Saw an article titled 3-Minute B.A.: A Writer’s Guide to Sounding Smart at Parties @ The Freelance Strategist:

Writers need to sound smart at parties

Even in a digital age there is still a body of academic trivia which writers must know in order to sound educated. If we hope to someday contribute to the best newspapers (The New York Times, The Economist) or the best blogs (Slate, Crooks and Liars ), then we had better be clear on who said “peace in our time” and who was the first female Secretary of State. Problem is, we learned that 101 stuff in college, and we promptly forgot it all the moment we tossed our mortarboards into the air.

Don’t despair! Glib familiarity was all any writer ever needed to make it through a cocktail party. You can hold your own so long as you’ve got the names of a few 20th-century trailblazers on the tip of your tongue.

Unfortunately our slick writer trots out a list (complete with thumbnail sketch) of clueless liberal academics who’s policies have lead us to the sad state of affairs we are living through today.

Conservatives are always confronted with liberals citing one hair-brained theory after another from obscure academics in an effort to make you look uninformed.

(Even though conservatives are consistently more informed than lib’s. It’s a scientific fact.)

As a service to MCT readers, here are a few conservative, pro freedom alternatives to cite  if you are trapped debating your blow hard (and half drunk) uncle at a Christmas or New Years Eve party. When he trots out a tired old liberal talking point in an effort to impress everyone around with his faux brilliance, here are a few conservative thinkers to cite to counter his liberal nonsense.

Leading off our slick writer @ The Freelance Strategist list of liberal tools is Noam “Libertarian Socialism” Chomsky. Our slick writer thinks Choamsky is a great modern thinker. However, the angry Chomsky is so brilliant, he likens Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Fox News to Nazis who blamed their problems on Jews.

Generally, Chomsky sounds like an off the shelf #OWS loser.

For an academic alternative look to Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College. He is a professor of politics and history.

Much more uplifting, don’t you think?

Next on our slick writers list is John Maynard ‘Deficit Spending is Key’ Keynes. Politicians love Keynes, since he advocated a government-centric view of economics. Even though his ideas have been disproved over and over, leftist love his theory that government can stimulate the economy through deficit spending.

For a healthy dose common sense & personal freedom to go along with your economics, look instead to Milton Friedman.

Makes a lot more sense than the flawed idea that government spending can ‘stimulate’ the economy.

There are a few more leftist academics on the slick writers list, but the last one covered here is Steven David Levitt (of Freakonomics fame). For a conservative clear, concise & decidedly non-freaky alternative to Levitt  there is Dr Madsen Pirie from the Adam Smith Institute.

Regularly reading at the ASI is one reason the Freakonomics guys are consistently behind the “MCT Curve.”

Of course, this is only a minuscule list (no Friedrich Hayek, Adam Smith, Thomas Sowel, Russel Kirk… And on….). however, I hope this quick look at conservative alternatives to the tired old liberal thinkers will help you get through the Christmas Season with family and friends from the ‘other side of the aisle’.