Why I’m Not on the Harvard Faculty

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Besides the fact that all I’ve got is a bachelor’s degree from a third-tier state university, there’s also the problem that I don’t think it’s necessary to apologize for saying bad things about dead bisexual British economists, which is now apparently taboo. You can badmouth dead people or defame the British or libel an economist unless any of them happen to be bisexual, in which case, they are beyond reproach.

A friend on Twitter informs me that John Maynard Keynes was an anti-Semite who was also head of the British Eugenics Society, which under ordinary liberal custom would be enough to render someone historically radioactive. However it seems the new rule is that being gay — or, as was apparently the case with Keynes, being nominally bisexual — is sufficient to silence all criticism.

Niall Ferguson says, in effect, “John Maynard Keynes was a bad economist who was wrong about everything and also, he was gay, which might be relevant to the problem.” OUTRAGE!

Well, here you go: Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer and a cannibal, and also, he was gay, which might be relevant to the problem.

Good-bye, Harvard faculty appointment!

UPDATE: My larger point — and if Ken at Popehat didn’t see this, no one else can be blamed for missing it — is to wonder why this particular molehill has become a peak in the Himalayas. The Ferguson/Keynes controversy was the top thread at Memeorandum, as if it were the most important thing that happened Saturday.

Does this make any sense? Why was this academic controversy magnified out of all proportion? Is necrohomophobia — fear of dead homosexuals — really such a serious problem in America? One of the commenters takes this jab at me:

Robert Stacy McCain is a simple-minded, hateful person, and also, he wears stupid hats, which might be relevant to the problem.

Simple-minded and hateful — and why? Because I did not rush to join the online lynch-mob of ritual denunciation?

It’s this aspect, redolent of the Moscow Show Trials, that alarms me. Also, how dare you call my hat stupid, you hat-hater!

These are the jokes, people. Lighten the hell up.

UPDATE II: Speaking of jokes, Andrew Sullivan has nominated me for the “Malkin Award.” This is my second such honor, the first having occurred in the aftermath of the 2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza, when I outlined my “Mideast Peace plan” as the hypothetical first gentile Prime Minister of Israel. These damned hypotheticals are always getting me in trouble.

 

73 comments

  3. […] Whatever Ferguson is, and whatever he really meant, his apology and the criticism that preceded it has enraged some on the right, who have used it as an example of how you are just not allowed to criticize gays without, you know, people saying mean things about you, which is hurtful. Some have gone further to say that Keynes should be roundly damned because he was a racist and anti-Semite and supported eugenics. Take, as a sample, Robert Stacy McCain: […]

  4. Did you just compare one of the most influential thinkers in economics to a serial killer? What a bizarre little post.

  5. There’s also the minor problem of your lousy attitude towards various forms of Liberalism (Commies, Occutards, feminists, etc.)

  9. I THINK YOU’RE RIGHT ABOUT THE NEW RULE, THOUGH CRAFTY TO GO GAY + ANTI-SEMITE. HOPEFULLY THAT GETS US BACK TO SUPPLY-SIDE.

  10. No, the problem isn’t that you or Ferguson dare to badmouth someone who is gay or bisexual. The problem lies in the claim that being gay or bisexual is the root cause. Dahmer is monstrous because he killed many people, but the fact that he was gay is irrelevant.

  11. Sloppy thinking…

    You can’t really generalize for a class based on one person.

    Do all gays preach bad economic theory?

    Are all gays anti-Semitic?

    If you answered no, then obviously one’s sexuality has nothing to do with bad economics or anti-Semitism.

    I can’t tell you how many times online I’ve seen despicable behavior linked to simply being a conservative White Christian Republican Male.

    Give me a break. It’s hard to make the case that conservatives aren’t the Boogeyman if some of your more vocal members persist in demonizing groups instead of individuals. Don’t play their game for them.

