Showing posts with label Frank Bruni. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Bruni. Show all posts

Monday, August 8, 2011

The Magical Thinking of the True Believers, Right and Left

Frank Bruni for The New York Times, here:

[T]here’s magical thinking in secular life . . . it springs from a similar yearning for easy, all-encompassing answers[.] ...

Faith-based is right. We all have our religions, all of which exert a special pull — and draw special fervor — when apprehension runs high and confusion deep, as they do now. And if yours isn’t a balanced-budget amendment and a government as lean as Christian Bale in one of his extreme-acting roles, it might well be a big fat binge of Keynesian stimulus spending. Liberals think magically, too, becoming so attached to a certain approach that they wind up advocating it less as option than as panacea.