More Pinochet

The good thing about a dictator like Augusto Pinochet is that even if he, sure, killed, maimed, and tortured a few people along the way, at least he implemented sound economic policies, right? Well, "multiple probes in recent years revealed financial corruption, including the discovery of millions of dollars in state funds held in numerous secret overseas accounts, among them several at the former Riggs Bank in Washington. As recently as October, Chilean investigators announced the discovery of 10 tons of gold, worth an estimated $160 million, in Pinochet's name in a Hong Kong bank."

Shocking! A dictator and his inner-circle using their power to enrich themselves? Maybe he killed all those people for personal gain rather than out of the goodness of his heart. See here and here on LGM for the contemporary right's continuing praise of Pinochet. I think this is the context in which you have to understand American conservatism's generally blasé attitude toward the Bush administration's more modest ventures into the fields of arbitrary detention, corruption, and torture. Years of apologizing for the deployment of such tactics by America's proxies abroad naturally desensitizes the political culture to the re-importation of these methods to the center.

UPDATE: Curious Jonah Goldberg post appears to me to apologize for Pinochet apologetics on the grounds that when Fidel Castro dies "certain quarters of the left" will engage in apologetics for him. So, okay, I'll stipulate that Castro's regime is a bad one and that, were it the case that pre-Castro Cuba had a democratically elected government it would have been very poor policy for the US government to help Castro mount a coup and aid him in entrenching his dictatorship.

Comments

The bankruptcy of the "anti-terrorist conservatives" is present in their approval of the murder of Letelier and Moffet in the US. What is a car bombing that kills a US citizen in the US, if it is not terrorism? This act, 30 years later, is still defended. I suppose they'd be upset if I came over to their house and shot the place up, but I don't understand why.

Posted by Robert the Red | December 11, 2006 10:16 AM

Surely the real ground for decrying the double standards in how Castro and Pinochet are evaluated is that Pinochet, horrible murderer though he was, actually gave up power to a democratic government, whereas Castro, in addition to being a horrible murderer, is trying to ensure "the revolution" survives his death by handing over dictatorial power to his brother. Moreover, pressure from the Reagan and Bush I administrations were instrumental in getting Pinochet to follow through on his promises to hold and respect a plebiscite on his regime.

Posted by rd | December 11, 2006 10:22 AM

Honestly, who gives a shit about how "some on the left" feel about Castro? If you've got a problem with them, go and argue with them. You don't make performance art out of supporting a bizarro mass murderer of your own.

Posted by JP | December 11, 2006 10:25 AM

It seems to me that the economic policies he implimented for the country are quite a different issue than his personal corruption. For some reason, Matthew conflates the two, but that makes no sense. (For one thing, the scale of the corruption, as compared to the economy as a whole, is miniscule. For another thing, is there any evidence that the corruption in Chile is any different than the corruption in, say, Argentina? I don't think so.)

It's another of those "look over there!" distractions by the left, who can't stand the fact that, yet again, a conservative economic policy is much more beneficial than a left-wing economic policy.

Chile today is SOOOOO much better off economically than any other South American country. And that's undoubtedly due in part to Pinochet's economic policies.

Posted by Al | December 11, 2006 10:27 AM

Defense of Pinochet, Castro, Botha, Franco, Salazar and their elk depends completely on the premise that the killing and torturing and imprisoning one's opponents arbitrarily is a necessary evil. If killing, torturing, and arbitrary imprisonment isn't necessary then the defenders of killing, torture, and arbitrary imprisonment are complicit in the crimes.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | December 11, 2006 10:36 AM

Performance art, Exhibit A, above.

Posted by JP | December 11, 2006 10:38 AM

Actually, Chile under Pinochet wasn't very successful economically, and really started to do better only after he left. Even still, it's not that much better from some other South American countries. I know it's hard for some people to accept that, but it's true. (And to hear people express the sort of vulgar utilitarianism you see here "he murdered people and destroyed human rights, but the economy improved!" is really pretty revealing.)

Posted by Matt | December 11, 2006 10:45 AM

Just a quick note, your pair of links is to LGM (Lawyers, Guns, and Money), the blog of your new colleagues at Tapped. LGF is something much, much different, and vastly ickier.

