A nasty book was just published arguing (no, “declaring” would be a more accurate word) that those of us who believe in minimal government have been duped by a gigantic conspiracy. It’s just a myth, you see, that big government has bad consequences. If you think otherwise, you’ve been taken in by sinister forces using clever mind-control techniques.
That book is entitled The Big Myth, authored by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. It receives an appropriately severe review here by attorney Mark Pulliam.
Here’s a sample paragraph:
The Big Myth even implicates Laura Ingalls Wilder (author of the beloved Little House on the Prairie series) and her daughter, “libertarian journalist” Rose Wilder Lane! In fact, virtually every libertarian and center-right figure espousing economic views in the past century is allegedly complicit in this massive conspiracy to deceive the American public about the mythical merits of capitalism versus government regulation of the economy. The implicit premise of The Big Myth provides an illuminating insight into the left-wing mindset prevalent in academia: The self-righteous authors assume that everyone would share their democratic-socialist worldview (which they declare to be “the truth”) in the absence of cupidity or deceit. Good faith disagreement is not possible. Call it demonizing dissent.
Oreskes and Conway even refer to Ludwig von Mises as a “fascist sympathizer,” notwithstanding the facts that he was Jewish and had to flee Hitler’s fascism and that his writings evince nothing but opposition to a state-controlled economy. The authors don’t debate his work, but just dismiss him with a bit of name-calling.
This type of thinking is patently ridiculous. Should we also believe, say, that Adam Smith was insincere in his observations about the harms done to regular people by mercantilistic policies? That Frederic Bastiat wanted free trade so he could enrich himself? That Friedrich Hayek’s opposition to socialism was somehow merely a facade for his desire to have big business run roughshod over all of us?
Pulliam is right to say that this screed demonizes dissent. That’s the object of so much leftist writing these days. As evidence mounts that omnipotent government creates many losers and aids only the well-connected, people like Oreskes and Conway write books meant to distract Americans from the obvious truth. Contemptible.