Yesterday’s Tom Woods Letter, which all the influential people receive every weekday. Click here to be one of them, and get my free eBook The Deregulation Bogeyman at the same time.
I thought arguing with SJWs was maddening and pointless.
I’d forgotten about what the so-called right wing can be like.
Last night David Stockman posted the following:
Here’s a sample comment and my response:
Now look: I understand people who find Trump entertaining, who are creeped out by his Deep State opponents, who appreciate his occasional deviations from foreign-policy orthodoxy, his deregulation, etc.
But for heaven’s sake, be reasonable: Trump is a pragmatist, not an anti-state ideologue. Is that even debatable?
And that’s all Stockman is saying. He’s saying that Bush, Obama, and Trump alike have a pro-state bias to their thought and economic policy. None has come close to cutting spending or getting a handle on the severe unfunded liabilities problem.
Trump didn’t even campaign on those things, so it’s not even that we’re accusing him of breaking a promise. You can’t break a promise you never made.
The rest of Stockman’s point is that the real problem here is the Federal Reserve, which has hurt Americans of all classes. Who can argue with that?
Trump supporters, evidently.
The entire thread consists of people calling Stockman a “liberal” — as if liberals criticize the Fed and demand sound money!
These folks don’t even understand what they’re supposed to believe.
Oh, Woods, go easy on them. Teach them!
I’m trying!
But I have zero sympathy for people who ignorantly denounce David Stockman — who’s 98% sound on economics and monetary policy in particular — for being, of all things, a left-liberal!
His point is that Trump is a statist. He used that exact word. Now you may disagree with that description of Trump, but it obviously isn’t something a liberal would say. To call Stockman a “liberal” (in the American sense, obviously) is as uncomprehending as it gets. He would be the first liberal ever to criticize Trump for favoring too much government.
Stockman criticizes “the state’s central banking branch,” and the MAGA folks in the comments can’t come to the central bank’s defense fast enough.
All right, all right, most of them know nothing about the central bank.
So maybe shutting up might not be a bad idea?
Shouldn’t their instinct be that a government-established central bank with monopoly privileges is probably a bad idea?
Instead, a critic like Stockman gets lambasted as a “liberal” — as if liberals are known for their criticisms, rather than instinctual defenses, of the Fed.
Here’s more cancer, if you can take it:
On and on it goes. That’s just a sample.
Thanks, conservative movement: this is the knowledge you’ve managed to convey to these people over the past 50 years.
Someone comes along and says spending needs to be slashed, the government’s role in the economy needs to be radically diminished, and a lid needs to be put on the Fed, and all they can do is scream, “Socialist!”
This is intellectual malpractice.
A socialist favors the exact opposite of all these positions, as you already know.
A great antidote to the insanity: the folks in my private group — some of whom helped me fight back in that cancerous thread.
I’ll see you in there, and we’ll Make the Fed our Enemy Again:
