The Art of Conservative Persuasion, Don Boudreaux Edition:

Being an economist can be frustrating.  Most people do not understand how markets work, and economists spend a good deal of time arguing against bad policy ideas that appeal to non-economists, and for good ideas that do not appeal to common-sense.  This can sometimes feel like pushing rocks uphill.  Plus it can lead people to suspect that you are carrying water for the corporate rich, which is unpleasant.

But what is it like to be an extreme right-wing economist?  If Don Boudreaux is any indication, it’s frustrating!  Boudreaux’s hero, Friedrich Hayek, understood the importance of reaching out to his intellectual opponents.  At least at times Hayek attributed good motives to socialists.  Boudreaux has pioneered a new approach:  insult the people you disagree with.

This is a hoot:

Okay, so what I’m about to do is a bit unfair to protectionists; indeed, it is pure consumption for me: I’m going to poke fun at Warren Platts (once a frequent protectionist commenter here at Cafe Hayek and still a commenter at EconLog). The reason that what I’m going to do here is unfair to protectionists is that, although even the most-able protectionist is armed intellectually only with the equivalent of a nerf gun, these nerf-gun-toting protectionists possess far more fire power than Mr. Platts brings to the battle between protectionists and free traders.

Still, I confess to having no patience with persistent protectionists such as Mr. Platts. It’s not a crime to be ignorant and misinformed, but it’s vile to cling stubbornly to one’s ignorance and misinformation in order to justify state predation against innocent people – which is what protectionism is. And so I here gleefully expose a true howler – one that must be read to be believed – that Mr. Platts deposited on this recent EconLog post by Pierre Lemieux.

Gee, I wonder why Platts doesn’t post at cafehayek anymore!  As they say, read the whole thing (for the details of Platts’ “clueless nitwittery”) . . .