Here we have the heart of the difference between Hayek and Keynes: one knew that markets work to give us the best of all possible worlds, while governments create and exacerbate malfunctions; the other imagined that governments were somehow capable of both perceiving and correcting malfunctions by means of the printing press, provided the right technocrats are in charge.

I'm not for pretending that bad stuff doesn't exist, and a passion for justice and truth is a libertarian trait. But the idea of liberty should also reveal new forms of beauty in the world, astonishing evidence of order without dictate, lovely examples of innovation without planning, and other magical things. Surely these deserve some attention too.

Morals do not come from the state and society. Morality deals with weightier matters that measure our thoughts, words, and deeds against universals that are true regardless of time and place.

Someone asked me the other day if I believe in conspiracies. Well, sure. Here's one. It is called the political system. It is nothing if not a giant conspiracy to rob, trick and subjugate the population.

Politics is a dirty business, a ruse, an ideological cul-de-sac, a vast looter of intellectual and financial resources, a lie that corrupts, a deceiver, a means of unleashing vast evil in the world of the most unexpected and undetected sort and the greatest diverter of human productivity ever concocted by those who do not believe in authentic social and economic progress.

The goal of intellectual life should be to see and understand what is true, not merely to adhere to a prevailing orthodoxy.

We really don’t get all the government we pay for, and thank goodness. Lord protect us on the day that we do.