Here’s who should not be on the list:
Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. In saying so, your list has very little creditability with these two. Replace them with the following: James (Jim) Rogers and Ron Paul.

Jonah Goldberg, Steve Forbes, and George Will also do not belong on the list.

Serious question: Was Hayek’s position on war in alignment with Mises’? If so, how can you call people like Rush, Horwitz, Sowell, etc. Hayekian? Or are you speaking exclusively in terms of Hayek’s economics?

At any rate, the omission of Ron Paul is far and away the most egregious. He should be at the very top of the list.

Since Hayek wrote “Why I Am Not a Conservative,” I find it strange that any conservatives are on this list. And especially conservative jerks like Gingrich and Will are on this list. And yes, “jerks” is the right word for them.

I do not recall Rush recommending The Road to Serfdom during the imperialist/corporate-socialist days of the Bush Administration. It is a travesty to include these neo-cons on this list. These are the people that give free market thinkers a black eye.

Limbaugh is not a Hayekian. What ishe? From LR.com:

Of those not there, most who know of the incident probably do so from Jerome Tuccille’s Radical Libertarianism: A Right Wing Alternative. At the 1969 Young Americans for Freedom convention in St. Louis, one faction — the libertarians — opposed the U.S. government’s orchestration of both the war in Vietnam and suppression here at home (including the nexus thereof: conscription). Their slogan: “Sock it to the State!” They were met (fiercely) by another faction — the “traditionalists” (with the actual tradition never identified) — who opposed that opposition. Their cry? “Sock it to the Left!”

This political drama flashed in the warder of my brain when something recently happened that put into perspective the bewilderment that has possessed observers of “conservatism” in the present age. The bewilderment itself comes from seeing too many individuals evade/dismiss/deny every error/deception/disaster in the “War on Terror” and repeat the same ill-conceived mantras (e.g., “Better to fight them [rump Ba'athists? rival Muslim sects?] there than here!”). People who used to parrot Rush Limbaugh’s dictum that the military exists only “to kill people and break things” and condemned Clinton for American involvement in the Balkans, now pout that the “liberal media” aren’t covering the super job the Army is doing in rebuilding Iraq. (A Reason commentator observed that the actual level of progress would have embarrassed a Soviet apparatchik reporting to his superiors. My own quip is that today’s “conservatives” are so committed to the welfare state that they established another one in Iraq.) It’s as if it’s a badge of honor to see how long they can continue to support — no matter how incoherently — an unsupportable war.

The something-recently that clued me in to what’s been going on was a response to a list made by Christopher Garvey (who ran this year for NY Attorney General on the Libertarian line) of rights that Americans have lost under President Bush. The respondent, N. (whom LRCers might recall from my “Letter to a Conservative Friend”), complained that Mr. Garvey’s facts “sound like DNC talking points.”

Bingo! Now I saw it all too clearly. Forget the Democrats’ actual record on the war and related issues: If N. believed “liberals” were opposing Bush’s attack on civil liberties, he was going to support it. And I thought about how any questioning of the Administration was always met with cries of “Support the Troops!” — as if all those who didn’t fall in line were ’60s radicals spitting on returning soldiers and calling them “baby killers.” The struggle isn’t against “Islamofascism” (minted by Christopher Hitchens to baby-talk fellow Leftists into backing the war) or terrorism or even al-Qaeda. The imperative, no less now than in ’69, is to “Sock it to the Left!” The “conservatism” of today isn’t that of Taft or Goldwater. It arguably isn’t even that of a “Religious Right,” since it seeks, not to serve any God, but only to stomp its Devil. Behold the Spite Right.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

I think Forbes and Will should be on the list (Forbes more so) and perhaps even Limbaugh (though much lower), but Gingrich??!! Come on!

Maybe you are confusing Gingrich with Armey. Dick Armey at least has a Ph.D. in economics and doesn’t promote vast federal monstrosities like Gingrich & Clinton’s proposed national health information registry.

Just because you have read,or recommend reading, “The Road to Serfdom” does not make you a Hayekian. He has many other works that are in my opinion far more insightful and important (Constitution of Liberty, Fatal Conceit, Prices and Production).

Also just because you are a member of the Mont Perelin Society does not make you a Hayekian. This is an obvious failure of logic. Milton Friedman was a member and even president, but he was most certainly not a Misean or Hayekian.

“The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended” Bastiat

By putting people like Thomas Sowell (more of a Friedman/Goldwater type), Gingrich, Limbaugh, Will, etc on the list you are doing a disservice to Hayek and all of his incredibly insightful work.

Walter Williams, Don Beaudreaux, and Russ Roberts should be Top 3. Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Jim Rogers, Peter Schiff and rest of Mises crowd should all be on the list, but not above Williams, Beaudreaux, Roberts because they are followers of Mises and are therefore not truly Hayekian. Thomas Sowell could be on there, but at the bottom (this is not an attempt to undermine Sowell because he does a lot of great work, but he is not Hayekian).

You might also want to include Drew Carrey. I was watching Price is Right the Other day and he threw in a great comment about inflation.

I’m also not sure when Hayek recommended a flat tax. In “Constitution of Liberty” he proposed a slightly progressive tax with a cap on the highest bracket to equal the % of GDP of the federal budget, ie if spending is 25% of GDP then highest tax bracket would be 25%.

How about Jason Lewis? He has the best radio show on economics. See http://www.jasonlewisshow.com.

Assuming that the order has some significance, Thomas Sowell and John Stossel do not belong at the Top. I echo the sentiment of everyone else that Ron Paul belongs on that list. Russ Roberts and Don Boudreaux belongs higher in the list. I don’t see Roger Garrison on the list. New Gingrich don’t belong there. Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh should move to the bottom, if at all they make the list.

Who wants to be a Hayekian anyway?

God damn there are some neo-cons on that list.

Hayek was the weakest of them all.

Someone do a Misesian list.

Conza88:

Generally I agree, but better to be a
Hayekian than a Lachmanian, which is frankly what most Hayekians these days really are.

Just a simple comment:

I’m not sure how the list was chosen, so it’s hard to say who “should” or “shouldn’t” be on it. To me, it seems that the list is really just a lot of people who are probably “public”, at least vaguely “intellectual”, and might have something nice to say about Hayek. Then, they’re ranked by how public they are – roughly.

A more interesting list for me would be to take the same list and rank it by “Hayekian-ness”. My guess is that the neo-cons would drop to the bottom.

Nice list, I only have one modification that I think you should consider: Walter Williams is also a professor at George Mason University.

Is it because Hayek was too forgiving of the welfare state and constitutionality that neo-cons and giant-state types like Limbaugh, Gingrich, Goldberg et al. make the list?

Or is it because these politicians and public yahoos have distorted Hayek worse than Thatcher?

Politicos oft have a penchant for compartmentalizing. Limbaugh bashes Obama soundly yet simultaneously ignores his own love of war socialism, for example.

The answers per listee are probably combinations in varying degrees.

It is also why I like Mises’s uncompromising stance over Hayek’s hedging. Mises once called his fellow Mont Pelerin Society chums socialists!

to raja:
i think gerry jackson’s more likely to be on the mises “top of the pops”.

to greg ransom:
steve forbes used to be one of those supply-siders screaming at greenspan for “deflating” in the 1990′s. (using the gold price as a gauge). that should be reason enough to have him struck from the list.