For true-believing lefties, everything is instrumental — does it help to advance the cause? If so, then old-fashioned concerns such as truth and civility should be ignored.
One of the techniques of the Left is to try to discredit eminent scholars who have come to different conclusions, not by arguing that they were mistaken, but by portraying them as bad people. And as we all know, bad people can’t be correct, so case closed. That conclusion does not logically follow, but with so many poorly educated, hyper-zealous people in academia today, who will notice?
In this AIER essay, Don Boudreaux recounts some of his efforts against one such “scholar,” namely Nancy MacLean of Duke University. Back in 2017, she published Democracy in Chains, a brazenly dishonest book — a screed, really — that was meant to take down Nobel laureate James Buchanan and the field known as public-choice theory. According to MacLean, it’s all a racist plot backed by some terrible rich people who just want to protect their wealth and position.
After recounting several episodes, Boudreaux concludes: “Note that I do not accuse MacLean of being a liar. I suspect that she really believes that her fables capture and convey important truths. But whether in this assessment I am correct or incorrect, one conclusion is airtight: As a scholar, Nancy MacLean is an utter disgrace.”
MacLean has recently tried the same ugly tactics on Milton Friedman, and other lefties have smeared Ludwig von Mises. No doubt we will see more of this as the country becomes increasingly politicized and incapable of detecting falsehoods and fallacies.