The Krugman Truth Squad revisited.

Donald Luskin gives The Krugger a lesson in history, economics, theology, science...well, you get the idea.

One of the Left’s sleaziest rhetorical tricks is to discredit conservative ideals by claiming they are based on religious beliefs, while liberal ideals are based on science. The Right, they sneer, is “faith based.” The Left, they brag, is “reality based.”

So we have Paul Krugman, America’s most dangerous (Ignorance uber alles, remember kiddies? - F.G.) liberal pundit, claiming that the world of conservative thought is “increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research.” Krugman even thinks the conservative preference for lower tax rates and higher economic growth is nothing more than a matter of right-wing religious zealotry. In his Friday New York Times column, Krugman called supply-side economics a “doctrine” that believes in “miraculous positive effects” which has “never been backed by evidence.”

Of course Krugman believes that his own leftist “doctrines” are entirely scientific. He excoriates Tom DeLay and Rick Santorum for statements they have made about the religious foundations of their views. But he never objects to the same kind of foundations when they support the views of Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, or even Al Sharpton.

In fact, Krugman doesn’t seem to know that the modern liberal conception of the welfare state began as a great religious awakening, led by the Christian Socialist and Social Gospel movements of the late 19th century. Their central doctrine was that the power of the state should be harnessed to redistribute wealth in order to combat sin among America’s crowded new urban populations. This doctrine gradually prevailed throughout the 20th century, through the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society, with the introduction of the federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and the regulatory state.

Today’s seemingly secular science of economics — an establishment in which Paul Krugman is regarded as a leading authority — was deliberately created in the late 19th century to manufacture an intellectual imprimatur for the Christian Socialist and Social Gospel movements. It came about in just the way Krugman, in his Friday column, claims today’s conservative think tanks were created by the Right to manufacture evidence against liberal shibboleths such as global warming.

The American Economic Association — the leading professional organization of economics — was founded in 1885 to be, in the words of its leading founder Richard T. Ely, “an influential movement which will help in the diffusion of a sound, Christian political economy.” Its first mission statement called for combating “social problems whose solution is impossible without the united efforts of Church, State, and Science.”