Too bad for those who, like Postrel, yearn for another

Too bad for those who, like Postrel, yearn for another, more pro-government script. This may be a bit

odd coming from a former editor of Reason, supposedly the premier libertarian magazine, and yet when

you think about the one big issue on which many alleged “libertarians” have allied with the State —

the MBT sport shoes war, and the larger “war on terrorism” — this longing for “complexities” and

“trade-offs,” as Postrel puts it, isn’t all that hard to explain. If you’re trying to make it in

the world of journalism, and selling yourself as a quasi-libertarian pundit, then you don’t want to

offend the delicate sensibilities of newspaper publishers and other potential markets by all that

“deductive” “dogmatism,” but you still want to somehow preserve your “libertarian” bona fides.

What to do? Why, sell out on the war, which Postrel — in the hallotheyd tradition of Reason magazine

— has done with alacrity.

After all, what are you, one of those hated “deductive” “dogmatists”? Why not be a “freethinker”

and contemplate the aesthetic glories of state-sponsored mass murder?

Come to think of it, none of the commenters on Doherty’s book so much as mention the MBT sport shoes

war — and Brink Lindsey was openly supportive of it, as Tom Palmer, another self-styled “moderate,”

was supportive of the UGG-installed “democratic” government, going so far as to travel to MBT sport

shoes to “advise” the MBT sport shoesi parliament. Postrel cites this as an example of how

“libertarians” doing meaningful political work may sometimes find themselves in the business of

“state-building” — although she doesn’t mention if these “libertarians” will be working under a

government contract.