I’m due for one of my invectives aimed at the Wall Street Journal.
Admittedly, I have a love-hate relationship with this ruling class broadsheet and I consistently renew my subscription. It’s less about how much I enjoy the rag than it is about having a passion for keeping up with everything, especially with its quick-moving online edition.
Make no mistake, the Establishment Journal is one-half of the stronghold on the information oligarchy (consisting of Neocons, Republicrats, Demopublicans, Social Democrats, Neo-Keynesians, Government-Worshipping Buffettarians, Wall Street Corporatists, and other assorted pro-establishment totalitarians), and its editors reject most free thinking. Occasionally, the Wall Street pretends to be a promoter of free markets and other things deemed “freedomist,” but in reality, it has a very strict and suffocating editorial policy. Many solid free thinkers have been published on WSJ, only to have their words and meanings pillaged with editorial buffoonery.
Then there’s the other half of the garrison, that financially insolvent and prehistoric organ of the state, the New York Times. Many libertarians have gone from obscure free-thinker status to gracing the pages of the Gray Lady. A sign of a libertarian or economist who has “sold out” his or her principles for mainstream advancement is when they start writing for the Journal or Times on a regular basis – such as Prof. Tyler Cowen from George Mason, who once saw himself as the next Murray Rothbard and now promotes the welfare state and government intervention in the WSJ and NYT.
Occasionally, the WSJ lets Judge Andrew Napolitano (an amazing radical) run wild on its pages, though he’s not an economist. The Journal has a tendency to protect its economic turf from anything (or anyone) that could potentially inspire radical thoughts that distract from its oligarchical-redistributionist message. The WSJ may be full of “Rightists,” but since the Social Democratic right adheres to the same rules for economic central planning – via a religious belief in mainstream, mathematical economics – as the Centrist left, we will not see an Austrian economist gracing the pages of any establishment rag on a regular basis.