Posted by jfaberuiuc | December 11, 2006 10:47 AM

Al is onto something here. The amount of corruption described is not that great. And I'm pretty sure the average Chilean is better off than the average Cuban-- certainly is less likely today to be throw into a political prison.

I'm under the impression that Pinochet's calculation that a Musharraf-esque referrendum would keep him in power went awry; still, he abided by the results, which is better than not doing so.

None of this excuses the fact that the US helped overthrow an elected government in Chile, and that Pinochet's regime tortured and murdered thousands of real and perceived political opponents.

I genuinely believe in some of the assertions that President Bush has made, about democracy abroad being in our best interests. That's why our efforts to break the professionalism of the Chilean military and to overthrow an elected government simply cannot be waived away, even if Pinochet eventually hit upon some useful economic reforms.

Jonah's "some on the left" is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy to keep their partisans outraged at liberals, and safe from engaging any toxic facts.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | December 11, 2006 10:50 AM

For some reason, Matthew conflates the two, but that makes no sense. - Al

Actually, it does make sense. Because the "free market reforms" of Pinochet, which have now become part of the demands made by the World Bank and IMF if ya wanna access international financial markets in a reasonable manner, involve selling off state assets. That those selling off those assets inevitably become enriched by said selling, kinda casts a pall of a conflict of interest on the whole process and calls it into doubt, nu?

Actually, I have been pleased by the coverage of Pinochet's death in that it has largely resisted the temptation to eulogy. OTOH, the coverage does repeat many myths of about Pinochet (e.g. "the miracle of Chile" and "we got rid of Allende, right or wrong, 'cause he was a socialist and hence too much like a commie for comfort") that have been quite well debunked (e.g. by Greg Palast who knows a thing or two, e.g. about the Chicago Boys, 'cause he was in their seminars, etc.).

Suppose anyway though that the "free market" crowd is right (which they are not -- Chile's "miracle" was financed by copper, the mining of which, thanks to Allende, was in state hands): even if Pinochet allowed the market to be free, if it weren't for Allende, there would be no market at all in Chile as Allende broke up the large estates which action allowed more people to own land and use it to create agribusiness and/or morgage it as capital. When we did something similar in our country, it was considered a wonderful act of brave pioneers (that the homestead act was a government give-away of land that wasn't even ours, is largely ignored, especially by all those anti-gummint "cowboys" whose very lifestyle exists because of government give-aways? isn't it ironic, dontcha think?) -- but when Allende did it or Chavez does it, we are out in force against those "evil demogogues"?

And people wonder why "they hate us"? Hint: it's not because they hate our freedom per se, but it's because we won't let them have the same opportunities we've had to develop!

Posted by DAS | December 11, 2006 10:50 AM

This paper refutes the myth that Pinochet's pension reform (the most celebrated of his economic policies) was a great neo-liberal success.

http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7460&secID=1152&catID=126

My sense is that in Chile itself, the memory of Pinochet is strongly divided along class lines. The well-to-do remember him fondly as a defender of their interest. The poor have a very different view.

Posted by Jeet | December 11, 2006 10:51 AM

According to CountryWatch, Chile's nominal GDP per capita in US$ in 2004 was $5948.

Brazil US$3278
Mexico US$6400
Venezuela US$4350
Argentina US$3908
Uruguay US$3841

Compared to other South American nations, Chile is doing well. But not spectacular. Really if it was a growth champion, like many Asian countries, it's growth rate would have been far higher. Certainly it would have surpassed Mexico in per capita GDP? I'm not an economist, but really it's hard to say by the example of Chile that radical free-market approaches are the best. The growth in South Korea, for example, would suggest that protectionist trade policies compbined with vast interlocking industrial combines are the best way to grow an economy. And South Korea's per capita GDP in 2004? US$14,091.

(And if you think this is an unfair comparison, remember that in 1980, Chile's nominal per capita GDP in US$ was US$2492 and South Korea's was US$1678, according to the IMF. So in that period when Chile was following the prescriptions of the Chicago boys, and Korea was decidedly not, Korea joined the club of developed nations. Maybe Pinochet should have turned his economy over to Korean economists instead of the University of Chicago.)

Posted by RWB | December 11, 2006 11:11 AM

See here and here on LGF

That's one typo I'd prefer you not make...;)

Posted by Scott Lemieux | December 11, 2006 11:15 AM

If you expand to Latin America generally, Costa Rica also has a comparable GDP per capita. And they're about as lefty on economics as you can get.

