Good point, Joe. Despite the failure of government planning everywhere, many people still push it along. Maybe Lind means that socialism is intellectually dead — that it has done about as well in the marketplace of ideas as, oh, broccoli-flavored yogurt. But he is not saying that libertarianism is intellectually dead, but only that Republican politicians, most of whom have fully absorbed the collectivist nostrums that leftists have been peddling for a century (recall that Newt Gingrich expressed his admiration for FDR) did not do anything to steer the nation away from the monumental but well-entrenched blunders of Social Security, minimum wage legislation and so forth. That fact is no refutation of any aspect of the libertarian critique of the megastate.
Maybe he just hopes that we will all convert to his big-government church so he won’t have to face scathing criticism any more.
