This op-ed is adapted (some additions, some deletions, some edits) from my acceptance speech for the 2023 Alexander Hamilton Award from the Manhattan Institute. Sorry, the bad jokes mostly made the cut. The full speech is here starting with an introduction to my part around the 16-minute mark.
Hello from the Manhattan Institute (MI) awards dinner. I bring greetings from, as the new populist right wing would call us, the rootless cosmopolitan globalist donor class who would sell our country to China for some cheap crapola. Oh, and according to them we’re also “RINOs” for believing in things conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians have believed in for 100 years. As a famous Sicilian once almost said, that word RINO, I don’t think it means what they think it means.
I also would like to say hi to the progressive left from, as they in turn would call us, our little band of bond-villain oligarch plutocrats, also tagged as from the much-despised “donor class”, and who the left also believes would sell the country to China, but this time in exchange for a lower capital gains rate and maybe keeping the carried interest exemption.
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