BCT Editorial – 1/27/09

This page was last updated on February 1, 2009.

Sinking; Editorial; Beaver County Times; January 27, 2009.

This editorial leads off with “The credit-based U.S. economy has turned out to be like the Titanic.” and concludes with “What happened to Circuit City, Linens ’N Things and others is just the tip of the iceberg — and there aren’t enough lifeboats to go around.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds like fear mongering to me.

The reason I bring this up is because Times editorials routinely call opponents fear or scare mongers. Heck, you only have look at an editorial (“Blame game”) published the day after this one for an example. Among previous examples are “Middle ground,” “Selling fear,” “Fright might,” and “Wrong crisis.”

Why would the Times want to engage in hyperbole on this subject? The Times hopes instilling fear will make us more accepting of increased government spending and intrusion into our lives. It’s also to set up President Obama and the Democrat-majority Congress so they can’t fail. If things get worse and/or recovery takes a long time, editorials will remind us about editorials like this one telling how terrible everything was and recovery will be a long process. If there is any improvement, no matter how minor and whether or not attributable to any government programs, editorials will sing the praises of improvement despite dire circumstances. Admittedly this tactic will work for only so long, but by then lefties will have a whole new set of excuses ready to go.