Evidently Reason’s Damon Root isn’t a very careful reader. His reply to my post last week contains a number of careless distortions of my argument. For example:

1. In his opening sentence, Root asserts that I “dismissed the libertarian legal movement as a bunch of ‘useful idiots for progressive statists.’” (Emphasis added.)

Not so. In the tweet of mine that he objects to, I stated that “libertarian supporters of judicial activism” are “useful idiots for progressive statists.” I have never claimed that the “libertarian legal movement” consists solely of “libertarian supporters of judicial activism.” Indeed, the post that Root purports to reply to spells out the “libertarian choice” between “a principled originalism” and “an unprincipled judicial activism.” I assume that some libertarians will choose one option and some the other.

2. Root asserts that I argue that “when libertarians attack conservatives ‘they provide significant de facto support for progressive judicial activists.’” (Emphasis added.)

Not so. My argument is that when libertarians “advocate an unprincipled judicial activism … [they] become de facto allies of progressive judicial activists.” Nothing in my post can fairly be read to assert that any libertarian “attack” on judicial conservatives is ipso facto “an unprincipled judicial activism.” On the contrary, I expressly acknowledged that even as they both pursue “a principled originalism,” libertarians and judicial conservatives will have “their inevitable differences.” (I would hope that there libertarians would engage in “productive conversation” over those differences, but if they instead choose attack mode, that doesn’t make their positions “unprincipled.”)

3. Root claims that I try “to frame our underlying disagreement as a contest between the ‘principled originalism’ of conservatives and the ‘unprincipled judicial activism’ of libertarians.”

Not so. That’s a flagrant misreading of what I wrote. Again, I expressly acknowledged that libertarians can embrace a “principled originalism” that will still lead to “inevitable differences” with judicial conservatives.

4. More broadly, Root fails to convey to his readers any hint of my core point that libertarian advocacy of “an aggressive judicial role” is going to provide camouflage for a “progressive rewriting of the Constitution” that will be severely hostile to libertarian principles.

5. Root insinuates that I think that “conservatives should be shielded from criticism when they’re wrong.”

Not so. Again, I would hope that natural allies would try to engage in “productive conversation” over their differences rather than jump to attack mode. But productive conversation can certainly include a lot of criticism.

(Given Root’s mode of mischaracterizing arguments, I see little point in engaging him on his substantive criticism of judicial conservative positions. I will simply note here that his claim that the Ninth Amendment “says” that it “protect[s] unenumerated rights” is a flat misreading of the text of that amendment, which merely sets forth a rule of construction and which does not purport to be a font of any rights.)