During the taping of Stossel, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton was brought out to give contrary views on libertarian foreign policy, and students were invited to ask him questions. One student, David West, asked a pointed question about blowback that referenced his time serving as a member of the Third Ranger Battalion in Iraq. West is now circulating a YouTube video of the question under the title John Bolton Dodges Question; Insults Anti‐​War Veteran. The link‐​aggregator Reddit has picked up the video and much conversation has resulted.

Mr. West’s question was good if only a little overdone, and I respect him for getting up and asking it. But I was also at the taping, so I’d like to tell my version of what I think happened, which is substantially different than Mr. West’s. I do so in order to highlight two points that concern me: 1) the attitude toward media “misinformation” that permeates modern political discourse, and 2) the use of what I call “machete libertarianism,” which is the slavish application an a priori axiom in order to cut through counter‐​arguments without the need for empirical knowledge—e.g. non‐​interventionism in foreign policy and the non‐​aggression principle.

First, what I saw at the taping: Fox News did not edit out applause. There was a slight mixture of boos and applause in response to Mr. Bolton’s answer, but mostly sounds of confusion. Immediately after John Bolton misunderstood the question (more on this below), Mr. West tried to clarify the misunderstanding. John Stossel cut him off, which halted the audience’s response, in order to wisely stop a back‐​and‐​forth and to move on to the many questioners waiting behind him. The questions that followed it were edited out, so there is a hard cut between the end of Bolton’s answer and the attempt to ask a follow‐​up question. The end of an omitted question leading into the commercial break was placed at that point. As anyone should know, this is not pernicious editing, it’s just television.

Secondly, Mr. Bolton did not dodge the question, nor did he intend to insult Mr. West. Ambassador Bolton heard the question as an atrocities question, that is, he heard the question as concerning a corporal killing a 13‐​year‐​old boy rather than a 13‐​year‐​old boy killing a corporal. Thus, his response focused on how atrocities of war are and should be addressed. And although his wording was awkward, the “grave disservice” that he saw Mr. West doing to those soldiers who “served with honor” was through the singling‐​out of the “bad apple” dishonorable corporal that Mr. Bolton believed he’d been asked about.

Now, I admittedly may be wrong about this, but let me further tell you why I think I am correct: it gives Ambassador Bolton the respect he deserves and the respect that, frankly, he earned on that stage by skillfully responding to the students’ questions. John Bolton does not need to “dodge” a question about blowback. As he demonstrated during the filming, he is more than capable of combating libertarian critiques on conservative foreign policy with rhetoric and facts that needs to be refuted with knowledge, not dismissed as a “dodge.”

Which brings me to my concerns with machete libertarianism. For millennia, intellectuals of all stripes have been using intellectual machetes to chop through opposing arguments. Sometimes this is called a “universal acid,” and it is used to burn through evidence and counter‐​arguments without even a second glance. Marxists, particularly of the literary theory ilk, have nearly turned this strategy into an art: they’ve sharpened the machete of class theory into a fine edge and they then chopped through the entire Western Canon—science, math, philosophy, literature, etc.—with ease. After all, why pay attention to the arguments of Kant, the experiments of Newton and Einstein, the equations of Euclid, and the musings of Shakespeare if the entire canon is built on Western lies and white‐​man privilege? Refutation can thus be achieved en masse, and actual knowledge of the evidence becomes superfluous.

Many intellectuals are prone to this type of simplified, self‐​aggrandizing argumentation. The advantages are obvious: a universal theory consistently applied can broaden your ability to intelligently converse on many subjects without having to actually acquire the knowledge needed to refute the opposition on their own terms. Moreover, if your position is idiosyncratic and against the mainstream, there is a certain satisfaction that comes from dissolving the prevailing view in a few choice sentences. In the hands of students and young people, these ideas become little more than intellectual juvenile delinquency: the Western Canon can be spray‐​painted and our military industrial complex can be TP’d.

Libertarians are as prone to this as anyone. Axioms and principles are often methodically applied to problems in the hope that the issues will just go away. Plus, libertarianism often attracts people who are self‐​consciously counter‐​majoritarian and attracted to being idiosyncratic. Put 80 libertarians in a room and you’ll see how quickly you can breed anarchists simply because the baseline for heterodoxy has so drastically changed.

In no subject is machete libertarianism more prevalent than in foreign policy. As Justin Raimondo of Anti​War​.com recently wrote: