The Libertarian Two-Step
Better late than never. Hit & Run, wading into the textbook wars, offers up this equivalent of a libertarian koan:
It is difficult to determine just what specific curriculum changes the Texas school board has in mind, though the ringleader of the revisionist faction, a creationist weirdo named Don McLeroy, strikes me as one who wants to impart ideology into the textbooks, not balance.
Ya think? It is difficult to determine what I should call the writer of this Hit & Run post: Sparky or Snarky. The thing about Reason is that it can’t simply call out McLeroy as a religous fanatic and leave it at that. The libertarian thing to do here is the Texas Two-Step: skip to the right, skip to the left. So in a post about theocrats rewriting American history, there has to be the obligatory discussion of ideological biases on both ends of the political spectrum. Sometimes I wonder if Reason does this just to pander to the liberal-hating conservatives who also consider themselves libertarians.
In the end, the writer, seemingly playing it straight, decides:
these people are not to be trusted to achieve some sort of “balancing” of the historical record.
Ya think, Sparky?
So, did the writer not have enough snark for you? He called the guy a weirdo and says he doesn’t trust them, but, what, exactly?
I don’t understand what you’re protesting, here.
Looks to me like he was veering between snark and straight commentary and couldn’t settle on the right tone. Also, it’s the attempt at a subtle equation between liberal and conservative biases that I found out of place in a post about theocrats imposing their agenda on public high school students. But like I said, this is the normal reflex reax for Hit & Run.