All he seems to be saying is that libertarian types tend to dance in the realm of ideals as opposed to putting the rubber to the road and actually understanding what it takes to rule. I've read almost every libertarian thinker of note and the perennial problem with almost all of them is this: they do not understand power, and even worse, they have no desire to and mistake their inability or unwillingness to understand it as some sort of virtue. Who needs to understand power when you can just "smash the state", right? Say what you want about Milton Friedman, but at least he was willing to create libertarian-friendly policies that would be somewhat more palatable to the masses.
Bannon, like all Machiavellians before him, understands power, and the cyclical nature of history. This is (apparently) a guy who reads Strauss and Burnham and Moldbug, among others. He is far more intellectually curious than the vast, vast majority of people who have been in the White House at any point in history. His desire to unmake the federal agencies is well known, but he's smart enough to know that you can't do that by running around talking about gold and how private charity will take care of everyone. Political idealism is the folly of fools who either have no desire or capacity to run a civilization.
Until libertarians study power the way they study economics, what economic theories they champion will be irrelevant. Until then, they'll never have the ability to set any economic policy, let alone an Austrian one.
