Written by Tom Woods will be joining me this Friday, May 8th for the 7th episode of Radical Agenda. I’m gitty, because Tom is one of my favorite podcasters, though that certainly isn’t his most impressive credential. Tom is a senior fellow at the Mises Institute, one of few libertarian institutions I still hold in high regard. He’s the author of 12 books, the most recent of which is “Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion“. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Tom had me on his program last year, and surprisingly enough, he doesn’t hate me yet. Let’s see how long we can put that off.
Tom is a very busy guy. I had originally reached out to him after his appearance at the Mises Circle in Houston where he gave a talk on secession. Aside from giving a great talk on the subject at hand, he made this really excellent statement about the state of political discourse in America today;
One of my themes over the years has been that the American political and media classes behave as if, there is a 3×5 card of allowable opinion. And if you stray from that 3×5 card, you will be smeared, condemned, written out of polite society. You won’t be refuted, that’s one thing you can guarantee. You can make all the reasonable arguments you want, but if you’re taking a position that is held by neither Mitt Romney nor Hillary Clinton, you are wrong by definition. So there is no need to refute you. All we need to do, as Lew Rockwell says is just point and say “Eeek! A Mouse!”. There’s no need to respond to anything we’re saying. We peons don’t deserve a refutation from our betters. So when I am invariably smeared for talking about themes like this, it’s completely expected. That’s what the media classes do. You strayed from the 3×5 card you’re not entitled to a refutation. If you get up at an event like this, and you say that I do not believe that a system in which 320 million diverse people are ruled infallibly by a single city, is the most humane form of political organization, that eminently reasonable statement will not be refuted. You will simply be smeared and condemned, you’re obviously crazy. You’re crazy. This is the best way to organize society, and it’s so obviously the best way, that even to question it makes you a heretic.
Well I’m very glad to be a heretic in this bizarro world.
I feel the same way, Tom, and not just with the media classes. Those who purport to be our own people are doing this to us now. It’s almost as if the New York Times had an intern program, where you practice smearing libertarians by pretending to be one for a few years before you get to join their team.
Lucky for us, we’ve got podcasting, affordable web hosting options, social media, and other means by which to deliver our message directly to interested parties.
Join Tom and I for another exciting episode of Radical Agenda, a show about common sense extremism. This and every Friday from 5-7pm Eastern. Give me a ring at 218-936-0815, or connect with Skype username Radical Agenda, if you would like to be on the program.
Find out more about Tom at TomWoods.com