In a recent Cato TechKnowledge, I highlighted a company called L‑1 Identity Solutions that is likely to be a key sponsor of any continuing efforts to implement the REAL ID Act, our moribund national ID law.

L‑1 features prominently in a current Rolling Stone article which points out how the company is working with China to build surveillance technologies that the state will use in its attempt to maintain a grip on power.

But before you get to that, you have to stomach this:

Remember how we’ve always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American “homeland security” technologies, pumped up with “war on terror” rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.

There are serious issues here, but they’re so mixed up with ideological vomitus that it’s hard to carry on reading. If this paragraph isn’t just meaningless, the author has obviously deemphasized telling an interesting story in favor of indoctrinating readers with–well, whatever the substance is behind those anti-globalization street-puppet shows.

Sure enough, when I went to see who wrote it, it was Naomi Klein. The same Naomi Klein, I assume, who inspired Johan Norberg to pen his recent briefing paper, “The Klein Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Polemics.”

Milton Friedman’s legacy survives her book with ease, so it didn’t trouble me much. But confusing the kids who read Rolling Stone about the role of communism in keeping China unfree? That could actually do some damage.