Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Tom Woods Responds to Conservative Buffoonery

posted by Iosue Andreas Sartorius at 8:17 PM (Permalink) Comment (3)

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3 Comments:

Blogger Pints in NYC said...

And picking up from yesterday's comment where I invoke Kirk - it looks like David Brooks makes a nod to a different type of "conservatism" than what today's mainstream is used to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/opinion/brooks-the-conservative-mind.html?ref=davidbrooks&moc.semityn.www

September 26, 2012 at 10:24 PM  
Blogger Mark in Spokane said...

First, libertarians aren't conservatives. Kirk pointed this out to devastating effect in his essay on libertarianism as ideology.

Which leads, second, to the proper diagnosis of the libertarian problem, one that Woods and other libertarians cannot refute: libertarianism is an ideology, and as such substitutes both for principle and for faith in the lives of its adherents. If one reads libertarians, this is immediately apparent -- the cultish approach to Ron Paul, the (for lack of a better phrase) "tinfoil hat" quality of so many of the arguments, the vast conspiracy theories, the lack of prudential balance in the political positions, the theological quality of so many of the arguments involving non-theological topics like economics, etc. Kirk explains the roots of all this quite well in his essay.

September 27, 2012 at 11:53 AM  
Blogger Pints in NYC said...

Mark,

You are right on about Kirk and his take on libertarianism. Although, I wonder if some people in that camp, especially the Ron Paul camp, are actually level-headed and just looking for an alternative economic system than Kenynsianism? Until Ropke's disciples get their act together, the Austrian School seems the most coherent opposition.

In any case: here's a guy who has been wrestling with the libertarianism (and apparently Woods) a bit:

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/

September 27, 2012 at 8:54 PM  

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