Hayek and Bastiat in New York City, Hypersensitivity in Auburn

The New York Times has a great piece describing the connection of the Tea Party to thinkers like Hayek, Bastiat, and Skousen. The coverage is descriptive for the most part. They make three value judgements as I read it - they say that repealing the 17th amendment is "out there" (which I think is a fair enough description), they say that being worried about beggars and vagabonds voting is "out dated' (which I think is an admirable effort at understatement on the part of the Times), and they say that Hayek and Bastiat provide intellectual ballast to the Tea Party movement (which is a compliment). All in all a very good read.

Jeff Tucker, at the Mises Institute, doesn't think so. Some how he thought this was a hit piece on the part of the Times. I can't conceive of how he twisted that in his head. Some people are hell-bent on conflict and argument, and in this case at least Tucker seems to be one of them. It's a good article, Jeff. Chill out.

One of the most interesting passages in the article is this one:

"Justin Amash, the 30-year-old Republican state legislator running for the House seat once held by Gerald Ford in Michigan, frequently posts links to essays by Hayek and Bastiat on his Facebook page, his chief vehicle for communicating with voters. “There is no single economist or philosopher I admire more than F. A. Hayek,” he wrote in May. “I have his portrait on the wall of my legislative office and the Justin Amash for Congress office.”"

I find it interesting how everyone talks like politicians are enthralled to Keynes or how Keynes offers an economics that is inherently political. Based on Justin Amash's testimony alone I'd be willing to guess that there are more portraits of Hayek up in the halls of Congress than there are of Keynes.

UPDATE: Steve Horwitz blogs on the article as well. He's much more sensible than Jeff Tucker, pointing out how absurd it is to call Hayek "obscure" or "dormant" (I think those terms are probably still fair for Bastiat, although that's changing very quickly). I still think he's a little too sensitive about the treatment. All in all I thought this was a positive piece doing away with the assumption that there is no intellectual grounding for the Tea Party. I have no idea why Jeff Tucker and even Steve are reading such sarcasm into it. Steve is also concerned that Austrian economics gets tied up with religion and other Tea Party "crackpottery". You know what? Oh well. They co-exist quite comfortable in the Tea Party so I'm not sure how else you could report it. When they did an article on Peter Boettke in the Wall Street Journal a while back they didn't mention that stuff. You know why? Because they don't coexist for Boettke or GMU. Who is ever happy with how their views are presented in a short New York Times article? Brevity always prevents a perfect rendition. I haven't once read a completely faithful account of Keynesianism in the New York Times. Even Krugman's op-eds dumb it down - you've gotta go to Krugman's blog for any reasonable rendition. That's the cost of presenting nuanced ideas in a short newspaper article. You live with it. At the end of the day, are people more or less educated about Hayek and Bastiat and more or less informed about the intellectual underpinnings of the Tea Party movement? On both counts, the answer is "more", not "less". I think this is a good thing.