Crooked Timber Liberals - Monopolizing the Facts

The Crooked Timber Liberals posted this new entry...Renouncing the facts in the name of method (Mankiw channels Lukacs).  Here was Chris Bertram's conclusion...

I’ve never had sympathy for what Lukacs says here, and don’t know the context for the Keynes quote. But I’m struck by the way that both Mankiw and Lukacs implicitly endorse the idea that they can just keep on keeping on, whatever happens in the actual world.

What happens in the "actual world"?  Are liberals the only ones who live in the "actual world"?  Here was my comment...

"The problem is thus in no way solved if we can show that all the facts, if they were known to a single mind (as we hypothetically assume them to be given to the observing economist), would uniquely determine the solution; instead we must show how a solution is produced by the interactions of people each of whom possesses only partial knowledge. To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind in the same manner in which we assume it to be given to us as the explaining economists is to assume the problem away and to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world." - Friedrich August Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society

Are any of you guys ever going to respond to my challenge that taxpayers should be allowed to directly allocate their individual taxes? Or are you just going to keep on pretending that you have a monopoly on facts? Perhaps you enjoy arguing like blind men touching different parts of an elephant?

Why not genuinely consider what The Devil's Advocate of Public Goods has to say? Why not recognize, respect...or at least tolerate other people's values?

Unlike some of my other comments on the Crooked Timber blog...they didn't have moderation enabled so I managed to post the comment.  It didn't last long though.  When I revisited the entry here's what I saw in place of my comment...

[Crooked Timber comments threads are an opportunity to engage in conversation, not the granting of a soapbox for you to promote your private obsessions. Please go away. CB]

I got shooed away.  Wasn't my comment relevant?  They were talking about "renouncing" facts so I shared Hayek's perspective on who owns the facts.  Then I offered a compromise and suggested political tolerance.

Sure, I'm self-aware enough to recognize that pragmatarianism could certainly qualify as an obsession.  And yes...I can't argue with the fact that I'm promoting my obsession.  But it's obviously not a private obsession...and aren't the Crooked Timber Liberals also promoting their own obsession?  

What was so harmful about my comment that they couldn't just allow other readers to form their own opinions on the relevance of my comment?  Aren't we all quite adept at that?  Do you really want other people to do that for you?  I sure know I don't.

Is it really that bad though to be obsessed with a reasonable compromise?  Pragmatarianism doesn't advocate getting rid of taxes or reducing the scope of government...but not once did the Crooked Timber liberals bother to address my compromise.  Yup...yet another ostrich response to pragmatarianism.