MSNBC talking head Rachel Maddow is one of the Praetorian Guard defending statist beliefs. Recently she repeated the demonstrably false claim that it was Herbert Hoover’s refusal to act that caused the Great Depression to develop.

Economics professor Steve Horwitz of St. Lawrence University has issued an open challenge to Maddow to debate the claim. If Maddow is certain she’s right, why not accept?

I’d bet that she won’t even acknowledge the challenge. The notion that federal inaction was the cause of the Depression is simply too useful to the statists to risk having it exposed as false.