I have often extolled the excellent essays by economics professor Sandy Ikeda and his latest one published by the Foundation for Economic Education is another good read.
In it, he argues that defenders of free markets shouldn’t just criticize “crony capitalism” because there are other kinds of statist intervention that are also damaging.
Ikeda also offers this piece of good advice, “Imputing bad intentions to your opponents from the get-go may be fitting for a street fight — and I know there sometimes are street fights — but it’s a bad idea if you want constructive dialogue or debate.”
Leftists incessantly do that, even when they claim to want dialogue or debate. They attack the supposedly bad motives of those who disagree with their statist ideas and then think they’ve won the argument. Of course, they never persuade anyone who understands the case for liberty by such tactics, but it seems to be a bad habit they just can’t break. We must not mimic their argumentative tactics.
