Increasingly, no.
Remember Duke historian Nancy MacLean’s odious book Democracy in Chains, a disreputable hatchet job on James Buchanan and public choice theory generally. Rather than trying to come to grips with Buchanan’s thinking and its implications — chiefly that if you believe government will solve problems, you’d better think again because government officials have their own self-interested agendas — MacLean manufactured a sleazy case that he was a racist who just wanted to create an excuse for opposing government action. That resonated with most leftists, who have been taught that exposing the supposed hidden motives of people who don’t want omnipotent government is all that’s necessary to win an argument.
Here’s another instance of that same style of writing. Professor Janek Wasserman of the University of Alabama has penned a book about the Austrian School of Economics. Professor Richard Ebeling finds that the book is a “twisted tale” in a lengthy review published by the American Institute for Economic Research. Wasserman can’t just give an explication of Austrian thinking and then offer arguments as to why he disagrees. He poisons his book with all sorts of motive impugning barbs.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corn...-conflicting-ideas-without-impugning-motives/
Remember Duke historian Nancy MacLean’s odious book Democracy in Chains, a disreputable hatchet job on James Buchanan and public choice theory generally. Rather than trying to come to grips with Buchanan’s thinking and its implications — chiefly that if you believe government will solve problems, you’d better think again because government officials have their own self-interested agendas — MacLean manufactured a sleazy case that he was a racist who just wanted to create an excuse for opposing government action. That resonated with most leftists, who have been taught that exposing the supposed hidden motives of people who don’t want omnipotent government is all that’s necessary to win an argument.
Here’s another instance of that same style of writing. Professor Janek Wasserman of the University of Alabama has penned a book about the Austrian School of Economics. Professor Richard Ebeling finds that the book is a “twisted tale” in a lengthy review published by the American Institute for Economic Research. Wasserman can’t just give an explication of Austrian thinking and then offer arguments as to why he disagrees. He poisons his book with all sorts of motive impugning barbs.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corn...-conflicting-ideas-without-impugning-motives/
