I didn’t know what was going on when I saw it, maybe I need to check “libertarian” on wikipedia. I have no clue what we did to provoke this, but here it is, a full article in Newsweek blaming Libertarian ideas for all of America’s economic problems and if that weren’t enough claiming that Alan Greenspan is a Libertarian(among others)!
I wrote a comment to them, it seems that there were a few more Libertarians who responded but I didn’t review the entire comment list.
I just thought I would bring this to everyone’s attention.
It really is sad that these people are either so stupid or so devious as to attack libertarianism for this. This article actually appeared on Slate.com first. It’s been subjected to numerous rebuttals, given how flimsy it is.
They “know” that the state should be in control of, well everything, so of course all problems stem from a lack of state management, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
Being attacked is far better than being ignored, so personally I look at this as a good sign. One of the reasons I was converted to libertarianism was from listening to attacks on free trade and realizing they weren’t actually refuting anything.
I guess people can write anything and get published. When I read that I just had to sigh and think: “what an amazing idiot.” But then several people on the main site did patient refutations, which is what Mises would have done I guess. In any case, it is so exasperating!
I don’t see it as such a bad thing to be honest, to me all it says is that the libertarian movement has got to the stage where it can no longer be ignored. If nothing else this article will give libertarianism a mention and perhaps if one or two people go and look for a refutation they may stumble onto Mises.org. Statist fools would be better sticking to their pleas to the emotions.