Lew’s post highlights the fatal flaw of the “libertarian centralizers” who believe that freedom is the result of empowering the central government with libertarian lawyers. It’ll never happen,and even if it did, they would be sabotaged at every step. All that would be left is a more empowered central government armed with more statist lawyers.

Libertarian economists have no delusions that government would be less intrusive if only populated by more “good guys” like us. Libertarian lawyers, however, seem to all have the incredibly naive belief that they could in fact become the saviors of the world in this respect. Jefferson would get a good belly laugh out of that one. Even the late Bernie Seigan, who was a great guy and a fine scholar, succumbed to this hubris in his book,Economic Liberties and the Constitution. I recommend the book to everyone, but in one disappointing passage he stated (paraphrasing) that the federal judiciary has always been America’s strongest safegaurd of liberty.