First of all, I'm not proselytizing. I've never once in this discussion stated, or even alluded to my political opinions, let alone tried to convince anyone else of them. I offered opinions about the politics of the editorial staff of both the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal, neither of which should be terribly controversial, and both of which are utterly orthogonal to my beliefs; and I offered an opinion about whether Piketty wrote his book in service of a pre-existing agenda, as distinct from a belief. That, too, is irrelevant to my politics.
Second, my claim of ad hominem isn't "ironic" in light of my other statements. Nowhere did I say the positions of the FT or WSJ editors were wrong; I said they were biased. One can be biased and correct, just as one can be biased and wrong.
I don't think it's much of a stretch to posit that the author of your WSJ quote meant it to convey something about how correct Piketty could possibly be, because "socialist". Note, too, that the quote doesn't say Piketty, himself, is a socialist; it just says that he keeps their company (or, more specifically, that they — but mostly, just this one, really, really icky one — keep his): guilt by association.
Contrarily, I'm not saying they're wrong because anything; I'm not saying they're wrong at all. I'm saying, "Capitalists don't like something that points out flaws in capitalism. Film at 11." Inferring anything further is projection and fabrication. Sorry, but I'm not your straw man.
Finally, if there was any downvoting, it wasn't on my part. You can't downvote direct replies.
EDIT: And I have the book already. It's in my queue. I just had to buy another bookshelf, however, so you can probably guess how deep that queue is.
Second, my claim of ad hominem isn't "ironic" in light of my other statements. Nowhere did I say the positions of the FT or WSJ editors were wrong; I said they were biased. One can be biased and correct, just as one can be biased and wrong.
I don't think it's much of a stretch to posit that the author of your WSJ quote meant it to convey something about how correct Piketty could possibly be, because "socialist". Note, too, that the quote doesn't say Piketty, himself, is a socialist; it just says that he keeps their company (or, more specifically, that they — but mostly, just this one, really, really icky one — keep his): guilt by association.
Contrarily, I'm not saying they're wrong because anything; I'm not saying they're wrong at all. I'm saying, "Capitalists don't like something that points out flaws in capitalism. Film at 11." Inferring anything further is projection and fabrication. Sorry, but I'm not your straw man.
Finally, if there was any downvoting, it wasn't on my part. You can't downvote direct replies.
EDIT: And I have the book already. It's in my queue. I just had to buy another bookshelf, however, so you can probably guess how deep that queue is.