At about 10:45 Tuesday night on MSNBC, Tom Brokaw began to acknowledge that guest Larry Elder was right, that Californians wanted less taxes and regulations. But then he called that philosophy “political nihilism.”
That’s very strange if you consult Webster’s, which defines nihilism as “a viewpoint the traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless.” That’s not “conservative.” Maybe he meant the other definition: “the program of a 19th century Russian party advocating revolutionary reform and using terrorism and assassination.” Perhaps Tom’s spent a little too much time with the Reader’s Digest feature “Toward More Picturesque Speech.”