>>From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
>>
>>... It
>>is a cateastrophic error to suppose that there is
>>nothing to be learned from the right, including their
>>ideas. ...
>
>No, there is nothing to be learned from the right
I wouldn't go to Carl's extreme, but I'm closer to him on this than to Justin. Hayek had a few non-worthless ideas - you can't plan everything is one of them. But that critique has been extended so far now - to a fatalistic belief that you can't plan anything - that it's become toxic to serious thought. I will concede that Hayek had a point about social democracy and nationalism - it's hard to keep the borders open if benefits are determined by citizenship - but that doesn't make me want to reject the idea of public benefits. Whatever of value the right had to offer to political thought happened a couple of decades ago, and now they've overstayed their welcome. They've reached that point that Keynes talked about: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." Hayek and Friedman are those scribblers, and we're stuck with those madmen in authority now. Fuck 'em.
Doug