Posted by JP | December 11, 2006 11:23 AM

do all the free marketers know that Chile's urban unemployment under Pinochet reached 40%? DO THEY KNOW THAT? Do they know that Pinochet used police repression to force discinipline unruly workers? DO THEY KNOW THAT? do they know that the poor GOT POORER under Pinochet? DO THEY KNOW THAT? DO THEY CARE?

Posted by rickm | December 11, 2006 11:33 AM

Speaking from the ground in Chile, I can confirm that if Pinochet's economic policies had any effect while he was leader, that effect was drowned out entirely by the brutal repression of the universities, punitive curfews, the obvious loss of foreign investment, etc, etc. It was not until several years after the end of the dictatorship that the situation began to improve, and many years more until Chile reached the nearing-first-world standards it finds itself enjoying now.

You could argue that his policies had a long-term effect, but I think this argument is basically full of crap. Most of the residual effects of the Pinochet government which is still visible are as follows: the incredibly awful private retirement fund (fully half of current retirees have accounts that don't pay the guaranteed minimum), the privatized public schools (Chile's public education is worse than that in the rest of Latin America, particularly *ahem* Cuba), and the private national health insurance which works as poorly as you might expect. There is national consensus to change all of these things, and large street demonstrations against some of them.

Posted by neil | December 11, 2006 11:43 AM

I'll handle that one, rickm: Of course they don't care.

Posted by neil | December 11, 2006 11:44 AM

Maybe Pinochet should have turned his economy over to Korean economists instead of the University of Chicago - RWB

Other than Britain, who was the first to industrialize and thus had little competition in a "free market" anyway (and some in Britain's former colonies would no doubt dispute how free the market involved was), is there any developed country which developed under the sort of "free market" regime recommended by the Friedmanite U. Chicago types? Is there a single developed country that didn't either shelter its nascient industries with tarrifs, otherwise restrict capital flows or engage in a heavy dose of socialism (at least in state sponsored capitalism)? The U.S., for example, did all of these, although in phases (Northeast developed under protection of tarrifs, much to the chagrin of the South; South and West were developed by various government give-away schemes and the by state sponsored capitalism under the New Deal: ironically, some of the most anti-gummint regions of the country are the regions whose development owes the most to federal largesse -- it's really an adolescent mentality they have then, nu?).

And even Britain developed after a period of the sort of major land tenure reform that in part led to Allende getting the boot and which is one of the reasons why many people are so mad at Chavez.

Posted by DAS | December 11, 2006 11:48 AM

I can't believe how papers have uncritically reported some kind of economic boom under Pinochet. He actually suffered two MAJOR collapses due to his insane Friedman-run policies, even worse in scale than the one under Allende's nutty policies that turned the country against the communists. The country only got better when his crazy economic plans were scrapped and grown up pragmatists took control. The country didn't reach it's pre-Pinochet GDP until around the time after he left office and poverty skyrocketed while he was in charge. Today Chile's economy is the envy of South America - but Chile was gone by 1990 and the government that followed him deserves the most credit for their responsible, middle-of-the-road policies.

Posted by Dan Panorama | December 11, 2006 12:02 PM

I should mention that even in 1995 after the democratic government had been back in power for several years, the situation seemed not to be improving. I think that's 'the long-term effects of Pinochet's policies' in action.

Posted by neil | December 11, 2006 12:20 PM

Pinochet was a horrible monster, of a breed that was all too common in Latin America during his time, and the world is better off without him. While Chile is almost certainly the strongest, most stable large Latin American country today economically and politically, it's decidedly unclear how much of this was because of Pinochet, and how much was despite him. I think the only kind words that should be said upon his death are that he gave up power willingly and peacefully to the democratic tradition he had undermined, and we can only hope all other tyrants would follow his example.

Posted by right | December 11, 2006 12:37 PM

It's not really true that Pinochet peacefully and willingly gave up power, either. Before turning over the keys, he made it clear that Rule #1 is that if you touch any of my guys, I take over again. So there was not even any hope of justice for torturers and murderers until a decade after the handover.

Also, most people don't know this, but under the constitution put in place by Pinochet, the upper house of Chile's legislature had 10 'reserved' seats for the former President and various other worthies. So Pinochet remained a Senator-for-Life for several years after he 'gave up power,' indeed he resigned from his seat only when it became politically necessary to use senility as a legal defense.

