Food for Thought

I'm going away for the weekend in a few moments, but wanted to thow some links to some things worth pondering that I would have liked to discuss at length if I had the time:

Brad DeLong, speaking at a Cato Institute event: "The modern Ametican liberal economist's view of libertarianism is much the same: libertarianism is false in theory, but it is very much worth figuring out a set of limited, strategic interventions that will make the libertarian promises roughly true in practice." I actually think there is something legitimate in this point, though I do not think it fatal to many forms of libertarianism. (H/T: Tyler Cowen)

James Poulos on the failures of Bush and Reform Conservatism: "But Bush has been a virtual detainee of events, of the powers of personality that glommed around him and beset him from near and far, of the strangeness of history that put the fate of Iraq and the fate of the Party of Reagan in his hands. It was easy for him, I think, to weigh the first above the latter, and though Republicans must not all be conservatives and vice versa, the audacity of this judgment is, Bush knows, what will sink or swim his own acquittal."