One thing to be said in favor of the American conservative establishment is the fact that they at least pay lip service to the idea of a free market. They have also memorized the typical talking points in its defense, including the greater prosperity it provides, the morality of private property, and the impossibility of successful central planning. On this last point, however, mainstream conservatives generally fail to extend the logic to perhaps its most obvious modern example: the catastrophic effects of American foreign policy.In his 1945 article “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” F. A. Hayek discusses how no central planners could possibly know enough to make rational decisions for the economy, regardless of their experience and intelligence. Since the

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