A reader objects:

Jonah,
You smear LewRockwellians as “Von Mises” worshippers, as if that’s a pejorative. Mises was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century (I tend to think arguably the greatest). If you are unfamiliar with Mises, it would be decent of you to refrain from criticizing him. Okay, maybe Lew Rockwell et al. are fair game, but by dismissing Mises himself, you are besmirching the memory and corpus of a great thinker and champion of freedom and western civilization. You are impugning a man who does not deserve it, one you would, I suspect, greatly admire if you knew his work. I assume you are unfamiliar with the main thrust of his writing–especially on economic theory–because as smart and pro-free market as you are, I would be astonished that you would hold him in low esteem and sneeringly dismiss him if you really knew his thought.

I think this is a fair point. I do not mean to “smeer” Mises at all. I am “familiar” with his work, but as I have explained in several columns, I am no expert on his work. From what I can tell, my problem with Mises — and his followers — is that he suffers from “extreme apriorism” as Buckley and others have used the phrase. I do not much like Kantian categories and imperatives and the like. Hence, I am a bigger fan of Hayek. But, that said, I sincerely doubt that Mises would consider Lincoln an American Hitler and there’s no reason why I should lump him in with the defenders of Jim Crow over at Lew Rockwell’s shop. But — again — why it should fall to me, one of the only conservatives eager to pick fights with Libertarians, to save Mises from the Rockwellians is a bit of a mystery. I will defend Edmund Burke to my last breath. I will even, as I have, do my darndest to claim Hayek as a conservative. But Mises is a libertarian and the libertarians should keep his good name intact themselves.