludes in his criticism of the Obama administration. Perhaps he is still caught up in the post-9/11 rhetoric of the Bush years, when fear-mongering was policy.

Yes, the Obama administration has acknowledged that this time of economic crisis provides an opportunity to correct flawed policy decisions of the past. But that is just recognition that all crises provide both danger and opportunity.

Fear-mongering is the exploitation of the danger, as we saw in the previous administration, not the actualization of its opportunities, as we see under this one.

Bob Harris

Lancaster

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Goldberg’s column, to use his own words, “isn’t funny at all. It’s scary. Its amorality is outweighed only by the grotesque and astoundingly naked cynicism of it all.”

Fortunately, it’s easy to spot telltale signs of intellectual flatulence. Goldberg states: “Numerous commentators, including me, have pointed to this never-waste-a-crisis mantra as ideological evidence that Obama’s budget priorities are a great bait-and-switch.”

Are the “numerous commentators” experts, or are they simply a bunch of right-wing bloggers and talk-show hosts? And something is either evidence or it is not evidence -- but what in heaven’s name is “ideological evidence”?

Surely the right wing can provide a more substantial intellect than Goldberg to make its points.

Franklin Cox

Yellow Springs, Ohio