The Ideologies Behind the Ideologues

„Let nobody accuse the Tea Party enthusiasts of lacking intellectual sophistication, no matter what their favorite candidates might say about evolution, civil rights, masturbation or alcohol prohibition. According to The Times, the movement's reading list includes works of political economy by such right-wing thinkers as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek and Frederic Bastiat. (And never mind that some of them are reading Glenn Beck's favorite crank, the late Cleon Skousen, who doesn't quite belong in the same category.)

What makes this news so bemusing is not that the far right is rediscovering anarcho-capitalism or ultra-libertarianism—an ideology whose potential consequences were observed the other day in Tennessee, where firefighters watched a family's house burn down because they hadn't paid a fee. Mises, Hayek and their successors have long influenced the American right, from William F. Buckley Jr. to Alan Greenspan.

What's funny is the sudden reverence among the Tea Party's self-styled superpatriots for a bunch of foreign philosophers whose outlook is known as »Austrian economics«, except for Bastiat—whose Frenchness might be expected to arouse even greater suspicion among our nativists. Among the most bitter complaints against President Obama is his supposed penchant for European notions concerning health care reform, climate change and global security. His angriest critics at Tea Party demonstrations maliciously suggest that the president is himself a foreigner who doesn't respect the American way. So why do those same people now tell us that America should heed the Austrian school of economics, with its strictures against public schooling, public roads and government services of almost any kind?”