Wednesday, January 31, 2018

On the Block-Wenzel Debate About Trump



I had not planned to say much about my debate with Walter Block on Donald Trump, I pretty much felt the debate was what an important libertarian, whose thinking I respect, wrote in a private email to me:
I have listened to your debate with Walter. Basically, according to Block, you are right in everything you say about Trump, but Trump is good because he is not Hillary. That's all he is really saying.
And as Paul Gottfried said once at the Mises Institute, Trump's rudeness and crudeness is often mistaken for political incorrectness. (I am paraphrasing)

That said, I see Walter mentioned the debate in a new essay, Is Donald Trump a disaster for libertarianism? Open Letter to the Donald, so I will take the time to discuss the debate in a post either later today or sometime tomorrow. Watch for it, I think it will be important.

 -RW

2 comments:

  1. Considering Walter Block helped introduce me to the concept of the seen and the unseen with Defending the Defendable, it is sad that he blind to the unseen in his position on Trump.

    I see de minimus value, but many costs, in saying you are "For Trump" because he's terrible on almost all the issues that matter, but better compared to Hillary.

    I'm not starting "Libertarians for a bat to the face" because it's better than being decapitated and giving people the idea that I support taking a bat to the face.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agreed. It’s great to point out the handful of remotely libertarian things that Trump has done. It’s something else entirely to suggest that he’s been a net positive for the liberty movement.

    I also thought Wenzel made a great point about a lot of Trump’s so-called deregulation actually amounting to crony favoritism.

    ReplyDelete