A case for optimism

About three years ago, I confessed in a piece for Strike-The-Root.com ("Hey, Libertarians -- Cheer Up!") that most libertarians depress the crap out of me.

They still do. That's why I love to read articles like that offered this week by Alan Bock on Antiwar.com. Alan says that, unlike most post-Marxists, he maintains a long-range optimism "that the state will eventually wither away (although I've come to accept the likelihood that it just might not happen during my lifetime)." In his essay "With a Whimper," Alan writes:

"It would hardly do to predict that the impulse has disappeared or that it won't resurface soon. But I'm beginning to think that it's just possible that the current manifestation of American empire-hunger, in its somewhat confused Bushian, neocon, neo-Wilsonian, democracy-obsessed manifestation, has reached something of a high-water mark and is likely to recede, at least for a while.

"The dreams of benevolent conquest are being mugged by reality."

Read all of Alan Bock's terrific article right here.