Looking at Slate, saw two articles that really show the range on that site — by which I mean range of IQs:

Exhibit A: Michael Kinsley points out how the federal student loan program is a huge blowjob for banks & lobbyists, in the process differentiating between market order & corporatism.  Excerpt:

Student loans are the clearest example of the common Republican confusion between free-market capitalism and business. Capitalism is an economic system that is held, with some justification, to be the best guarantor of prosperity. Business can be capitalism in action, or it can be something entirely different. There is very little about the student loan program that has anything to do with free-market capitalism. Yet whenever the student loan system comes under criticism, lobbyists, “industry” leaders, and supportive politicians haul out the same old clichés as if they were defending Adam Smith’s famous pin factory itself. During the recent reform bill debate in the House, for example, a Republican from Texas, Jeb Hensarling, declared that the very notion of reducing the subsidy to private companies was “all part of a Democratic tax-and-spend program.” (emphasis mine)

Now obviously he doesn’t take this realization of the intersection between money & politics to its logical conclusion — he is a statist, after all — but it’s a start at least.

Exhibit B: Will Saletan, after taking note of millions from US hedge funds bankrolling high-tech surveillance systems in China (obviously for use by the Chinese government), pulls the following quip out of his ass:

Human Nature’s view: The problem with libertarianism is that the first thing people do with freedom is take away the freedom of others.

[Guinness commercial guy #1 voice] “So you see, because some people are willing to use their money to perpetuate a police state in hopes of profit, people don’t deserve freedom.  Those who claim to want liberty are just elitists who want to enslave people.”

[Guinness commercial guy #2 voice] “Because of the hypocrisy of a slim minority, we should take away freedom to keep people from taking away freedom?!?  BRILLIANT!”

In case you can’t tell, I need a drink after reading such tripe.