Ep. 165 Dan McCarthy Trusts the People More Than the Elites
Dan McCarthy, Editor at Large of The American Conservative, joins Bob to discuss his view that conservatives and libertarians should stop heaping contempt on democracy. McCarthy argues that the elites are the real threat to liberty, not the masses.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The YouTube version of this interview.
- The homepages for Modern Age and The American Conservative.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
The audio production for this episode was provided by Podsworth Media.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
I think he underplays the populist element in the French Revolution. It doesn’t necessarily change his argument but it is important context and material for a potential counter-argument: See: The womens’ march on Versailles, the sanscullotes, the enrages, the cordelier district, the September massacres, etc.
Not convinced. The whole argument is based off the dichotomy between democracy and elite-run oligarchy. I’d think that these are just about equally bad. I certainly don’t see the moderating influence of democracy. People elected Hitler and Chavez. Pushing this off to “not real populism” is a weak argument.
All democracies elect leaders to stand in for “the people,” so of course all of them will be run by elites. Unless you somehow manage a direct democracy with no representatives at all, which seems technically difficult.