Jerrod’s answer to “I see the right wing trolls have dumped in on this book, which is interesting. Anyone else suspect …” > Likes and Comments
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This response to the criticisms seems rather biased. Just a few things to point out.
1) When Seal says, "this is only a problem if we have reason to doubt that MacLean honestly represents her sources" I am a bit more skeptical about her ability to do that than Seal is. As noted in the Teles and Farrell article, MacLean represents Buchanan's ideas as the "technology" for revolution that Koch wants (when in fact it was Koch's own market-based management that he was referring to in the referenced speech). If she can't correctly represent the sources of her ultimate target, I don't have any doubt she'd misrepresent other sources as well.
2) on Calhoun: Seal says he did a search of Calhoun at the Mises Institute and turned up 220 results (I found 253). This is to establish Calhoun's connection (which generally has the silent "foundational" preceding it) to libertarianism. First, the Mises Institute is hardly the only (or largest) libertarian institute. Second, I did a search for James Madison and found 7500 hits. The only reason one would call Calhoun Buchanan's "intellectual lodestar" (as MacLean does) or to say that a couple of hundred search results definitively shows a connection between Calhoun and libertarianism (as Seal does), all while ignoring a more obvious connection of public choice to Madison's writings, is most likely to impugn by association. (Note that MacLean and Seal also say that the critique isn't that Buchanan was "just a racist", meaning that MacLean's critique is that Buchanan was a racist and did other things as well). The most logical reason MacLean makes any connection between Buchanan and the Agrarians and Calhoun, while at the same time rejecting any connection to people with a more positive reputation (quoth MacLean, "although its [public choice] spokespersons would like you to believe they are disciples of James Madison, the leading architect of the U.S. Constitution, it is not true") seems to be that she wants the stink of those more unseemly characters to rub off onto Buchanan, et al.
3) On Tullock (whom Seal mentions but never gets back to): MacLean notes that Tullock did not get tenured at UVA in 1967 because his "publication record… was undistinguished". That he had 3 publications in the American Economic Review, 4 in the Journal of Political Economy, and 3 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (the three top economics journals (one publication in any one of those journals today would get an econ professor half way to tenure at most universities)) by the end of 1967 belies her claim of "undistinguished". Again, this seems to be MacLean trying to impugn the reputation of the characters in her book rather than providing any kind of argumentation. Of all the misrepresentations and errors that MacLean seems to have made, not one goes against the thrust of her thesis. If these were innocent mistakes, one would expect at least a few of them to go against her thesis.
4) MacLean seems to have a bit of an infantile conception of democracy: pure majoritarianism. Very few actually think that pure majoritarianism is a good thing. That's why we have the Bill of Rights. What makes liberal democracy great is not the "democracy" part but the "liberal" part. This is going to include some basic protections of civil and economic liberties (which are not as disconnected as Seal wants them to be) from a majority vote. To describe anyone as "anti-democratic" because he or she does not adhere to pure majoritarianism is a bit absurd.
5) If in fact, the main target is Koch, then maybe readers should just read Dark Money and skip MacLean's book of questionable scholarship.
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This response to the criticisms seems rather biased. Just a few things to point out. 1) When Seal says, "this is only a problem if we have reason to doubt that MacLean honestly represents her sources" I am a bit more skeptical about her ability to do that than Seal is. As noted in the Teles and Farrell article, MacLean represents Buchanan's ideas as the "technology" for revolution that Koch wants (when in fact it was Koch's own market-based management that he was referring to in the referenced speech). If she can't correctly represent the sources of her ultimate target, I don't have any doubt she'd misrepresent other sources as well.
2) on Calhoun: Seal says he did a search of Calhoun at the Mises Institute and turned up 220 results (I found 253). This is to establish Calhoun's connection (which generally has the silent "foundational" preceding it) to libertarianism. First, the Mises Institute is hardly the only (or largest) libertarian institute. Second, I did a search for James Madison and found 7500 hits. The only reason one would call Calhoun Buchanan's "intellectual lodestar" (as MacLean does) or to say that a couple of hundred search results definitively shows a connection between Calhoun and libertarianism (as Seal does), all while ignoring a more obvious connection of public choice to Madison's writings, is most likely to impugn by association. (Note that MacLean and Seal also say that the critique isn't that Buchanan was "just a racist", meaning that MacLean's critique is that Buchanan was a racist and did other things as well). The most logical reason MacLean makes any connection between Buchanan and the Agrarians and Calhoun, while at the same time rejecting any connection to people with a more positive reputation (quoth MacLean, "although its [public choice] spokespersons would like you to believe they are disciples of James Madison, the leading architect of the U.S. Constitution, it is not true") seems to be that she wants the stink of those more unseemly characters to rub off onto Buchanan, et al.
3) On Tullock (whom Seal mentions but never gets back to): MacLean notes that Tullock did not get tenured at UVA in 1967 because his "publication record… was undistinguished". That he had 3 publications in the American Economic Review, 4 in the Journal of Political Economy, and 3 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (the three top economics journals (one publication in any one of those journals today would get an econ professor half way to tenure at most universities)) by the end of 1967 belies her claim of "undistinguished". Again, this seems to be MacLean trying to impugn the reputation of the characters in her book rather than providing any kind of argumentation. Of all the misrepresentations and errors that MacLean seems to have made, not one goes against the thrust of her thesis. If these were innocent mistakes, one would expect at least a few of them to go against her thesis.
4) MacLean seems to have a bit of an infantile conception of democracy: pure majoritarianism. Very few actually think that pure majoritarianism is a good thing. That's why we have the Bill of Rights. What makes liberal democracy great is not the "democracy" part but the "liberal" part. This is going to include some basic protections of civil and economic liberties (which are not as disconnected as Seal wants them to be) from a majority vote. To describe anyone as "anti-democratic" because he or she does not adhere to pure majoritarianism is a bit absurd.
5) If in fact, the main target is Koch, then maybe readers should just read Dark Money and skip MacLean's book of questionable scholarship.
http://www.publicseminar.org/2017/07/...