The Cato Institute’s Neo-Nazis by Thomas DiLorenzo

Via Billy

Doing a Web search of “FDR critics” I ran across this Cato Institute publication that condemns FDR for having harmed “millions” of poor people with his policies.  Applying the same “logic” that is used by some people associated with Cato (and the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies and various other nihilistic libertines who mislabel themselves as “libertarians”), it is reasonable to assume that the author of this article, and those who publish it, must be neo-Nazis.  After all, when people such as myself, Tom Woods, and Judge Napolitano criticize Lincoln, these Cato characters smear everyone associated with the Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com as “a bunch of neo-Confederates,” implying that we must secretly wish to bring back slavery.  If making critical comments about Lincoln makes one a “neo-Confederate,” then making critical comments about FDR makes one a “neo-Nazi” or a neo-Hitlerite.

Or perhaps the issue here is that too many people approach the study of history as though it is like a college football game where one either roots for the home team or the visiting team.  If you cheer when Alabama fumbles or throws an interception, then you must be an Auburn fan, and vice versa.

An alternative way of looking at historical research is that it is a search for learning about historical reality and not a sporting event.  As such, there are no winners and losers, as with sporting events.  If you look at it that way, then criticisms of Lincoln or FDR are just that — criticisms of Lincoln and FDR, period, case closed.  Unless of course you are simply lying and deceiving in order to smear and slander those with whom you disagree about public policy matters.  The modus operandi of the left-wing hate group known as the Southern Poverty Law Center, in other words.