Don Boudreaux puts his finger on why I'm scared to go into politics

We had a party a few weeks ago and one of the guests started up a conversation about multi-national corporations and the wickedness of the Australian Prime Minister. Implicit in what he said was not that John Howard was misguided in his economic policies but that he was, in some way, deliberately trying to "destroy" Australia.

I see this a lot in political debate. For example, if you believe in a smaller state, lower taxes or any policy that is seen as "economically liberal", you can expect to be attacked for being selfish, greedy or downright malign.

Professor Boudreaux writes at Café Hayek about an email he received after having a letter on taxation published in the New York Times today.

I am gratified to see that his response was similar to the one that I gave to my friend. I said: "It may well be true that John Howard is evil but let's assume that he believes he is not and that he genuinely believes what he is doing will be good for Australia. What thought process do you think he went through? Can you explain to me why what he is doing is wrong without needing to claim that he is evil?

Sadly, the argument took place after several glasses of a good Beaujolais and I forget the exact details of the economic policy in question or my friend's response...