As Barnes noted, there were a number of "middle-class writers" who took more or less this line, but "by far the most influential" of them "was the 17th-century English philosopher, John Locke. Many of his theories were taken up and popularized in America by Thomas Jefferson."
It is because the liberal elite believe that, without a massive government, the economy would collapse to zero.
My main message is that most of our economic problems derive from previous government intervention in the economy.
The Deepwater Horizon crisis has sparked the next battle in the never-ending war of ideas between the proponents of government intervention and the defenders of laissez-faire.
"The Internet and other personal technologies have been the saving grace of the past 20 years. In every other respect, Western societies in 2010 look much more dysfunctional and tyrannical than they did in 1990."
Knowing that the Fed now holds the most toxic of the subprime assets the banking system could create during the roaring 2000s should leave us with some concern.
Jefferson believed that peaceful coercion was the perfect republican solution to the worsening commercial crisis.
Raico provides a detailed reading of their work in all these respects and shows that one need not embrace statism, and that one can be a consistent and full-blown liberal in the classical tradition, and not come anywhere near fulfilling the stereotype that conservatives were then creating of libertarians.
It doesn't make the country richer when politicians spend money they don't have.
Only such a spirit could succeed in building a movement, Austrian and libertarian, twice in his distinguished career.
