I would note that the same people Robert Stacy McCain cites (Hayek, Mises, Friedman and Rand) are the same people who have influenced so much of my thinking (as a freedom-loving libertine, I'd be remiss if I didn't note that de Sade, Dostoevsky and Paglia have also influenced said thinking). I would venture that most people are intimidated by their work because - frankly - they have unusual names.
Yet - to use a favorite method of devout Christians, and no disrespect is intended by that remark - one can open "The Road to Serfdom" to any page and find wisdom that is breathtaking. Forget the Limbaugh Challenge, I would ask anyone who despises free markets and how people behave when participating in them to read "The Road to Serfdom" or Friedman's "Free to Choose" (or, for a more modern take, Norberg's "In Defense of Global Capitalism" or Sowell's "Basic Economics" or "Black Rednecks and White Liberals") and see if they still think the same way.
By virtue of going to college, I've been exposed to the most lauded progressive thinkers, and by virtue of intellectual curiosity, I've read many more on my own. Strangely, it's reading the thinkers to the left of me that have cemented my views on the right. A severe problem on the Left when it comes to thinking is that it believes by listening to Ann Coulter on Hannity while chewing on five minutes of a three-hour Rush Limbaugh they've found some missing link to understanding Conservatives. I love both, but Conservatism in America - especially in economics - blossomed around the thinkers mentioned herein, and oh so many more that came before them.
What Mises, Hayek and others of the Austrian school patiently demonstrated was that socialism (Marxian or otherwise) is based on a fundamental fallacy that ultimately makes socialism unworkable in practice. Socialism -- the "planned economy," as Hayek often described it -- neglects the function of prices as information by which individuals make their own economic decisions.
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