Conservative talking head Tony Blankley has cognitive dissonance:

[I]t is true that it is harder this week than it was last week to persuasively argue pure free-market principles if one has endorsed the $700 billion bailout and partial nationalization of the credit industry (and I do emphatically endorse the bailout as the only available and preferable alternative to the calamitous economic status quo).

So, in the months and years to come, it falls to those of us who advocate for free markets to persist in making our case.

In other words, “I pledge in the future to reaffirm the free-market principles that I am currently abandoning.” Gee, thanks.

Anyone who opposes the bailout on free-market principles has to be disappointed by the number of relatively steadfast free-market economists -- some of high stature -- who have blinked and endorsed the bailout or something like it. I am sure that they have not done so lightly, though I question their judgment in this matter that more government intervention is needed to offset – and will offset rather than compound – the previous interventions that have landed us in this soup. They have made it harder to "persuasively argue pure free-market principles" not only for themselves, but for those who have opposed the bailout. Advocates of free markets can expect to hear in the future: “But even an arch free-market economist like [insert name] endorses greater government intervention in the financial market!”