Ramesh – I await with interest your chiming-in. But just for the sake of clarity, I should say that I raised the “liberaltarian” thing because, in effect, both Brooks and Reihan had (Brooks, you’ll note, touted Tyler Cowen’s essay). I agree with you that there are important differences between the Brooks view and, say, Brink Lindsey’s. But I think there’s a real dilemma in the making when even libertarians start abandoning small-government absolutism. And it is on display as we speak. If the intellectual anchor of small-government absolutism slides leftward toward statism, then that gives everyone else more slack to slide that way as well.