Facebook backer and former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel has dropped his pants and let his crazy flag fly, right in front of the entire internet.  In an essay published on the website of the Libertarian think tank The Cato Institute, Thiel bemoans the day that women won the right to vote. 

I should be outraged by this, or at least dismayed.  But the truth is: I laughed.  I couldn't help but laugh.  Thiel's essay is so flamboyantly and earnestly insane that, were its author not worth $1.3 billion, it would be distributed via tattered Xerox copies stapled to light poles. 

The meatiest bit is as follows:

Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.

I like how he places the blame for being "tough for libertarians" squarely on the shoulders of women and poor people.  It isn't the Libertarians' fault for not being able to successfully market themselves to these demographics - heavens, no! 

And let us not overlook the part where he refers to women - fifty percent of the population of the world, an entire half of the human race - as a "constituency."

It is hardly earthshaking to declare that capitalism and democracy are in opposition to one another.  A true capitalist doesn't want pesky laws and voters standing in his way.  A democratic society will tend to want to rein in the excesses of capitalism, and requires people to pay taxes in exchange for government. 

I understand this.  What I don't understand is why, according to Thiel, this was NOT true in the shining age before we had poor people and female voters.  Evidently before 1920, capitalism and democracy skipped hand in hand down the path of enlightenment.  If I were Thiel's college professor, I would circle this passage and write "supporting information, please" in the margin.

Other great moments from Thiel's essay include:

• Comparing his experience in helming a student newspaper to "trench warfare on the Western Front in World War I."  Melodramatic much?

• Blaming the current banking crisis on too much government interference.

• Asserting that the ultimate problem is that "the broader education of the body politic has become a fool's errand."  In other words, people are too stupid.  (Except for himself, of course.  Thiel will show us the way, if only we will sit quietly at his feet and listen raptly to his words of wisdom.)

• Describing the Great Depression as "short but sharp," and lauding it as an example of Creative Destruction.

• "Historians have forgotten the [Great Depression]."

• The conclusion, when he urges us to find true freedom in the "undiscovered countries."  Like seasteading.  That's right - Thiel wants us to live on the oceans, in a floating Libertarian paradise which will presumably be free of difficult constituencies (like women and poor people).  (But will it have Kevin Costner?)

I would like to embarrass Peter Thiel further, but I simply cannot.  Nothing I could say could ever be as embarrassing as his very own essay.  And so I can only say: well done, Mr. Thiel!