“There is no longer any excuse for Catholics to defend Von Mises,” says Dale Ahlquist, who goes on to recommend a book by a real estate agent as an appropriate classroom text in economics.  We are indeed to be spared nothing.

Poor Otto von Habsburg, Crown Prince of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia.  He called Mises “one of the truly great men of our century.”  The Habsburgs didn’t have the opportunity to be lectured by the head of the Chesterton Society, so they praised Mises, whose works they (unlike Ahlquist) had actually read first hand, not in secondhand caricature.

Should you encounter Thomas Storck and find him rather on the vicious side, understand that he has never quite recovered from this drubbing.  And here’s my longstanding statement on Mr. Ferrara, which tells you all you need to know about this delightful bunch.

I am reminded of what Richard Tawney said about Martin Luther: “Confronted with the complexities of foreign trade and financial organizations, he is like a savage introduced to a dynamo or a steam engine. He is too frightened and angry even to feel curiosity. Attempts to explain the mechanism merely enrage him; he can only repeat that there is a devil in it, and that good Christians will not meddle with the mystery of iniquity.”

These are truly some of the most vicious and uncharitable — and, let me say it, doltish — people whose dronings have ever come my way.  They are best ignored.  They are hopeless.  They will not learn, not even enough to state your position correctly.  Even the Left sometimes does me at least that courtesy.  But if you can’t avoid them, inoculate yourself against them with The Church and the Market, and with the articles on Catholic social teaching on my Articles page.