Nancy MacLean will make two appearances at the University of Arizona Monday, Sept. 24. From 1:30-2:45 p.m., she will be at the UA Bookstore and will be available for an author signing after the event. From 6:30-8 p.m., she will give a book talk at the UA Student Union Memorial Center, Catalina and Tucson Rooms.
The full title of MacLean’s recent book is Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for the United States. The book, which was a 2017 National Book Award finalist, puts well known right wing, libertarian figures like the Koch brothers into the context of a larger, sustained effort by billionaires, academics and political operatives to make fundamental changes to our economic and governmental systems.
It’s among the best, most revelatory books I’ve read in recent years, deeply researched and well written. Though I didn’t attend MacLean’s appearance at Tucson Festival of Books in March, people who attended have said MacLean is an excellent speaker.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2018.
Has there been any controversy, David, about the validity of this woman*s research methods that you might want to brief us on?
Another question: Is calling one*s ideological opponents autistic now an acceptable rhetorical strategy? It seems pretty inappropriate to me, but then so does a lot of what passes for argumentation and *research* these days.
https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2018/02/professor-nancy-maclean-claims-founders-of-libertarianism-are-on-the-autism-spectrum
‘questions’, back in the 50-60’s, Barry Goldwater and William F Buckley Jr both said far worse of the John Birch Society, the people we’re talking about here. They came right out and said that if they were able to take over the republican party they would establish a fascist government within a few short years. Here’s an article on their ramblings today that you might find interesting. . . https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/20…
Democracy in Chains is about James M. Buchanan, the Nobel prize winning economist. The main question to consider is whether it is an accurate and fair representation of its subject.
Have there been any credible claims to the contrary?
Take a look:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/28/does-democracy-in-chains-paint-an-accurate-picture-of-james-buchanan/?utm_term=.fe1e9d2e3e32
That is a lot of criticism, coming from a lot of reputable sources. But David Safier did not brief us on all the controversy surrounding this woman, while recommending that we attend her presentations.
Gee, I wonder why.
Nancy MacLean herself says that she has been threatened and bullied by her “opponents”–as if scholarly and well researched work that lays out a history understandable to the average reader is somehow dangerous. Gee, why would the Kochs and their allies do such a thing? Is there precedent for their throwing a hissy fit when their cascade of dark money hits the sunlight? After all, they are just acting in all of our individual best interests, aren’t they? Ask the Chileans, who got a dose of Buchanan’s medicine that their country, once well known for its stellar education, retirement, health systems and democracy, are still struggling to retain almost 30 years later. The dictatorship that allowed Buchanan to REALLY test his theory out (no pesky voters with all of THEIR individual choices to deal with) is gone, but its libertarian machinery is still in place. Do you really think the Buchanan-ites and their billionaire Koch pals have much different in store for us?
For an interesting take on what a fine example of what dark money is doing, and the resistance offered to it, see https://blogforarizona.net/outlaw-dirty-mo…. Full disclosure so that “Questions” doesn’t run me through the mill for not exposing all dirty laundry here on the blog that she loves to hate: the author, in my view, has been known to make outlandish and unsupported claims in the past. This, however, is simply a report on what the Outlaw Dark Money group is doing.
Dark money=George Soros. Don’t be fooled Americans, it comes from both sides but one definitely does not play by the rules. Give you one guess who.
Some people are political partisans and almost everything they pitch is related to their partisan aims.
Some of us are actually concerned with accuracy, and take issue with propaganda originating from any portion of the political spectrum that tries to feed the public oversimplified villain-hero dramas based on shoddy research. Especially when such propaganda feeds are taking place in universities where students should be learning critical thinking and valid research methods.
By all means let this woman speak, but let’s be honest about the controversy surrounding her methods. If you want to promote her talks, link a summary of pro and con statements like what Adler (a constitutional law scholar at Case Western Reserve) provides in the Washington Post piece referenced above, and try letting people THINK and DECIDE for themselves which arguments are valid.
It’s a better, more honest method than presenting information about the talks in glowing terms and not giving people a “heads up” that there have been serious questions raised about this woman’s methods and conclusions. And no, the criticisms of her work are not all coming from Koch-funded scholars-for-hire. Commenters who imply as much should back their view of the controversy up with valid data about ALL of the scholars and academic departments in question — there are a lot of them. The criticisms are not just coming from the UA Freedom Institute and similar programs elsewhere.
There are many devastating reviews of MacLean’s book done by her own academic peers. They called a work of “partisanship” not of scholarship. She goes as far as trimming Buchanan’s quotes right in the middle to “prove” her point.
