By half way through the article, I haven't seen one decent argument presented to justify the author's dislike of The Economist. Instead, this is just an invitation to go boo, hiss when the reader hears the wake-word 'liberal'.
Searching the page for "liberal" gives 41 hits, searching for "economist" gives 42 hits. It's very hard to take the article seriously even after reading just the first sentence:
> The publication has a sublime — even smug — self-confidence in its elite liberal worldview.
What ever they're proposing may very well have merit, but in that tone, there's little interest to hear the case out.
As a subscriber to the Economist, I fully concur with the line you take offense with. It is very self-assured in its worldview. Pointing that out should not be controversial.
Yes, the fact that Economist has an obvious political stand should not be taken as a bug - it's a feature. Their fact-based journalism is excellent, and when they take a stand on an issue, it's obvious and not hidden inside some fake statistics or pseudoscience.
As a sometime-reader I find the clear worldview refreshing. While clearly CNN has a particular worldview, they constantly try to remind people that they don't hold that worldview, in order to convince people they are impartial. Same goes for basically any media, the different is between if it's clear or if they are trying to seem impartial while not being so.
I'd much rather news organizations be clear about their view, so I as a reader can keep that in mind and also look at the opposition view, because that other news organization would also be clear that they do hold the opposition view.
It's what frustrates me whenever I read an Economist piece. Their absolute certainty in declaring what should be done about any particular topic is jarring. The 'pretend you are God' line in the article is exactly the problem.
But that is the exact description of the tone the magazine uses in its opinion pieces. Unlike most of the news outlets, they don't confuse facts with opinions. You know exactly which type of article you are reading thanks to that tone.
I don't know if only reading half of an article is a good strategy to measure the worth of the article. Noticeably before the half-way mark, I saw three things: support of slave-holding south, support of the Suharto regime, and support of Pinochet. I feel like throwing political opponents out of helicopters is a little more than "just an invitation to go boo, hiss when the reader hears the wake-word 'liberal'."
Throwing opponents from helicopters is about the most extravagant means of execution short of keeping them on death row for decades. (But look which the US prefers.)
Mentioning the US slouching toward authoritarianism is "whataboutism", now?
Nobody is throwing people out of helicopters now, but the US now tortures dissenters in solitary, while China is harvesting potential dissenters' organs for sale. None of it is pleasant to contemplate, but we in the US are at least in a better position to stop ours, if we care enough to.
Here's a link to an article from the economist:
"We need a post-liberal order now
The international, rules-based system is collapsing. Overhauling it means combining national identity with a global ethos, says Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and author"
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/26/we-need-a-p...
I don't think that's an actual article from The Economist. They describe Open Future[1] as a festival in which you, "Hear discussions and debates mediated by journalists from The Economist and talks by prominent figures from across the political spectrum, as well as contributions from innovators, entrepreneurs, critics and connoisseurs."
