I have had some brief exchanges with some well-known libertarians, including Don Boudreaux, Tom DiLorenzo and Russ Roberts (best known as the moderator of EconTalk and co-blogger with Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek) and Cato Institute's Alex Nowrasteh. Now don't expect them to remember me from a few 15-second emails. For example, some National Review writer had targeted DiLorenzo's critical analysis of Lincoln, and I wanted to give Tom a heads up and to get his take on the piece. In essence, his response was dismissive: my paraphrase: "I've heard it all before from better-informed historians." I was once curious why Boudreaux vented in I think one of his op-eds in a Pittsburgh newspaper about people calling him a conservative, and he gave a very Hayekian response. No doubt the most embarrassing was the time I was doing a lot of reading on market monetarism (especially Scott Sumner), and I suggested the topic for a future EconTalk episode. Roberts tersely responded they already did an episode on it. Apparently I had missed a past episode.
Now I recently wrote a critical essay on certain popular libertarians (Rockwell and Woods) who, on reviewing the first Presidential debate, were dumping on Biden and suggesting how Trump could/should have responded to Biden's nonsense. Now don't get me wrong: I am utterly opposed to a Biden (or any other Dem) candidacy to the Presidency. I have actively tweeted against The Lincoln Project, a GOP protest group endorsing Biden for President. But I've more or less argued a more orthodox libertarian view that the Dems and GOP are different factions of the Big Government Party; the GOP adopts freedom talking points but doesn't do anything to fulfill them once in power. The Rockwell/Woods faction treats Trump as the target of the Deep State; Trump would surely exit us from foreign interventions except for the conspiratorial bureaucracy. (They are in complete denial of Trump's past appointments, like of prominent neo-con John Bolton.)
One of the reasons I'm so picky about selecting Ron Paul videos for my daily miscellany posts is because he is a little too much into the crackpottery wing of libertarianism, including the Deep State, talk about blowbacks in foreign policy, etc. Rockwell's famous website is similar, a weird mashup of diverse stuff, including natural health gurus, COVID-19 meds being suppressed, etc.
So for this piece I'm not going to identify the libertarian in this exchange. For one thing, I did not request for his permission to quote him. Note that I disagree with him and I do not claim ownership of his ideas. But he responded voluntarily and unexpectedly to an email. I think most libertarians can probably make an educated guess from context. I also don't want to use his name to promote readership of my blog (although no doubt it would help). This isn't meant to create a mystery but to focus attention on the exchange itself. I've done this several times in my Facebook (now social media digest blog post) segments. I think when you respond to my questions, you should expect accountability in some form.
This particular libertarian has an email distro, and I'm on it. So in a recent email, he pointed out that the New England Journal of Medicine made the unprecedented move of publicly endorsing a political candidate, in this case Biden. I wrote a sympathetic reply, noting that the esteemed Scientific American magazine had done the same, which I thought undermined their credibility. Now I think was set him off was this passing comment, which I didn't think he would take exception to:
But let's face it: Trump brought a lot of this on himself by bashing scientists, saying crazy stuff about injecting household chemicals, fighting testing tooth and nail, etc. There is an anti-intellectualism in Trumpkin populism, and he stokes it.
I think any fair-minded person would agree with what I wrote; it's a pattern of behavior, and the anti-intellectualism is implicit in his pretentious rubbish in the COVID-19 pressers. Trump has zero background in science and research.
My adversary answers back to me. Now this was a judgment error on his part. I don't know what, if any, background he has in science or research. He is an historian by training. (Now I've probably pissed off every history academic in the universe; I have not looked at what universities require for PhD candidacy in history, but they don't do randomized research studies. Maybe some do questionnaire studies on what students believe about history; I don't know.) I did fairly well in high school and college science courses, participated in our Texas UIL science competition, winning district. I hold two math degrees and have published peer-reviewed empirical studies. You really want to be careful in trying to debate me; be really careful of what you wish for. So here's his pretentious reply; see if you can make out a cheap shot he takes at me:
But his critics have their own irrationality. You, for example. He never said anything about injecting household cleaners. In the debate he said that he had said it only sarcastically, so the narrative has become so overwhelming that he himself has come to believe it. But he never said it. And I think we on some level have a responsibility to know that something this preposterous is false. It always is. It always is.
Has he really bashed scientists per se? Well, if so, I would say given the overwhelming politicization of the virus, these bastards had it coming to them. I don't see how that's debatable! Look at the damage these blinkered people are doing, as they go about their merry way wrecking everybody's lives and refusing even to acknowledge the collateral damage of what they're doing. Bashing them is the least he should be doing.
He hardly fought testing tooth and nail. There's been a massive amount of testing. If anything, there's been much too much testing, which appears to be the opinion of Harvard Medical School's [xxx], When I asked him about it on my show.
Japan and Taiwan, now they fought testing. They never did mass testing, and they're fine. The demand for mass testing is like a mania. Yes, tests can be valuable in certain situations, but am I supposed to get a new test every time I step into a taxicab or something? The whole thing is ridiculous and a distraction.
I wrote a brief reply (unacknowledged) and I'll then make some follow-up points.
Sorry. You're wrong. He was spitballing trying to make himself relevant. His point was that cleaners worked on viruses externally; so they should be relevant internally. That's literally as deep as he thinks. If you're honest, he does this all the time. During all the 2016 debates, he never could debate on substance. It was all memorized soundbites and insults.
It was only after he got caught with justifiable blowback that he comes up with this predictable phony excuse that he was only kidding. Even if you buy this, how do you explain the context? Why is he being sarcastic in a presser? Why is he bringing up household cleaners, of all things? You're buying in all this reminds me of my 5 years as a professor and catching students in academic dishonesty. They all had "explanations". The only thing they wanted to know is how I caught them so they wouldn't get caught next time.
I could debate this point on point. What surprises me is how a fellow libertarian says what you said. Testing was the reason South Korea halted the pandemic--and they did it by engaging the private sector, unlike the Trump CDC and FDA which screwed up their own monopoly rollout, a matter of fact, not opinion. Trump has for months opposed testing on the record, blaming them for cases, as if the virus gives a damn about testing procedures. He has opposed funding for testing. He doesn't understand how testing can control the spread.
I'll leave it at that for now.
I was exactly right and very precise in what I said, specifically in response. Now it's true that Trump did not initially say that household chemicals should be injected (and don't get distracted by stupid arcane arguments like "well, he meant medical personnel, not patients doing the injections" or whether the treatment might be oral vs. injectable) Here is what he said:
"A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. (To Bryan) And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting, right?"
"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."
And here is another damning example of Trump spitballing:
"I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure. You know? If you could? And maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Again, I say maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I’m not a doctor. But I’m a person that has a good… You know what. Deborah, have you ever heard of that? The heat and the light relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus?"
Dr. Deborah Birx: "Not as a treatment. I mean, certainly fever is a good thing. When you have a fever, it helps your body respond. But, I’ve not seen heat or light as a —"
Trump: "I think that’s a great thing to look at. OK?"
Here's the point: Trump knows household cleaners and UV rays can kill COVID-19 and other viruses on surfaces or in the air. What does he know about pharmaceutical design and development? What does he know about the body's immune system and how it responds to therapy? What does he think he's contributing to the discussion, when he literally has no knowledge of the health sciences other than as a patient?