Safier, Betts et. al., there is plenty of evidence that suggests her account of Buchanan Chilean engagement -among other of her claims- is grossly misrepresented. The most recent one is done by Standford Professor Jennifer Burns. She calls the book ” too heated, partisan, and shallow”. Here it is:
http://www.jenniferburns.org/dev/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Burns-HOPE-MacLean-Review-09.18.pdf
Take a look if you want an alternative view. I doubt you do, but just in case =D
Give relevant info, Questions, and almost every other very critical arguer against David Safier’s posts and TUSD, you really should have your own blog. I understand Blog for Arizona takes volunteers. Your criticisms are incisive, they are cited, your intelligence is obviously great–why don’t you come up with the content, instead of shredding the content of others? Why not come up with your own interesting subjects and then present them in the airtight way that you would like? I myself loved the MacLean book because it DID take a point of view, it IS unapologetically against the idea of destroying democracy so that the 1% get to express THEIR individual desires while the rest of us do not….I personally think that if academia does not get heated up about something it really will become irrelevant. But who cares what I think, why don’t you suit up and decide to express yours? Proactively, that is, because you have the reactive thing down. It would exercise your perfection so much better than simply coming onto other people’s blogs and ripping into them with your very, very distinctive voice. Perhaps you could ask Blog for Arizona if you could use a different pseudonym for every blog–like you do for every complaint.
When people try to influence the electorate, Betts Putnam-Hidalgo, its fair to expect citizens with different perspectives (and sometimes with better information) to respond. This is how democracy works: you and David Safier get to express your opinions and engage in your experiments with persuasion, and other people get to say how the matters discussed look to them. It would seem advisable for both you and David, in promoting your ideas, to keep your cool and make your arguments impersonally. Both of you have lapsed into potshots lately. Make your case and let the best man (or woman) win.
Sorry Give, but that is not the way they operate. They continue to argue against the 1%ers but continually elevate themselves above the 995. Just like you were told, “don’t come here and dispute our opinions.” Much like the whole “resist” movement that somehow wants to undo the will of the American public’s vote because they don’t like the way Donald Trump operates.
I am watching the violent destruction of democracy, free speech and individual rights. And we know who is doing it.
Betts, the problem is not that you choose to take a point of view. You are entitled to that and I will never dispute such a right to anyone. In fact, I do sympathize with the position of being “unapologetically against the idea of destroying democracy”. The problem is that MacLean’s book is not academically rigorous, is full of misrepresentations misusing quotes from published work, and overstates the weight of the so-called evidence it presents. Academia can be heated up all you want, but not at the expense of intellectual honesty and soundness. One can be a defender of democracy and see argumentative flaws at the same time, right?
“into the context of a larger, sustained effort by billionaires, academics and political operatives to make fundamental changes to our economic and governmental systems. “
She means people like George Soros, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Pierre Omidyar and Jonathan Soros?
More questions, and an answer wrote: “Gee, I wonder why.”
Because David Safier is a partisan hack and not really concerned about the truth.
Betts Putnam-Hidalgo wrote: “Give relevant info…”
Umm, look at the posts before yours. There are plenty of links that show that Nancy Maclean does not really care about the truth.
Here is the kill shot:
“MacLean has, by her own admission, very little knowledge of economics….In the most generous reading, she is misunderstanding arguments and chopping up quotes because she simply doesnt understand what Buchanan and his collaborators are up to. In the least generous reading, she has a theory and shes going to cut up the evidence to fit that theory.”
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2017/…
Here is some more relevant info for your enjoyment:
http://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/06/na…
https://medium.com/@russroberts/nancy-macl…
https://cafehayek.com/2017/06/russ-roberts…
http://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/06/na…
http://philmagness.com/?p=2074
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh…
https://www.cato.org/blog/another-misleadi…
http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2017/…
https://mises.org/wire/maclean-james-bucha…
https://fee.org/articles/this-confused-con…
Wow Stretch, looks as if David Safier had your number when he accused you of being dishonest. The fact that you’re practicing that “weird, deceptive form of trolling and sock puppetry” in this thread by responding to yourself as Ted Dancing is all the proof that is necessary. Hopefully, for your sake, it’s just you being a pathetic troll and not you needing some serious help with balancing multiple personalities. If it’s the latter, seek professional help immediately.
Ha ha. Nope. On this one there are multiple posters. But thats a clever trolling technique, to assert that all the comments that disagree with Safier are originating from one person. The world is actually full of people who see through this type of politicized BS, but only a few of them bother to comment here: four different individuals by my count on this thread.
You are a fucking terrible liar. You are Ted Dancing. You know it and I know it. I’m sure that others, including Betts and Safier, know it as well. Your disguise is paper thin. Work harder on your trolling skills, because if anyone needs to, it’s you.
