Hell Freezes Over

Sorry about the hyperbole. I should have said, Katherine Kersten published a Star Tribune column this week that I agreed with.

For those not from the Twin Cities, let me tell you a little about Minnesota's favorite newspaper columnist. Formerly part of the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based conservative think tank, Kersten has written countless columns against same-sex marriage, immigration and Muslims, while constantly praising anything that she considers "family values." Another recent column, for instance, defended the arrests of journalists and bystanders during the St. Paul Republican National Convention because the peaceful protesters were intentionally providing cover for violent anarchists. In general, her columns sound more like Fox News than a mainstream daily newspaper.

So no one was more surprised than me to find I agreed with the premise of her Oct. 8 column, "The Surprise Villain Behind Nation's Financial Meltdown." Who did she point the finger at? Our credit-based economy, from Henry Ford to Diner's Club and onward through Visa and Fannie Mae. We can't delay gratification, and so we go into debt -- we think it's normal to have a car loan, a mortgage and even some credit card balances, right?

Well, about then Kersten starts to go off on a tangent about the the Community Reinvestment Act, a la Michele Bachmann. I guess I missed that on first reading. So maybe hell only dropped to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. But then she gets back to one of my other pet peeves: lotteries, which are basically a way for government to take advantage of the public's innumeracy to make money.

Not surprisingly, Kersten doesn't carry her thought about the evils of credit far enough. If she did, she'd find herself agreeing with one of her favorite targets, Muslims -- who don't believe in debt either, to the point where they can't buy houses with traditional mortgages because their religion doesn't allow it.

Guess the financial meltdown is one thing she can't blame on Muslims.