The Liberaltarian Jackelope

Meat for the bones:

During the debate over the $1 trillion stimulus package, for example, a remarkable academic fight broke out: Liberal fans of John Maynard Keynes, led by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (a man whose Nobel Prize award last year was cheered by many libertarian economists), tried to airbrush free marketeers out of the debate. “They just don’t read anything that doesn’t come from their cult circle,” Krugman wrote in one blog post; in another he called them “barbarians in the grip of an obscurantist faith.” (For more on the false consensus of liberal economists, see Veronique de Rugy’s “Stimulating Ourselves to Death,” page 17, and Daniel M. Rothschild’s “Whitewashing FDR,” page 55.) The same liberal bloggers who complained for years about being called “unserious” by pro-war Republicans were using the same word to describe libertarian arguments against the bailout.