And even after that, the reserved Senate seats gave the right wing near-total veto power over the Chilean legislative process, using it to beat back several attempts to reform the constitution, to eliminate the reforms imposed by the dictatorship, and generally to prevent any positive change.

This profoundly anti-democratic state of affairs continued until 2005, when the constitutional amendment eliminating the reserved Senate seats finally went through. Upon signing it the President said, 'this completes the democratic transition in Chile.' By then, though, the rest of the world was under the impression that the transition was history.

Posted by neil | December 11, 2006 1:00 PM

But the point is, however much he might have tried to hedge against the consequences, Pinochet did give way to the democratic process, the same democratic process that later stripped him of his remaining position and immunities. Castro will go to his grave having done everything in his power to make a democratic transition harder in Cuba. That is the crucial point that makes the double standard in how they are evaluated so indefensible.

Posted by rd | December 11, 2006 1:39 PM

And they wondered how we knew they were lying about bringing democracy to Iraq.

Posted by Aleks | December 11, 2006 2:34 PM

I don't think it's useful or worthwhile to say that Pinochet gave way to the democratic process. His record is of nothing but subverting the democratic process. Under Pinochet, Chile went longer without an election than it had since it was ruled by the King of Spain. When he chose to allow an election, under his terms at at his time, it was a plebescite on whether to have democracy, rather than a true election. He used strict media control laws to his advantage during this so-called election. And after he lost, he continued to threaten Chilean democracy by explicitly threatening to take over again if certain boundaries were crossed, and he continued to enjoy a seat of power which he used to fight democratization every step of the way.

Finally, it's fairly likely that if Pinochet had refused to give up power, he'd have lost it by now by some other means which would not have left his constitution in force today. By building a democracy over the foundation of his authoritarian government, he ensured that the foundation would outlive him.

Posted by neil | December 11, 2006 2:40 PM

If you want to see a ruler whose record actually is "nothing but subverting the democratic process," try Castro. To say that Pinochet did nothing that allowed democracy to return is absurd.

Posted by rd | December 11, 2006 3:08 PM

The only reason anyone would want to compare Pinochet to Castro is to make one of them look better. There's fertile ground for specious comparisons on both ends, mostly so because of the two completely different situations.

Posted by neil | December 11, 2006 3:21 PM

Isn't the right arguing that Pinochet was in some way better than Castro no different that comparing Stalin and Hitler?

So what, even if they make their case, the guy was still a murderous tyrant and our support of him is a black mark on our history.

Posted by Eric | December 11, 2006 3:45 PM

I don't know why so many right-wingers can't get their heads around this: There's not much point in us worrying about Castro; he's not "our sonuvabitch." Pinochet, however, was.

Posted by dj moonbat | December 11, 2006 4:06 PM

dj moonbat,
for the same reason that they don't understand that because some jihadists behead people, it's still not okay for Americans to torture POWs.

Posted by Gus | December 11, 2006 4:42 PM

between pinochet and castro one will go down in history as a tremendous military, political, and civil leader and it ain't augusto. castro's authoritarian regime brings the basic essentials food shelter medicine to every single cuban person for free. the richest country in world history, the 21st century united states, provides those services for free as well, for the 2.2 million of its population in prison at least.

re: bad schools in chile, bad schools here in brasil as well. here, this is easier: name a capitalist country where the public schools are uniformly top notch.

Posted by Murph | December 11, 2006 6:10 PM

The Goldberg post seemed very strange to me, for slightly different reasons. At first, he's not so much excusing Pinochet as arguing that both conservatives and liberals tend to be hypocritical when it comes to defending human rights, using the examples of Castro and Pinochet. The first problem is that there are very few American lefties who are sympathetic with Castro and think he has been good for Cuba. On the other hand, many conservatives are *still* quite fond of Pinochet, unashamedly so. Just go read the Corner symposium. Second, Goldberg ends the post laughably by saying that "when it comes to Castro vs. Pinochet, Pinochet takes it in a cakewalk," illustrating the hypocrisy perfectly for us.

