…anyway, so the reason I got off on that tangent was because I’d just read’s Shawn’s interview with Timothy P. Carney author of The Big Ripoff — a book that “explores in a meticulous-yet-highly-readable fashion how the collusion of big business and big government depletes the savings accounts of average Americans, fills the coffers of regulation-adoring politicians and damages the cause of free-market capitalism in the United States.”

It’s so hard to defend free-markets when you’re surrounded by people who equate capitalism with big business. (Ya know?) First, you have to explain that we don’t really have a free market now. Carney’s book, evidently, makes that argument well:

The Big Myth, as I call it, certainly is a useful thing for both sides. It allows Democrats to slander limited-government advocates as corporate hacks, and it enables Republicans to fool their small-government base. On the flipside, the Big Myth allows Republicans to attack big-government liberals as “anti-business,” but also enables Democrats to haul in corporate cash while pretending to fight for the little guy.

Word booty.