Shikha Dalmia’s Thursday The Bulwark editorial “Faced With Trump, Libertarianism Shrugged” may read, for people unfamiliar with libertarianism, like a well thought out and researched takedown of libertarianism. For those who are informed, it is nonsense.
Dalmia ends her editorial with this condemnatory sentence: “Libertarianism unfortunately is becoming a zombie ideology, unable to draw fresh moral sustenance even as it uses up its existing reserves.” But, reading through what comes before, it is clear that Dalmia’s means to reaching this conclusion involves repeatedly making false claims regarding libertarianism and libertarians.
The author George F. Will is a “libertarian public intellectual,” asserts Dalmia in the second paragraph of her editorial. Say what? The next paragraph starts off with another whopper about how there was a “hostile takeover” of the United States Libertarian Party by “a Holocaust-denying, white nationalist-friendly, ultra-reactionary faction.” Huh?
In her flinging of nonsense claims regarding libertarians, Dalmia doesn’t resist taking absurd swipes at one of the most prominent libertarian communicators — Ron Paul. Among her series of bizarre attacks on Paul is criticizing him for “his ethnonationalism wrapped in high-minded anti-war packaging.” Oh brother.
“Honest news. Smart analysis. Good faith.” That is the motto of The Bulwark. Dalmia’s editorial does not measure up.