And all the right-wing comments about how Pinochet may have been murderous and ruthless but was "at least good for the economy" brings up a simple question. I never thought about it in such stark terms before, but do the most vocal free-market enthusiasts believe that free markets are so important that it is sometimes permissible to kill and oppress innocent masses in order to implement those policies? Is the ultimate good of free markets that desirable and over-riding?

Posted by Gabriel | December 11, 2006 6:27 PM

What's "curious" about Jonah being a wanker and putting forth a sorry excuse for an "argument" ("my magic 8-ball says "in the future 'many on the left' will fail to criticize Castro," ergo Pinochet wasn't that bad")?

Posted by live | December 11, 2006 6:56 PM

I had an email exchange with Jonah on this issue today, and he posted my letter on The Corner as an example of the kind of calumny he must put up with from the netroots.

I received this email from him, which seems a little puerile, even by his standards:

"LOL. i love these sorts of emails that start insulting and go down from there. You wonder what Bill Buckley thinks? Gawd. Read a little more, will you?

As for your point, I'm kind of at a loss why you bothered, especially since you have such a low regard for me. You don't actually refute anything I said. I said Pinochet was an SOB. I also made it pretty clear, I think, that Pinochet's actions can't really be defended on the merits."

I thought being lectured on erudition by Jonah Goldberg was particularly rich. To be fair to Jonah, perhaps I started out in too ad hominem a manner; to also be fair, his non-apology apology for Pinochet is symbolic of the moral depravity of the hard Right at this moment in history.

Posted by Ben Cronin | December 11, 2006 7:37 PM

to quote the clash
"If adolf hitler flew in today. They'd send limousine anyway."

Had hitler just kept his hands of the jews and his ambitions eastward I think we have a fair idea the response he would be getting on his death as well.

Posted by blank_stare | December 11, 2006 8:37 PM

I'm pretty positive they wouldn't give a piss about dead Jews either if he had stuck with invading the Soviets. Instead of hearing this Castro crap, you would be hearing about how Stalin was the real evil dictator. There is nothing strange about it at all, American right wing politics is all about identity and teams. It's worthless to even try to make logic out of it because it's not there.

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 11, 2006 8:59 PM

"do the most vocal free-market enthusiasts believe that free markets are so important that it is sometimes permissible to kill and oppress innocent masses in order to implement those policies?"

I think this is the great question we must ask of all the supporters of George W. Bush. Over and over, until they finally forget their Rove script and explode: "The Rich are the Master Race! They are the source of all Good! The Poor are fit only to serve!"

And our answer must be: People do not exist to serve the economy, the economy exists to serve people.

Whether the economics of the poor are a failure is irrelevant. A starving man has an absolute right to revolution, for all the rich can do to him is execute him. A rich man does not have an absolute right to revolution as long as he can load his gold in a suitcase and head for Florida, protected by a Washington that shares his hatred of the poor. America has killed millions of the poor in class wars all over the world. Even if the Right were correct in principle, it has no solution in practice to the polarization of wealth that is the norm of private property. It's as irrelevant to stopping revolutions as a stock exchange in Baghdad.

(Note that in S. Korea, assembly line workers used to make $2 an hour, until the radical labor movement helped overthrow the junta and went on a whole lot of strikes to achieve the aforementioned high wages. Yet Pinochet's sexy bitch Milton Friedman wrote an article in the '90s saying that S. Korea might be proof that dictatorship is superior for economic progress.)

We must also ask whether our masters used Pinochet's dictatorship as a laboratory for the policies they always intended to impose on America.

Posted by super390 | December 11, 2006 9:01 PM

Gabriel asks, above: [D]o the most vocal free-market enthusiasts believe that free markets are so important that it is sometimes permissible to kill and oppress innocent masses in order to implement those policies?

Sometimes permissible to kill and oppress in the name of free markets? No. To any serious 'winger, it is obligatory.

Posted by dj moonbat | December 11, 2006 9:04 PM

I'm pretty positive they wouldn't give a piss about dead Jews either if he had stuck with invading the Soviets

I was feeling generous I guess. They victims would all be quite like the armenians I would think "gypsies ? homosexuals ?? they existed in Europe ??? Nah"

I guess I am happy with the praising of pinochet by the "morally incorruptible" crowd. It takes incidents like this for them to re-reveal their true natures. The only line is the bottom line this clan.