Before I read MacLean’s book, I googled the title so I could look at some reviews and analysis. I didn’t want to read a book that simply rehashed ideas I had already read. I found links to the same criticisms tctw cited above. I noticed nearly all the reviews were on sites with strong libertarian/conservative connections. I have rarely seen so many people work so hard to debunk a book as I saw in this case. I noticed they were written between June 25 and July 10, 2017 — a flurry of defensive reactions to the book beginning a few weeks after the book was published, which makes the writers seem rather frantic. “Quick, we need to debunk this book right now!”
My reaction was, “The libertarian doth protest too much, methinks.” Any book that aroused that level of defensiveness, any book they spent so much effort writing against, must have struck a nerve, meaning it very likely had something important to say. After reading reviews elsewhere which were favorable and maintained that MacLean covered new ground in the book, I decided it was probably worth reading. It was.
I read and scanned my way through the links tctw cites. They tend to be intelligent and knowledgeable, but they often try to use specific problems they find in MacLean’s knowledge or her use of certain quotations to deflate the entire book rather than refuting her basis thesis concerning the people she wrote about and the movement they were part of.
I’m not a scholar, I can’t give MacLean’s book an academic’s seal of approval. But from what I have read elsewhere on the subject and from the overall logical thread running through the book, my sense is that it is an accurate depiction of the topic she covers.
Is The Washington Post a site with strong libertarian / conservative connections, David?
Did you read Jonathan Adler’s summary of the controversy there? The link was provided for you above. Did you analyze the affiliations and institutional homes of the people listed IN THAT ARTICLE weighing in on the con side? Here is that link again, for your convenience:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/28/does-democracy-in-chains-paint-an-accurate-picture-of-james-buchanan/?utm_term=.fe1e9d2e3e32
If not, your “response” is not a response. You don’t win by selecting the weakest, most Libertarian-affiliated part of the case against MacLean and ignoring the stronger parts.
What you find when you consider the “con” arguments fairly and comprehensively is that it is not just Libertarians or pro-business interests taking issue with MacLean’s technique. The use to which quotations are put, when they are taken out of context to support an “argument” that cannot properly find its basis in the material being cited, is a serious, confidence-undermining problem when we are considering the validity of a piece of history. So is the author not having any grounding to speak of in the field (economics) which constitutes the professional occupation of the primary subject (James Buchanan) of her book.
I don’t have much time available to provide another “con” to your “pro” here, but I will leave you in this thread with a couple of observations.
1. When you look at checklists of propaganda techniques (have you studied them? I’m guessing you have) you see that many of the methods researchers have identified are being used regularly in the pieces you write in this blog. But what distinguishes illegitimate propaganda from legitimate persuasion, in the opinion of some researchers, is not the techniques used, some of which are used in more valid forms of argument, but whether the goal sought (e.g. “vote a straight Democratic ticket!”) could be argued to serve the best interests of the audience as well as the interests of the originator of the propaganda. When honest and thorough analysis of the performance of Democrats in office, or of the actual functioning of the institutions that will benefit if Democrat-sponsored policy is implemented (e.g., TUSD), is entirely absent from the copious blog-product of an author pushing “get rid of vouchers! and / or vote for my friends Garcia, and Foster, and Juarez” etc., the verbiage promoting that agenda cannot be anything but propaganda, because no legitimate evidence that following that advice will have a tangible benefit for the audience has been provided.
2. The legitimacy of the message is even more dubious when, not only is it missing concrete evidence of what the politicians promoted have accomplished, it is constructed of recommendations for the consumption of faulty products manufactured with shoddy methods, like MacLean’s.
“You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists, who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of all power.” Edmund Burke
To recommend a talk like this without briefing your readership on the controversy surrounding the author looks to me like treating them with paternalistic contempt. Give them the info, and let them decide for themselves whether the criticisms are as easily dismissible as you conveniently (for your political purposes) decide that they are.
The Adler piece is in the Washington Post, as you say, which has a variety of op eds, running the gamut from politically left to politically right. The Volokh Conspiracy, which is said to be the place he contributes in his byline, tends conservative, as does Adler. He’s written for a variety of publications on a variety of subjects. I think it’s worth noting that his interpretation of Obamacare’s use of tax credits helped lead to the judicial decision which dealt a severe blow to the health care law. That’s one indication of where he sits on the left-right spectrum.
I mention all this to say, Adler is writing from a similar stance as the others mentioned in the links, even if his piece is in the Washington Post. This is not to say he’s incorrect. It’s just to say I wasn’t cherry picking. As he notes in his op ed, many people reviewed MacLean’s book positively, others negatively. I’ve looked over both views, decided the book was worth reading, and finished it thinking it was very worth reading. It’s my sense that it presents an important history of the movement it follows. Others disagree. That’s fine.
