Un-beee-lievable!

In the last half year, the Lynch Mob Media have tried their damnedest to tar and feather the following good and decent people:

1. Sarah Palin and little baby Trig.

2. Michele Bachmann and all the migraine sufferers who are not card-carrying Demagogues.

3. Col. Allen West (for telling the truth).

4. Herman Cain (for ditto).

5. Justice Clarence Thomas, for fear he might vote against O'Care when it comes to the Supremes.

6. Rupert Murdoch for providing free speech in BBC-brainwashed Britain.

7. And now ... tadaaa!!!  The late Professor Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winner in economics, who has just been proved right (again!) by the miserable failure of ObamaNomics.

Our witch huntress this time is one Naomi Klein, and her latest brainchild is titled "THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: The rise of disaster capitalism."

You don't want to miss out on this "#1 International Bestseller."

Ms. Klein modestly describes her shocking expose as follows:

Around the world ... there are people  ... who are cashing in on chaos; exploiting bloodshed and catastrophe to brutally remake our world in their image. They are the shock doctors. ... . Raking in billions out of the tsunami, plundering Russia, exploiting Iraq - this is the chilling tale of how a few are making a killing while more are getting killed.

Wow, are these Evil Meanies, or what?

And the Evilest of Them All -- sitting like a red-white-and-blue spider at the center of the Web of Kaos --- there is (or sadly, there was) one Mad Doktor Milton Friedman.

(And, I assume, Milton's wife, the late and beloved Rosie Friedman.)

You can see them waving a little American flag and smiling.

Are these folks Evil or what?

Here's the HuffPo's breathless take on Ms. Klein's tome:

In her groundbreaking book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein coined the term "disaster capitalism" for the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock. The master of disaster? Privatization and free market guru Milton Friedman. Friedman advised governments in economic crisis to follow strict austerity measures, combining radical cuts in social services with the full-scale privatization of their more lucrative assets. Many countries in Latin America auctioned off everything standing -- from energy and water utilities to Social Security -- to for profit multinational firms, crushing unions and other dissenters along the way.

Are there chills running up your spine yet?

Can you just see Professor Milton Friedman as the incarnation of wickedness?

Well, neither can I.

OK, Reality Check.  Before we hear more from Ms. Klein, a word from the late, beloved Milton Friedman.  Let's look at the evidence Friedman always referred to -- because he was an evidence guy. 

Here it is:

From The economic freedom of 157 nations, www.heritage.org/index

Quite a disaster, ain't it?

Or if you want to hear the good doctor himself, here's a YouTube video, talking to an audience in New Zealand.

Or, since Klein sees the dreaded Fist of Friedman wreaking economic disaster all over Latin America, let's see what the capitalist-mongering New York Times says: Economies in Latin America Race Ahead

Don't believe the right-wing NYT?

Well, here's the People's Broadcasting System, which carried a TV series on free-market economics.  Before they lost their bearings completely.

Or if you want it from real science -- the kind the left adores so much -- you can read a recent empirical study here.  From real economists digging out real facts.

But wait!  Let's hear what Rachel Maddow has to say.

Ms Maddow describes Klein's book as "[t]he only book of the last few years in American publishing that I would describe as a mandatory must-read.  Literally the only one."

Obviously Maddow has a very limited reading list.  What about Algore's latest masterpiece?  What about The Wisdom of Chairman Barry?

(And isn't "mandatory must-read" slightly redundant, Rachel?)

This whole farrago of paranoid mentation reveals so much about the left.  Theirs is not a world where you listen respectfully to both sides of a debate, and then decide who has the better case.  It's not a world where you bother to read the history of economics since Adam Smith.  It's certainly not a world where you weigh the pros and cons of competing ideas.

Reality doesn't enter into this shadowy world, except in the guise of Angels of Light (like Jozef Stalin) fighting Demons of the Underworld (like Sarah Palin).

Reason and evidence are not wanted, even if you can google the answers in sixty seconds flat.  Something that Ms. Klein apparently neglected to do.

Self-worshiping cults talk only to themselves.  They shut out any and all dissent.  That is why cult thinking leads to disaster so often.

(See: All the totalitarian cults in history.)

If, like Obama, you were educated in the Universe of PC you may never have heard about Milton Friedman.  PC-laundered minds are like the old song -- Dunno much about histiry, Dunno know much about jeeografee -- or Adam Smith, John Locke, Edmund Burke, or the American founders.

If you went to college since the Soviet Union crumbled, you might consider the Wall Street Journal -- or, heck, the New York Times -- to be filthy right-wing rags.  You only watch MSNBC and read The Nation.  Your heroes are Che, Mao, Stalin, maybe Trotsky if you're really open-minded.  Because they brought so much good to the world.

And -- this is the real kicker -- if you live in cult mentality you keep mixing up your heated fantasies with the real world.  You never open up.  Never.  You have to chase any strange ideas out of your head, because new ideas are frightening.

All your friends keep telling you how smart you are, because you keep repeating the same amazing twaddle to each other.  It's a self-fulfilling ego-boosting cult, without ever having to take a little peek outside.

Then you're ready to run for president.