Most people love attention, me no less than anyone. So I’m happy to respond to my learned friend Henry Farrell’s challenge to the argument I made in my critical review of The Captured Economy, the new book by our mutual friend Steven Teles and Brink Lindsey.

The object of that book is to map a new territory of cooperation between Left and Right, for the sake of traditional progressive goals. In pursuit of this political project, a new philosophy is offered, summed up by the term “liberaltarianism,” and further described as “anti-state egalitarianism.”

Let me say that in principle I have no objection to couplings of strange bedfellows in progressive causes, and my record proves it. Back in the early days of blogs, I launched a left-right blog known as “Stand Down” to campaign against the US invasion of Iraq. I assembled luminaries from the world of blogging, including Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos), Duncan “Atrios” Black (Eschaton), Tom Tomorrow, Julian Sanchez (Notes from the Lounge), Radley Balko (The Agitator), and Jim Henley (Unqualified Offerings), among many others.