Vox Authors Are Too Smug For Me, Even When They Are Trying to Be Helpful
I realize this might be a case of me not taking “yes” for an answer, but you don’t come to Free Advice to read what everybody else is saying. You want the unique reaction that only I can provide…
So at Vox, Henry Farrell and Steven Teles give a gentle but firm critique of Nancy MacLean and her hit job on Public Choice economists. It is interesting because unlike the responses from David R. Henderson, Mike Munger, Don Boudreaux, Phil Magness, etc., these two authors are not obviously just circling the wagons and defending their own. (Disclaimer: I actually don’t know Farrell and Teles, so I’m just relying on the fact that Vox published them and that others are saying at least one of them is mildly a leftist.)
I have to say, I could barely concentrate on their main point, after reading this opening:
It’s always hard in politics for people to take their opponents’ views seriously, but it has become ever harder in Trump’s America. People are more engaged with politics, but only because they want to beat the other side, not understand it. This means scholars have a greater responsibility than ever to help ordinary citizens understand how the people with whom they disagree think, and what their political opponents are actually doing.
Most scholars get this. For example, political scientists and historians, who tend to range from the political center to the left wing, have written extensively about the origins and development of American conservatism. Rick Perlstein, the left-wing historian, has written intelligently and sensitively about the Barry Goldwater movement and the rise of the modern US right. Jefferson Decker at Rutgers University has carefully tracked how reaction against the role of the federal government in Western public lands gave rise to conservative public interest law.
Angus Burgin has thoroughly dug into the history of the Mont Pelerin Society, founded by Friedrich Hayek in 1947, showing how a transnational network of free market thinkers helped change the global conversation on political economy. One of us (Teles) devoted years to making sense of how conservative foundations helped shape the academic discipline of law and economics, build the Federalist Society, and, more recently, support criminal justice reform. And this barely scratches the surface of high-quality scholarship across multiple disciplines on conservatism.
This kind of work is not just important because it involves scholarly objectivity and generosity — although that is true. It’s also important because even when it doesn’t promote agreement, it promotes smarter politics. [Bold added.]
Am I the only one who thinks that’s really smug? They are literally calling the work of one of them “high-quality scholarship” that is “important” and “promotes smarter politics.” And the point of patting themselves on the back like this, is to then pivot and say that Nancy MacLean in her book on Buchanan is not engaged in the same type of high-quality scholarship that promotes smarter politics the way these guys do.
Not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but I am still astounded that they wrote that.
Bob, I think what they’re saying is that there’s an entire genre of writing that is high-quality, important, and which promotes smaller politics, and that Teles’ work is one work within that genre. And they’re saying that Nancy Maclean’s work is not in that genre. But I do agree that they’re implicitly praising Teles. Perhaps Farrell wrote that sentence.
On a side note, I agree entirely with the substance of their quote. Rick Perlstein in particular has been masterful in his series of books on the history of conservatism. He has somehow found a way to describe things in a way that conservatives would not find too objectionable, and yet is understandable from a liberal perspective.
Keshav wrote: Bob, I think what they’re saying is that there’s an entire genre of writing that is high-quality, important, and which promotes smaller politics, and that Teles’ work is one work within that genre.
Right, that’s exactly what they’re saying.
smarter*
EVEN the intellectual left is drawn to conspiracy theories about the right.
EVEN the intellectual left has never bothered to engage the Misesian/Hayek/Rothbardian explanation of the 1920 and 1929 depressions and the 2008 “crisis”. Even.
Don’t miss Phillip Magness:
http://philmagness.com/?p=2098
The punchline is that Buchanan brought W.H. Hutt to Virginia from South Africa. When Buchanan brought Hutt to Virginia “his international reputation as an Apartheid critic was near its peak”. Whoops! What a bunch of racists!