Libertarians Can be a Sensitive Bunch

Jacob Weisberg's article in Slate last week has riled up the libertarian blogosphere. Weisberg proclaimed The End of Libertarianism after conveniently blaming the ideology for the current financial meltdown. Slate Reports:

The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school.  Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong.  Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult for them to accept that markets can be irrational, misunderstand risk, and misallocate resources or that financial systems without vigorous government oversight and the capacity for pragmatic intervention constitute a recipe for disaster.  They are bankrupt, and this time, there will be no bailout.

I have to admit that I do have a copy of The Fountainhead on my bookshelf ... but the same can be said for The Communist Manifesto and The Ralph Nader Reader. And, for Mr. Weisberg's future reference, Rand barely touches on economic theory at all. She mostly just glorifies Man through her kooky philosophy of Objectivism while subjecting her readers to her sexual fantasies.

In any case, Weisberg went after Libertarians with quite a passion for apparently ruining everything - even though Libertarians hold a somewhat pathetic amount of power or influence in any branch of government.  Reason became resentful and responded with a few Brickbats from Matt Welch:

There is no space in Weisberg's conception of "libertarians" for people like, for instance, me: Not remotely a utopian, not "of the right," never read an Ayn Rand novel, spend highschool playing sports instead of reading political philosophy ... and don't pine for some presumably awful world where everyone shares my political views. (And, I might add, unlike Weisberg, I don't want to convert my political views into increased state power over fellow citizens who don't happen to agree with me.)

Read other responses on Reason here and here. (They have a touchy staff.)

Not to be outdone, NYU visiting professor of law Richard A. Epstein took a swipe at Weisberg in his weekly column on Forbes:

Weisberg is so intent on attacking libertarians as "intellectually immature" that he overlooks the point of [Fannie and Freddy's] cautionary tale.  Private markets magnify government errors. But in light of this history, it is plain foolish to treat the current failures solely as the result of an unregulated market.  The hard question is what kind of regulation is appropriate, and why.

Weisberg's crudes charge, however, is that all libertarians suffer from the incurable dogmatism of high school students captivated by Ayn Rand novels (which - confession - I have never read).  His stick-figure image of libertarains does not square with the current intellectual landscape. Limited-government libertarians like me are not anarchists.  We have a presumption against government regulation, which can be rebutted by showing long-term social improvements.

We also strenuously oppose using the credit crisis as a lever for introducing all sorts of senseless gimmicks to disrupt labor and product markets

Volokh, Mises, Rockwell and Cato all chimed in ... If you feel like reading their responses click on the links (I would block quote but this post is running a little long.)

The most humorous thing to come out of this whole fiasco has been watching libertarians proclaim ignorance of Ayn Rand. Clarence Thomas is probably pissed.