Time for me to move onto future posts. Feel free to continue commenting, and, if you wish, also feel free to call me a coward or say I proved you were right by backing out of the discussion. That’s what often happens when I’ve said my say in the comments section. It’s one of the reasons I generally don’t get involved in back-and-forths, as I did in this instance. Anyone who wants to claim victory just has to hang around longer than I decide to hang around, then claim I turned tail and ran.
Yup, Adler is a conservative. Pretty clear from his bio and list of accomplishments. But that is not to say that all those he lists who have written “con” perspectives on Democracy in Chains are. (I know, it would take a long time to assess the bios and institutional affiliations of the LONG list of “con” authors Adler provides in the WaPo piece, but I think it is fair to note that that was what was suggested, and you did not do so.)
Also worth noting is that whether the author of a WaPo editorial piece is liberal or conservative, The Washington Post does not tend to publish transparent boosterism for Libertarianism or DARK MONEY. Whatever part of the political spectrum the piece comes from, it won’t be without substance.
Bottom line for me is that genuine “democratists” (more than their ideological opponents who do not believe that it is in fact possible for ordinary people to think for themselves and make good decisions) have an obligation to keep their communication practices in line with their political theories. If you believe ordinary people are competent to make governance decisions, you provide them with the whole story, not a doctored part of it with significant info excised. That goes for political blogs as well as candidate forums and comment streams.
Indictments of THE ELITES ring hollow when your own rhetorical strategies presume that it is fine to deal selectively with the historical record to “manage” the electorate and “engineer” (or “manufacture”) consent for favored politicians and policies.
Well, for those who care to read it, here is what Nancy MacLean says about her critics. Not that anyone can change anyone else’s mind with original sources. And just a personal note? I, Betts, who always uses her own name, have absolutely no political power whatsoever, so the post above that somehow links me with a critique of David is absolutely inaccurate in a way surprising to see from that particular commenter. I am not playing any “game of persuasion”…with who? And from who? And has the commenter above with the long list of links gone so far as to a)actually read the book and b) check out how many of those links have ties to the Koch brothers? Honest to God, do you think they are not smart enough to fight an expose like this one? Anyway, here is the citation I promised. I have read the book. Have you? Or have you just read the criticisms and decided that you agree with them? https://www.chronicle.com/article/Nancy-Ma…
Betts Putnam-Hidalgo:
I wrote “experiments with persuasion,” not “game of persuasion.” The difference is significant. Running a political campaign for elected office is a type of experiment with persuasion. It involves persuading people to vote for you. Working for other people’s political campaigns or initiative campaigns is another type of persuasion. It involves persuading people to vote for other people or for initiatives. Running an advocacy organization is another type of persuasion. If the advocacy organization is responsible, it involves persuading people in positions of power to adopt beneficial policy.
Attempting to persuade is not in and of itself bad, but some types of persuasion are rightly labeled propaganda. I don’t see anyone in this comment stream accusing you of sponsoring propaganda, though there does seem to be some concern: A) with the validity of MacLean’s historical METHODS, and B) with attempts to recruit people to hear her speak that don’t disclose the controversy surrounding her METHODS. There is also some concern with David Safier’s METHODS vis a vis the actual state of our local education systems, what he chooses to include and exclude from his blogs, and how the politicians and the policies he promotes relate to the state of our local education systems.
(You ask whether I have read MacLean’s book. I read reviews pro and con. I found the con reviews persuasive, not because I agreed with the political perspectives of their authors — in most cases I disagreed with them — but because I found the critiques of MacLean’s METHODS substantive. When you invite busy people to spend time reading that book or listening to its author speak, it would seem reasonable and fair to give them an opportunity to take a look at the controversy and decide for themselves whether it is worth their time to consider arguments that have been shown to be based on documentably flimsy evidence. Doesn’t coupling supposedly “democratic” ideas with such “evidence” actually discredit democracy? Is it important to establish ideas on the right foundation and use honest methods in communicating with the electorate, or is it just important to get the “right” ideas across, through methodologically unsound “history” and propaganda? How someone answers those questions seems to me to make the difference between a real “democratist” and a specious one.)
Everybody has an agenda and preferences. There is that. But in academia, the disputes are about how sound is the evidence presented. Claims should be substantiated with data, models, empirics, and in history, with analytical narratives and good archive work. Same goes for critical reviews of others’ research.
So, the way to judge an academic work -and its reviews- is not by looking at the affiliations of those that produce it, but by looking how rigorous they are. So far MacLean has not provided satisfactory scholarly answers to some of the scholarly criticism of her work. From both libertarian and non-libertarian critics. It is that simple. It is way easier to question the objectivity of a review rather than actually taking a look at it and see if the claims are solid and how to respond to them. So far MacLean has chosen the easy path supported by her club of fans. Maybe good enough for a pundit, not for a scholar.