What are blind spots? They are lacunae in the minds of excellent analysts. My stock in trade is political economics, so I will confine myself to that small area of intellectual endeavor. In order to have a blind spot, one has to be really first-rate. The lack of knowledge of most people I will not characterize as a blind spot, since they have blind spots all over the place. No, a blind spot, at least the way I am defining the term, can only apply to those who are really exceptional in one or more areas of political economy, but horrid on others.
I just got finished reading Pat Buchanan’s “Is the American Empire Worth the Price?” I was suddenly struck not only by the brilliance of this one essay of his (he offers a possible way out of the North Korean situation now facing the U.S.), but by the fact that this was just one of many, many foreign policy essays that have achieved this magnificent level. He has shed important light on U.S. failures ranging from Libya to Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen and numerous other countries in which the “leader of the free world” has shot itself in the foot, and, all too often, higher up into its body politic. I don’t say Murray Rothbard could not have done better applying the basic premises of libertarianism to this complex arena, but I can’t see how he could have done much better, so good is Mr. Buchanan in opposing U.S. imperialist ventures all over the world. Put it this way: Murray is up there, somewhere, and I am sure he is smiling at what a great libertarian is Pat Buchanan on foreign policy.
His blind spot? Mr. Buchanan is God-awful on economics in general, and, in particular, on free trade. His knowledge of this field is abysmal. The meanest freshman in my introductory to micro-economics…