Over at the Weekly Standard, Cato associate and University of Chicago Law School powerhouse Richard Epstein and a co-author decry the fact that libertarians, and worse, influential libertarian Republicans, have turned on the surveillance state and its heroic battle against terrorism that saved so many lives back on 9/11. But the authors have a problem: You can’t get trust back, especially when your spokespeople are James Clapper, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama. You may have to find another way to defend against terrorism.
They remind me, as statists often do, of the know-it-all grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” a biddy who issues non-stop stream of orders and punditry telling her son in law and daughter how to live. Then helpfully she flags down passersby when the family care breaks down, escaped convicts, who helpfully murder the family.
The Insomniac Libertarian 