His much ignored opponent, in the black corner, wearing freedom trunks, the prophet of profit and loss, Friedrich Hayek.

If only the debate over economics were as simple as a boxing match that most people could ignore without bearing the burden of ignorance. That’s not the case, however.

Keynes and Hayek represent two fundamentally different views on economics, with the Keynesian view of spend, spend, spend even when you don’t have the money being the one adopted by most—if not all— modern day governments, including that of the United States.

Every year in the United States, regardless of which party controls Congress, regardless of which party the president belongs to, the debt continues to increase.

When John Kennedy took office the national debt was $290 billion. The Johnson administration grew the debt to $345 billion. At the end of the Nixon/Ford terms in office, the debt was $493 billion.

When Ronald Reagan took office the debt was $930 billion, but when the great communicator left office the debt was more than $2.6 trillion.

By the end of fiscal year 2007, George W. Bush had increased the debt from $5.8 trillion to $8.97 trillion. The debt now exceeds $14 trillion.

That debt is a burden on the people of the United States, a burden on the children and the as yet unborn.

Keynesian economics and the policies that support the concept are a failing proposition that depletes wealth through inflation and taxation, by taxing and spending or borrowing and spending. They do nothing but strengthen a government’s grip on its people, siphoning prosperity and stealing liberties. Centralized power is contrary to a robust and dynamic economy.

Hayek, by contrast, was an advocate of the free market. His classic The Road to Serfdom—published in 1944— was an attack on centralized government and social planning.

As Thomas J. DiLorenzo wrote recently in a piece for the Ludwig von Mises Institute:

“Hayek's motivation for writing The Road to Serfdom was the shocking speed at which so many Europeans — especially in Germany — had simply forgotten all that they had learned over the centuries about the virtues of a free society, the need for limitations on government power, the dangers of centralized power, and the workings of capitalism as a worldwide network of mutually advantageous exchange. It only took a couple of decades of socialistic sloganeering to persuade Germans to abandon their classical-liberal roots and embrace Big Government of the worst sort.”

Hayek’s work, ignored by politicians as Keynesians continue to ridicule it, is getting a second life in the public mind, however. A few weeks ago it was the number one seller on Amazon.com. Not bad for a 66-year-old book that advocates a minority opinion—a libertarian opinion—from that of officialdom.

It is the increased interest in Hayek that we find interesting and heartening. It coincides with the increasing interest in liberty and libertarian ideas. U.S. Rep Ron Paul from Texas, though a Republican, is a solid small libertarian and his ideas are being met with increased interest. Consider even U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has joined with the congressman in a bid to get the Federal Reserve audited.

Consider further that even the word libertarian is getting more use in the media. John Stossel and Judge Andrew Napolitano have their own TV shows that bring libertarian ideas to the forefront of discussion and even former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough dedicated a segment of his “Morning Joe” program to libertarian ideas on June 30.

We hope the trend continues with libertarian thought included in more TV news and commentary programs, so that the political discussion becomes more realistic. The left/right only debate is false. There is more than just a left wing or a right wing. There is more to economic thought than just Keynesian economics.

Let’s hope the intellectual and philosophical heirs to Hayek and other free market thinkers get a chance to verbally duke it out with the statists in the mainstream media.