Charles Krauthammer Despises 'Fairness,' Dagnabbit

The best thing to come out of this Greatest Depression would be for the Washington Post to go out of business. It would truly be a "silver lining." Because Dana Priest and the other few hot-ticket reporters could easily find new jobs at other out-of-business newspapers. And the major upside of thePostgoing out of business would be the total decimation of its editorial board and op-ed columnist stable. Fred Hiatt, Richard Cohen, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, David Broder. Imagine a media world in which these names no longer existed. They only exist now as a sort of institutionally-guarded trolling scheme, so why not BOMB the institution? VERY GOOD YES? Oh. Well, Charles Krauthammer wrote something stupid today.

Krauthammer takes the issue of bank seizure and car company aid very seriously. He thinks they're major constitutional slights, and the Constitution is not to be swept aside. He is so serious about this stuff and its bite-sized ironies that his super serious attitude towards it all is "amused," and for some reason we have to fucking read about it:

In fact, we are now so deep into government intervention that constitutional objections are summarily swept aside. The last Treasury secretary brought the nine largest banks into his office and informed them that henceforth he was their partner. His successor is seeking the power to seize any financial institution at his own discretion.

Despite these astonishments, I remain more amused than alarmed. First, the notion of presidential car warranties strikes me as simply too bizarre, too comical, to mark the beginning of Yankee Peronism.

Yes, government-backed warranties on American-made cars are too "minor" -- "minor" is the word he is looking for, "minor" -- to mark the point when America became a third world country in South America.

Then we read about Obama's sinister Secret Plan for Fairness in the richest country in the world. Now he could make his conservative argument in a different way, by calmly stating that he doesn't think the national government of a country as large as the United States is capable of bringing about social change, and that if it's going to happen, it will come about through the private sector and invisible hands and interest rates and shit. But instead it is a SECRET PLOT in which, believe it or not, Barack Obamaisn't concerned about the impossible financial crisis at the heart of the most massive global economic collapse in modern history.For that and the motorcars are merely Diversions! Witch Craft!

Second, there is every political incentive to make these interventions in the banks and autos temporary and circumscribed. For President Obama, autos and banks are sideshows. Enormous sideshows, to be sure, but had the financial meltdown and the looming auto bankruptcies not been handed to him, he would hardly have gone seeking to be the nation's credit and car czar.

Obama has far different ambitions. His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.

Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.

[...]

If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: "fair," leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life.

Isn't "fairness" a good pick for "ultimate social value?" It's kind of like "justice," to which we nominally dedicate an entire branch of government? Krauthammer isn't making it clear whether his problem is simply with Obama wanting the government to bring about fairness, or whether he just REALLY FUCKING HATES the concept of "fairness," some dumb gay thing no doubt. He is using the word "FAIR" as a pejorative.

(Also, all of his facts are wrong.)

 Obama's Ultimate Agenda [Washington Post]