Pens for Hire, Cheap

No one traveling in hostile country should ever be without reliable protection. When the territory in question is intellectual, it always helps to have the aid of fighters who've been there before. In fact, two of the most seasoned pros are yours for only the cost of the effort required to understand their arguments. Fortunately, these straight-shooting writers have made that cost minimal.

I'm speaking of Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850). Both were skilled polemicists. If they had been contemporaries they might have gotten along as famously as Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. Paine's major works were mostly political and religious polemics, while Bastiat was a skilled debunker of economic fallacies and a great economic theorist. Though much could be written about their differences, they shared a strong intellectual similarity.

If only we knew now what they knew then.