It was a worthwhile article. It wasn't inflammatory at all, and it was insightful. You don't have to agree with the overall political analysis to feel that this was a worthy and substantial contribution to the discussion of very important issues in tech.
I have some sympathy for the mods in that I don't see all the submissions that get flagged. It could be that without aggressive flagging, which will inevitably lead to some "errors" (this getting flagged that perhaps shouldn't have). It could be that HN would turn into nothing but flame wars about politics and complaints about the tech industry. People complain about what HN has turned into, but the quality of discussion here remains much higher (vastly higher, in many cases) than a lot of other forums. Craigslist, a while back, devolved from a good forum into something essentially unreadable.
Still, I have my doubts as to whether an article similar in treatment, depth, and tone, but from a libertarian point of view, would have been flagged. In this case, I do think it was a mistake to flag and remove this article, though I appreciate that any meaningful defense of a good discussion forum will inevitably involve a few mistakes like this.
