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They’re silly libertarians, but even they can see the authoritarianism that’s on the rise.
CATO is a classic case of only ever doubling down on how much you hate the government.
From what's I've read from Cato, I don't think they actually believe in what they write. Some of the younger analysts (who lack life experience) maybe, and I am sure they keep a few "true believer" types to keep up appearances.
But at the end of the day their copytext about "freedom this" and "freedom that" doesn't pass the basic smell test. A bunch of oligarch funded think tank analysts by definition cannot know anything about freedom.
If they were solely a propaganda piece of Oligarchs, I would have imagined they wouldn’t have the US keep dropping on their index of freedom lists and not have all the European nations listed as high: https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2024
I think they believe their own bullshit.
I would disagree, considering the nature of Cato it makes sense for them to keep up appearances. Propaganda can show nuance when needed.
Consider russian propaganda, even they don't openly admit to being genocidal imperialists. On the contrary you often hear narratives around how they are helping Ukrainians and if not for the CIA, Ukrainians and Russians would be enjoying life together as brotherly nations.
I just find it difficult to take something like this seriously:
This reads like some sort of communist propaganda or something similar (especially the bit about "for future generations"). From my perspective, this is pretty typical copytext for Americans who work on corruption enablement. Lots of pomp and tedious bullshit, but when push comes to shove, there is always algniment with oligarch goals.