Phil Gramm a Terrorist?

That’s what Shaun Mullen of the Moderate Voice says.  His justification?  Gramm, the former Senator from Texas, played in instrumental role in dismantling decades-old banking regulations during the Clinton administration.  Terrorist.  We’d better lock Gramm up as a matter of national security.  Imagine the gall, doing away with obsolete rules from a by-gone era.  Evidently Mullen’s idea of government is one that simply continues to grow without ever being pruned back.  Typical liberal think, and anything but moderate, as Karl explains.

Quoting Mullen:

Phil Gramm, who is co-chair of McCain’s campaign, is not just another lobbyist. He is the man most responsible for the repeal of Depression-era banking regulations that have led directly and inextricably to much of today’s economic turmoil

…

Considering the pain and suffering that Gramm’s masterwork has caused ordinary Americans, it is not hyperbolic to say that he is a terrorist, he just doesn’t wear funny looking headgear and carry a Kalashikov.

McCain acknowledges that he’s “no expert” and “doesn’t understand” the economy. That is worrisome enough, but that he is relying on a terrorist in pinstripes to figure things out for him is . . . well, terrifying.

In Shaun’s view of the world none of the participants in the doomed lending scheme are responsible for their own actions.  How could they have known, after all, that historically low credit rates would rise?  Who could have guessed that adjustable-rate mortgages would increase, leaving over-leveraged buyers unable to meet their obligations?  Anyone with any knowledge of financial markets whatever, that’s who. 

But Mullen would have us believe that the failure of the borrowers to understand the risks they were taking isn’t their fault at all.  In the reality in which he and other liberal evaders of responsibility live, it’s the government’s fault for failing to fulfill its primary function, which is to control these people’s behavior so that they do what exactly what Shaun wants them to.

Gramm, who was a professor of economics at Texas A&M University for 12 years, has more knowledge of finance and economics in his pinky toe that Mr. Mullen has in his entire body.  But it is currently a popular – and perhaps desperate – ploy by liberals to attempt to link Gramm to the current financial troubles in order to make John McCain look bad by association. 

As we’ve frequently seen in regard to Hillary Clinton, this technique is a staple of liberal/progressive writers, of whom Mullen is hardly the worst or most important. 

Calling Phil Gramm a terrorist is both ridiculous and libelous.  Reading these words makes me wonder about something akin to intellectual terrorism. 

Destructive words, deliberately thrown about, damaging targets and bystanders alike with their unjustified force – all in service of an ideological cause that would not triumph in any sort of straight-up democratic process.

Sounds right.