I linked to Crane and Niskanen’s <a href=”http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1054966383325&p=1012571727088

” target=”_blank”> anti-neocon piece yesterday. I generally find it to be a bit heavy on the usual libertarian clichés for my taste (I’ll get into that in a future column). Still, I should have called attention to one odd bit which I quote in full context:

Under no circumstances should an American be held captive in the US indefinitely, with no charges filed and no legal representation afforded. Yet this has happened under the Patriot Act. And now there is talk of a Patriot II. James Buchanan, the Nobel laureate, argues that governments will acquire more power when the opportunity arises. History shows this to be true, and the Patriot law reflects it. Today, with the war on terrorism, the opportunities for the state to expand are ubiquitous. Both liberals and conservatives are turning a blind eye to unnecessary usurpations of power, if not openly calling for them.
Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, has mooted the idea of “torture warrants”, by which courts could authorise the use of torture to elicit information. The neo-conservative agenda is a particular threat to liberty – perhaps greater than the ideologically spent ideas of left-liberalism. Always a movement of bright intellectual leaders, neo-conservatism has mostly been a movement with a head but no body. One rarely runs into a neo-con on the street.
Underlying neo-conservatism is a desire to reshape America and the world through the efforts of a robust federal government. For years The Weekly Standard, the neo-conservative magazine, has pushed for initiatives to reinforce US international power. Merely living in a free society appears to be insufficient for neo-conservatives.

Two Points: A generous reading would support the interpretation that Niskanen and Crane are pointing to Alan Dershowitz as an example of a “left-liberal.” But this strikes me as deliberately ambiguous. I understand that from the libertarian perspective there’s very little difference between what they see as a big government conservative and a big government liberal, but did they really have to cite the world’s most famously obnoxious Jew as their ersatz neocon?

Second, and more important, what’s with this bit about how “One rarely runs into a neo-con on the street”? Um, is Cato ordering from the same vendor who supplies Pat Buchanan’s office with cool aid?”

Come on. Sure, it’s absolutely true that one rarely runs into someone in the street who knows what the word “neocon” means. (The same might be said of libertarians). But that’s very different from saying that one rarely runs into someone in the street who holds what Mr. Crane and Mr. Niskanen surely consider to be “neocon” views. I guarantee Mr. Crane and Mr. Niskanen that if you actually poll Americans on what policies they support, there are a lot more neocons out there than there are libertarians. Don’t get me wrong, in many respects I wish there were more libertarians out there (in terms of public policy). But, please, spare me the faux populist jabs at neocon intellectuals (in the Financial Timesno less!) from the likes of Crane and Niskanen. It just doesn’t wash.