Robert Wenzel at EconomicPolicyJournal.com:

Tyler Cowen has listed from “his gut” the 10 books that have influenced him the most. Human Action by Ludwig von Mises is not on the list. None of Mises’s books are on the list. Keynes makes the list. Of Keynes, he writes:

John Maynard Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.  Keynes is one of the greatest thinkers of economics and there are new ideas on virtually every page.

Which raises the question for me, “Why does Cowen even care what Austrian economists call themselves?” If he can’t put a Mises book on a list of ten books that influenced him,when Human Action is the greatest economic text ever written, yet finds room for Keynes and “his new ideas,” I have to classify him a Keynesian, pure and simple.”

Why does Cowen care? It’s all about subversion of language…

“Libertarianism” thus defined (or, more accurately, labeled) comes to mean something not very removed from “liberalism”….

…which today has moved so much to the left that in many areas it’s indistinguishable from communism.

Which means you get to call yourself a libertarian but still push for the same programs and policies that the left-liberals push for.

Which keeps you within the range of “respectability.”

And keeps you out of SPLC lists that have you rubbing shoulders with the Pentagon shooter and anyone else who decides to get physical with the state apparatus.

Mind you, at our little blog, we have no quarrel with communism or communists. We don’t think they’re evil. We just don’t want them turning us into guinea pigs for their experiments. When they feel an urge to test the limits of human malleability, we suggest that they try it out first on their spouses and off-spring. See how that turns out after a generation, and then give us a call and we’ll talk….