Re:China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregates ...
by AnthonyMouse on Thursday July 05, 2018 @03:04PM
(#17465871)
> The Iraq war had significant buy-in from (some now mainstream) libertarian writers and thinkers.
Identifying someone who claims to support an idea and then makes an argument inconsistent with that idea is a valid criticism of the person and their bad argument, not of the original idea.
> I don't want to single out libertarians here though, I just want to point out interventionist policies have widespread support in the United States across the political spectrum (after all "even the liberal New Republic" supported it)
Sure, right after 9/11 when everybody was angry. Angry makes for irrational. Maybe it's time to revisit a lot of that stuff and roll it back.
> and I don't see that trend reversing any time soon.
The public is made up of people. Things change when somebody changes them.
The Iraq war had significant buy-in from (some now mainstream) libertarian writers and thinkers. For example, Megan McArdle, under the name "Jane Galt", wrote feverishly in favor of the war on terror and mocked those who opposed it. The libertarian argument was that by toppling dictatorships and theocracies, these "liberated" middle-eastern democracies would all have liberalized economies.
I don't want to single out libertarians here though, I just want to point out interventionist policies have widespread support in the United States across the political spectrum (after all "even the liberal New Republic" supported it) and I don't see that trend reversing any time soon.