Today, New York Times columnist/Nobel Prize winner/hardcore partisan hack Paul Krugman, the man who Ann Coulter rightly labeled as the “only known economist who despises the free market,” wrote a column that, even in my post-election anti-political stupor, still managed to enrage me.

Keep in mind that I’m coming to accept the fact that America has decided it wants to join Europe in inevitable economic decline and destitution, that the fight for America’s future is over, and that Krugman and his ideological ilk have won. That means the country at large has about ten years or so before we go the way of Greece and California, and I have only a short time to make the most of what little economic potential we have left. So why should I waste it worrying about what a clueless hack like Krugman has to say?

Nevertheless…

Krugman begins his editorial atrocity by pointing out that we survived a 91% income rate in the 1950s, so it’s time we gave in brought back the good ol’ days. No surprises there. This last election confirmed the idea that higher taxes somehow create prosperity, despite the plethora of historical evidence and common sense that says otherwise. No, it’s not Krugman’s smug stupidity that is galling, but rather his snide assessment of Republican motives and his breathtakingly presumptuous invocation of morality.

Here’s the paragraph that had me coughing up my Crunch Berries…

There are, let’s face it, some people in our political life who pine for the days when minorities and women knew their place, gays stayed firmly in the closet and congressmen asked, “Are you now or have you ever been?” The rest of us, however, are very glad those days are gone. We are, morally, a much better nation than we were. Oh, and the food has improved a lot, too.

Can’t speak for the food – he may be right there – but the rest of this is, to invoke Joe Biden, malarkey. Literally malarkey.

“Some people” pine for a more oppressive society based on race, gender, and sexual orientation? Just who are these “some people?” Which politicians are calling for the oppression of women and minorities and gays? I’ve also searched in vain for any Republican proposal to recreate the House Un-American Activities Committee. But Krugman insists that such people, “let’s face it,” are front and center in our political life. If it’s that blindingly obvious that even a cretin like Krugman can see it, then what am I missing?

This time around, the Republican Convention had more women and minorities addressing delegates than did the DNC. Mitt Romney’s much-mocked phrase about “binders of women” was actually a ham-handed attempt by the former governor to indicate that he’d gone out of his way to give women prominent leadership positions in Massachusetts. Yet to the Krugmanites, all of that was simply a smokescreen to mask a legacy of permanent, insoluble racism and sexism and homophobia that, according to projecting bigots like Krugman, is the only reason why anyone could possibly be a conservative.

Then Krugman concludes with this money quote, which is stunning in its intellectual dishonesty: “We are,” he says,” morally, a much better nation than we were.” [Emphasis mine.]

What on earth is this bearded clown talking about?

When a statist like Krugman invokes morality, you have to ask: which morality? Morality isn’t like fashion sense, where anyone’s taste is as valid as anyone else’s. An appeal to morality requires objective and unalterable standards of right and wrong. Such standards cannot be legitimately created by the state, nor can they be altered by means of legislation or shifting societal mores. We are a nation that was founded on the ideal that all of us are “endowed by our Creator” with “certain unalienable rights.” Rights and morality are inextricably linked, and therefore, all morality originates with God, not with government.

Where does that leave Krugman?

When the state is the center of your moral universe, then morality, like everything else, is solely about economics. But if that’s the case, how do you justify the fact that more people live in poverty in the United States today than ever before? If morality is about the economic conditions of minorities and women, why are we more moral now that 72% of black children are born into families without a father, which all but guarantees that they’ll be locked into a multi-generational cycle of poverty? Indeed, a little more of that traditional, God-given morality about waiting until you’re married to start making babies might help clean up this mess. But sexual behavior generally has no moral implications for the left, unless it’s the moral right to free contraception or the right to kill a gestating infant at any time and for any reason.

Up is down; day is night.

Many things have improved over these past few decades, but, overall, I don’t think the nation’s moral condition is one of them. It doesn’t matter what I think, though. I’ve lost. We now live in Krugman’s moral universe.

Heaven help us all.