  12. At least Ferguson offered a sincere apology for momentarily acting like a hateful moron. You seem to actually relish it. But I will now also sacrifice my future Harvard faculty appointment:

    Robert Stacy McCain is a simple-minded, hateful person, and also, he wears stupid hats, which might be relevant to the problem.

  13. First, I don’t have a transcript of Ferguson’s comments, but it sounds like he wasn’t suggesting that Keynes being bisexual/gay was the “root cause,” but a contributing factor.

    I try to avoid such psychologizing of ideas and urge others on the right to do so as well. I’d hazard to say that Ferguson’s analysis in that respect was pretty weak. But I’m also sure that he could have provided a dozen other better reasons for why Keynes arrived at his flawed theories, if challenged to do so – i.e., none of which would be easily identified as “root causes” on their own. Another thing we should strive to do, besides avoiding psychologizing ideas, is to take our opponents best arguments and then defeat THOSE.

    Second, RSM is not lamenting that Ferguson would received criticism – that some would vehemently believe his analysis in this case was wrong-headed but that it require a public apology and possible loss of employment, etc.

  14. You leftists always seem to struggle understanding that it’s possible to make an analogy between two things without suggesting that the two things are morally/ideologically comparable in some way.

    Here’s a hint (which probably won’t help you, but hey, don’t say I didn’t try to help you): sometimes people who are engaged in serious arguments will use an “extreme” example to establish a baseline of agreement. Once that standard is established, it’s not necessarily the case that additional examples are meant to be similar in moral worth or philosophical orientation, etc., to the baseline example. Is that clear enough?

  15. If sexual orientation is as fundamental and immutable as you Leftards claim, it would have to impact Keynes’ worldview.

    Or you’re just a lying hypocrite who pulls arguments out of his ass (after extracting the gerbil).

  17. OK, fair enough. Let’s assume that sexual orientation affects economic worldview. What affect would heterosexuality have on economics then?

  19. I was ready to go get out my credit card and buy all of Ferguson’s books (he’s quite a historian, yanno) until I got to the part where he apologized. Worse yet, he sincerely apologized. Now I’m conflicted.

    I understand why all the intellectuals in the world were scandalized by Ferguson’s joke, but even here a fair number of commenters are showing a lack of humor, and stooping to tortuous analysis to explain why he was JUST TERRIBLY WRONG.

    I hate to think that intellectuals are reading this blog.

  20. Yes, the apology is like Zinoviev being forced to admit that he was a “Trotskyist saboteur.”

  21. “These are the jokes, people. Lighten the hell up.”

    And they’re so funny, I can’t wait to read your jokes about straight people. Link?

  22. I certainly don’t see why he had to backtrack with such gusto. I mean the guy is funded at Harvard by an endowment. He didn’t have to genuflect to the radical gay interests on the faculty.

    Perhaps he feared for his status with the Davos crowd. They like their bigots a bit more polished. Perhaps it was too unsightly to be seen getting air high-fives from mouth breathers such as yourself?

  23. What I want to know is whether Mr. Dahmer qualifies as a “terrorist”? After all, he killed more than a couple of people and then ate them.

  24. I don’t read style books, but I would say no, because he didn’t really have an agenda to alter society in some way. Serial killer, yes. Terrorist, no.

  26. Actually Ferguson was saying that a result of homosexuality had an effect on Keynes economic views. I think you will find much the same thing with heterosexuals that purposely forego child bearing. Sterility is the issue, not the fact that Keynes was a queer.

  27. Argument by analogy, the hallmark of third-tier minds.

    Dahmer’s sexuality has more relevance than Keynes’, at any rate.

  28. Niall Ferguson says, in effect, “John Maynard Keynes was a bad economist who was wrong about everything and also, he was gay, which might be relevant to the problem.” OUTRAGE!