I am sure that reverend pat or jerry will place pinochet to the right hand of god while all the muslims, liberals, feminists, evolutionists etc will all enjoy the unending torment of god's love :-)

Posted by blank_stare | December 11, 2006 11:25 PM

Bear in mind these are some of the same people on the Right who cheered nun-murdering terrorists (the Contras) as "Freedom Fighters" and a psychotic child-molesting cult leader (Vernon Howell) as a martyr to the Second Amendment. Why should praise from the same quarter for a bucolic old fascist like Pinochet surprise anyone?

Posted by The Local Crank | December 12, 2006 12:11 AM

One important thing to keep in mind about Pinochet was mentioned by Mark Falcoff (who's done several pieces for the American Spectator, which makes it rather difficult to accuse him of leftism) in the Sept. 7, 1987 New Republic -- namely, that Pinochet went far beyond anti-Communism and was explicitly "fascist":

"Like most authoritarian regimes of the right, the Chilean government is anti-political, rather than just anti-Communist. Pinochet himself has argued in his autobiography, 'The Decisive Day', which appeared in 1980, that democracy almost inevitably leads to communism, since mdoerate and even conservative politicians are so hungry for power that they will strike bargains with anyone who seems to promise a few more votes. Thus 'politics' of any kind is something from which the Chilean people have to be protected. Left to their own devices, the Chilean are bound to stumble into some form of Marxism-Leninism."

For this reason, Falcoff was absolutely certain that Pinochet would either rig the 1989 referendum or refuse to obey any "No" vote from it -- and that the rest of the Chilean military would back him up: "This is a Prussianized, professional, vertically organized military, which will march blindly off the precipice of history and take an entire country with it." Happily, he was wrong; but I have been told by another blog commenter today that Pinochet did try to void the referendum's results, only to be blocked by his fellow officers, who were a good deal more fed up with his excesses by then than Falcoff thought. (I've also heard an extraordinary rumor that he and his wife were ardent numeralogists and set the election for a date whose magic numerical properties, they were confident, would hypnotize the Chilean voters into backing him. It's certainly no crazier than the Argentinian junta's attacks on Einstein.) At any rate, the fact that Pinochet did surrender power was no thanks to Pinochet.

As for Jonah Goldberg's pseudo-apology, it's hilarious. Just read anything that National Review wrote about Pinochet during his actual reign: they absolutely adored him. (According to Garry Wills, Buckley had pretty much given up editing NR by the 1960s, and so George Wallace admirer William Rusher not only published it but was its real editor-in-chief until about 1990 -- which would explain a lot about NR in general.) The mag was full of pieces with titles like "Redeeming Chile" (in which a European conservative announced that the coup was justified largely because Allende used to hold WILD SEX PARTIES in the Presidential mansion); and when Letelier and Ronni Moffitt were killed, NR printed a piece approving enthusiastically of the hit, and also praised it in that issue's table of contents. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing the print magazine's eulogy for Pinochet; I wonder if it will match their 1989 eulogy for Ferdinand Marcos ("a generous, warm-hearted political glad-hander").

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 12, 2006 2:28 AM

Castro - overthrew repressive Batista dictatorship
Pinnochet - overthrew democratically elected government

If we stop there I wouuld say Castro wins. Comparing dictators is fun.

Posted by moonbatista | December 12, 2006 4:34 AM

See what I mean? You can try to make either one of them look better by comparing him to the other, and without having to make an argument at all.

Posted by neil | December 12, 2006 8:35 AM

"And all the right-wing comments about how Pinochet may have been murderous and ruthless but was "at least good for the economy" brings up a simple question. I never thought about it in such stark terms before, but do the most vocal free-market enthusiasts believe that free markets are so important that it is sometimes permissible to kill and oppress innocent masses in order to implement those policies? Is the ultimate good of free markets that desirable and over-riding?"

Posted by: Gabriel

When you say 'free markets', you've already accepted their lies. Pinochet supporters don't really like the free market, except as they themselves wish to be free to do unto others.

Posted by Barry | December 12, 2006 9:46 AM

"Do the most vocal free-market enthusiasts believe that free markets are so important that it is sometimes permissible to kill and oppress innocent masses in order to implement those policies? Is the ultimate good of free markets that desirable and over-riding?"

Believe it or not, Hayek thought so. See http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/11/milton_friedman_1.html . Apparently the man was much more of a right-wing Leninist than I thought.

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