Liberty Maven

Libertarians and true Conservatives have been bemoaning the fact, for quite some time now, that those who have hijacked the Republican party are not who they represent themselves to be.  They consistently call for smaller government, less spending, and appear to bow reverently to the tenants of free-market capitalism. But in truth, and in practice, they are enemies of capitalism, as Briggs Armstrong points out in this article from the Ludwig von Mises Institute:

photo via mises.org

New Rule: neomercantilists, neoconservatives, and statists are no longer allowed to call themselves “free marketers.” People who call themselves free marketers such as Bush, Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke are the primary threat capitalism faces. These false prophets of capitalism are the greatest friends that proponents of socialism have.

Many prominent American figures claim to be proponents of free markets but in practice advocate neomercantilist, corporate welfare policies. These policies eventually, and unsurprisingly, lead to disastrous economic and social consequences. These catastrophes are then blamed on capitalism, free markets, and deregulation, at which point, socialists are easily able to convince the distraught public that capitalism is a failed experiment and only massive government intervention in the markets can save them. Such is the way that capitalism dies, eaten away by a cancer from within. (Continue article)