    No, he most certainly did not. Keynes had a saying “in the long term, were all dead” meaning (as Keynes himself later explained) that it was a poor Economics professor who could only forecast that after the storm, the sea would calm down. From this, Ferguson took that since he said in the long term were all dead, and Keynes was a homosexual, ipso facto he didnt care for future generations and their well being. Ferguson made the mistake in comprehension and you just blithely ran past that, ignoring the entire argument to say that “OH NOES NOW NOBODY CAN EVER SAY BAD THINGS ABOUT GAY PEOPLE”.

  31. If you paid attention you’d realize that the vast majority of all jokes are about “straight” people, and many of them are told by homosexuals. Perhaps you also think only Caucasians are racist?

  33. If it is true that “demonizing groups” doesn’t pay, please explain the continuing success of the Democrat Party. Success depends, rather, on which groups are demonized, and how skillful the demonizer. It helps, of course, to be absolutely shameless.

    s/The Bogeyman

  34. Except Ferguson said no such thing, only that Keynes’ orientation might be relevant in regard to his attitude. McCain also said no such thing as you claim, he merely pointed out the hysteria which inevitably erupts.

    So you are 2-0 against your own Straw Men, but that’s why you carry matches, isn’t it?

  35. His sexuality explains why all Dahmer’s victims were all male. Keynes’ is irrelevant to his economic thought.

  36. A more interesting question is why McCain would use Dahmer as his analogy; Keynes’ contribution to history is substantial, Dahmer’s microscopic.

  37. That’s why I said “Don’t play their game for them.”

    If conservatives and Republicans adopt the tactics of the progressives, then the only thing you’ve got going for you is that your cause is “just.”

    Which is just meaningless.

  38. As someone who is childless, I agree. I find I have to consider the question ‘would I think differently if I had children?’ in certain matters.

  40. We are likely witnessing the end game for Keynesian economic theory. To be scientific, a theory must be falsifiable. For liberals, Keynes’s theory was given Bible-like imprimatur. Since we’ve been living the Keynes’s la vida loca since January 2007, no one with two neurons firing in sequence gives Keynes any credence anymore. There’s no point of Keynes’s theory that hasn’t been thoroughly discredited.

    But Keynes’s economic theory is a pillar of liberalism. If the pillar falls, so too liberals’ and their pet ideas like universal, free healthcare. So the most PC of defenses is thrown over Keynes: non-heterosexuality.

    Only problem: if conservatives and libertarians really cared about heterosexuality as the requirement for its thought leaders, Ayn Rand and Bill Buckley would be just a pair of dead writers.

    So far, Ferguson has apologised but he won’t keep his job. PC is the ultimate corrosive.

  41. Since you failed to use an analogy, settling instead for a mere declaration of opinion, I am forced to reject your argument. Sorry about that.

    Besides, you should have said, His sexuality explains [at least superficially] why all Dahmer’s victims were all male.

    And was it necessary to use ‘all’ twice in that sentence?

  44. Nah, that’s not even close to being a problem. Being in favor of the various forms of “progressivism” (commies, occutards,k feminists, etc.) would, however, be a very serious problem, as we see whenever we look out the window.

  45. Au contraire! Such intellectual pursuits involving two neurons firing at the same time is extremely hard for progtards to understand. It’s genetic and they just can’t help themselves.

  47. I’m guessing yours is a bachelor’s degree from a third-tier state university in a BS pseudo-subject and you got it by the skin of your teeth. Am I right?

  48. Dai, I went to school with Socrates.
    Socrates was a friend of mine.
    And Dai, this McCain ain’t no Socrates.

  49. Well, let’s just see how this works in the real world:

    Ferguson Math: 2 + 2 = 4

    Gay Math: 2 + 2 = 4

    Childless Math: 2 + 2 = 4

    Oh, yeah … you’re right – a HUGE impact!

  50. You seem to be claiming that propaganda doesn’t work, when in fact Dem success seems to prove otherwise. My claim is that it is necessary to fight fire with fire, and that we’d be wise to learn the use of more subtle and effective propaganda.

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