Tutton, the wannabe Kraut, still can't read

He e-mailed me the following:

I did not see your "enlightened" response to my e-mail to Don Luskin when it first came out. But let me now express my appreciation to you for articulating the ueber Kapitolistischer opinion that it is indeed, not only acceptible, but good, to have children working in coal mines and other dangerous manufacturing scenarios.

Tutton had better stick to the German that he likes to speak, because he certainly can't understand English. What part of "I make no value judgment either way" does he not understand? Good lord. A child could read what I wrote before and then reiterated, and nowhere did I say it was "good." Nor did I say it was "bad," either, because it's not the role of real economics to make value judgments.

That being said, my challenge still stands: let Tutton defend his beliefs, when his way of "protecting the children" would have condemned my father to starvation.

Man, I could not have asked for a better response. But, you were mistaken in saying that I am a "Liberal". I was cured of that disease a long time ago. I am a Nationalist. But, Gott sei' dank', I am not a Socialist.

So he claims, but like a good liberal, he wants government intervention. Mussolini was a fascist, but having been a "socialist" once upon a time, he could still sincerely argue for the necessity of state intervention into the economy.

Is Tutton a wannabe Calvinist, also, that he unnecessarily brings God into the equation? God had nothing to do with his political choice, and the boss upstairs is probably tired of people giving him thanks for such silly things. God, devils and people may have influence, but ultimately a man makes his own choices about what to believe.

Since you say you do not understand German,

In economics, it's called "opportunity cost." Right now I'm learning a bit of Tagalog, when six months ago I did want to learn German and visit Heidelberg someday (part of my father's family came from there in the mid-19th century).

let me explain what I said. Nationalist is one thing. Socialist is another. National Socialist is NAZI.

Does anyone not chuckle how he claims the two are different, then cites the example where the two came together? Nationalists come in all wavelengths of the political spectrum, but whether "socalist" or "fascist," their common denominator is allegiance to the state.

It's no wonder Tutton likes to throw German around. With that, his self-professed nationalism, and his hatred of being called "liberal," he'd have fit right in in 1930s Munich.

Wacht auf! (Wake up.) Never again, lover. Do you understand? Ask your grandmother. Your grandfather left for a reason. Children weeding the garden is one thing. Little children pulling carts through tunnels that grown men cannot fit through, for 20 hours a day, in the mines, is a different thing -- ganz verschiedene, Phillipenischer. Ask the old ones.

And I'd like Tutton to point out anytime that children were doing such things. The sheer logic escapes him: a cart won't fit much at all if it must fit in a tunnel smaller than a grown man. A mine owner wasn't going to hire children when he needed the strength of grown men.

Notice how Tutton makes assumptions about me, which is a common liberal trait. None of my grandparents are alive, and my paternal ones were born here in the United States. They never "left" anywhere. My paternal grandmother was French and has been dead for decades (you can imagine when she was born, since my father was born in 1918 as the youngest of three). My paternal grandfather was German, but he abandoned the family, and I have no idea what happened to him.

But as I've said about father, he spent his childhood selling apples on the streets of Schenectady during the Depression. If he didn't count as an "old one," nobody does.

I would wish you peace, but you have no strength, and you clearly have no children,

I'd wish him peace, but strength of intellect and an ounce of brain before anything else. And if he has any kinder, I feel pity for them.