In a recent print issue of NR, Michael Knox Beran argued that Barack Obama and John McCain represented diferent aristocratic alternatives for our liberal democracy. Beran clearly prefers the latter, but seems to prefer even more a Hayekian vision that he recognizes is at odds and in tension with McCain’s military conception of honor.

He suggests that people aren’t "reasonable" enough to Hayekians, and that Republicans can’t win the argument about how best to deliver a chicken in every microwave, even though that seems to be the argument he takes most seriously. What he doesn’t seem to recognize is that the argument he’d prefer to have is one that depends in some measure on the debasement he seems to deprecate in Obama and the people to whom he appeals.