Look – those are the words. You have to interpret them just like I do. You clearly can interpret “general welfare” in a limited but non-trivial way. Trust that I can too. And we’ll fight it out in Congress.

That’s one of my biggest problems with the Austrian school – it’s so damn insular. It can be like a cult. People call Keynesianism a cult – but Keynesianism has changed TREMENDOUSLY since the thirties. How much has the Austrian school changed? Not that much. That’s a pretty good sign that things are taken more on faith or at best dedication to a philosophical foundation than on rational scientific inquiry.

And in that case, why don’t they ever explain the Japanese counter-example? In Japan in the 1990s they pumped money into the system as surely as we’re pumping it into it now. And yet not a bit of inflation… in fact, there was deflation. Why don’t the Austrians ever explain that? Confirmatory bias. The more obvious interpretation is that liquidity traps are real – that all this Keynes bashing is unwarranted.

No, certainly not immunity from bias. Mankiw (and then Kling) were contrasting scientist with engineer, and I suppose saying engineers were more susceptible to confirmatory bias. I (1.) am not sure that is true that they are more susceptible, and (2.) agree with you that scientists (and Austrians and New Classical School) are very susceptible to it too. AT LEAST as susceptible to it as the “engineers”. After all… engineers have to actually make it work. They have less latitutide for abstract theorizing.

“I’ve never read anything saying WWII and the New Deal were responsible for 1970s inflation.”

No – exactly. I probably worded that confusingly. We hear now that the debt will cause inflation. But we don’t hear from the people who claim that the current debt will cause inflation why WWII and New Deal debt didn’t. Not that they claim they didn’t, they just never seem to bother to address that very obvious counter-example. I actually agree with Friedman for the most part on the causes of the 1970s inflation. I don’t agree with his statement that “inflation is everywhere a monetary phenomenon”… he probably could have allowed a little more room for Keynesian cost-push explanations. But as far as it goes, I buy into Friedman’s understanding of all that. A sin of omission, rather than commission, if you will

“I believe an Austrian response to Kling’s post would be general skepticism of macroeconomics as a discipline”

They sure wish you would think that, wouldn’t they? And yet they always seem perfectly willing to chime in with a fiat-currency centric model of the business cycle. That always struck me as fairly macroeconomic.

“Unfortunately, that leaves government policy to the wrong people.”

Aww, now that’s uncharitable

This is “constitution is flawed”…

This is about the constitution as a document of negative rights, and therefore the courts not being the best (or at least a sufficient) route for civil rights movement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VctiYQplw8