And that's not surprising, because most 'Austrian' economic tenets are a part of micro-economics. Opportunity cost, marginalism, consumer preference, and other concepts that form part of neoclassical economics originally come from the 'Austrian' school. No one disputes that, and these all are taught in economics courses.
The problem with modern 'Austrian' economists is that they generally don't have a coherent macro-economic model, with the more modern 'Austrian' economists (do any real ones exist?) veering into ideology, philosophy and politics. Most reject the advances made into econometrics, mathematic models, and modern neoclassical macro theory.
And that's not to say there's no disagreement in the neoclassical camp. But pretty much everyone who actually attempts to practice economics as a science, generally falls into the neoclassical camp.
Edit - there's a reason Hayek is more frequently cited by right-wingers and libertarians than by economists. Most of his writings were political, and many of his predictions false.
Still though, when I hear commentary by someone like Peter Schiff, I find it very hard to ignore. Perhaps his ideas are "out there", but so were the people that suggested that the sun does not revolve around the earth. I guess that's a long winded way of saying I don't think they're obviously batshit insane wackos, they have ideas that should be heard.
Well, I have. And I found myself mostly agreeing with them. That's neither here nor there, I wouldn't think someone was dumb if they didn't share my viewpoint.
> And I've found many of those who argue against Keynes' theories are also the ones who espouse things like a gold-backed currency, or eliminating government altogether. I've seen blogs that equate Keynesian economics to satanism...
That's not really fair though, you can find kooks in ANY subject matter. It proves nothing other than that, kooks exist. Also I don't think people that argue for a gold standard are insane. I personally disagree with them, but they do have some valid points. I actually think it's kind of weird that the modern, relatively young system of governments printing debt with no tethoring to actual economic goods or work is somehow considered "obviously" right. We're barely a hundred years into this experiment and a lot of really bad thing have happened already, it could be entirely wrong.