Once More With Feeling

KarenDeCoster.com Web Log: Don't Be Skeptical of the State's Commandments, You Crazy Extremist Archives

David Wessel, economics editor of the Wall Street Journal, was on NPR this week, and he stated that this economy is so bad that even serious, sober people - not just the crazy extremists - are noting that unemployment could make a major jump upwards. Etc., etc. The point being that “crazy, extremist” libertarians/contrarians/skeptics, who long ago pointed out the facts about statist policies propping up an unsustainable economic boom, are just crazy and extremist. But when all the things they said would happen do happen, it’s a good time for “serious, sober” people - who are not deemed crazy extremists - to weigh in and confirm the most obvious points in retrospect. Then the analysis and 11th-hour conclusions can be taken seriously. How convenient! It’s mind-blowing to be living in times where developing analysis and conclusions or forming opinions that differ from the Head Government Planners and their enablers (Wall Street Kings, the Intelligentsia, the military-industrial complex, etc.) gets you branded a traitor, crazy, an extremist, a terrorist, an enemy of freedom (my personal favorite), anti-American, and worse. Does anyone ever dream, even for a moment, what it would be like if Rothbard and Mencken were alive in these years, with the power of the Internet behind them?