The Hunt for False Equivalence

Paul Krugman, NYT
April 29, 2014, 8:45 am

America, it goes without saying, has a powerful, crazy right wing. There’s nothing equivalent on the left — yes, there are individual crazy leftists, but nothing like the organized, lavishly financed madness on the right.

But centrists have a very hard time acknowledging this asymmetry; they love to assert that both sides are equally wrong — and often seem to feel the need to invent extreme positions when they don’t actually exist.

Which brings me to this critical piece by Chris House. A while back House declared that both Ed Prescott and yours truly say crazy things; when asked for an example of me saying something remotely equivalent to something like Prescott’s declaration that there is no evidence that Fed policy matters, he never did answer.

Now House takes me and Noah Smith to task for preaching to the left-wing echo chamber in what we wrote about the Tom Sargent speech that’s making the rounds. And once again I have to wonder whether he actually read what I wrote, or simply assumed that it must be over the top.

(More here.)