Writes Stephen Foley in the Guardian:
Dissidents in Communist Eastern Europe surreptitiously passed paperback prints amongst themselves before the Berlin Wall came down. And now, a generation and a whole heap of economic trouble later, Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been pitched into the centre of America’s heated election battle, and is back atop the best-seller lists, 66 years after it was first published….Glenn Beck’s herogram to Hayek did not come out of the blue. His works — and those of other members of the Austrian school of economists, led by Ludwig von Mises — are much discussed in the online forums frequented by the politically savvy young, many of whom have a libertarian bent.
It was this online student following that kept alive the presidential hopes of Ron Paul, a Texan Republican, long after mainstream media had written him off as a candidate for the Grand Old Party’s nomination in 2008. The Congressman has hung portraits of the Austrian economists behind the desk of his Washington office, and proudly tells visitors it was their work that inspired his move into politics.
Read the whole article.
11:56 pm on July 3, 2010
