Posted by Nicholas Stix
For years, each of the divisions of the racial socialist alliance has told us that there is a coherent, morally superior outlook that is characteristic of its members: the black perspective, the woman’s perspective, the reconquista, er, Hispanic perspective, the gay perspective. Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson took that claim seriously, recently, in regards to homosexual economist John Maynard Keynes, but instead of homosexuals applauding him, they subjected him to a show trial, and forced him to recant (see below), a la James Watson.
Race relations expert Jonah Goldberg has shown some backbone, in attempting to rescue Ferguson. Remember this moment; we may not see its like again.
A tip ‘o the hate to Kathy Shaidle at Five Feet of Fury.
By Jonah Goldberg
May 4, 2013 3:24 PM
National Review
There’s a brouhaha a-brewin’ over comments by Niall Ferguson at an investor conference. Ferguson suggested that because John Maynard Keynes was gay, effete, and childless he might have lacked concern for posterity. After all, Keynes famously proclaimed ”in the long run we’re all dead.” In a nigh-upon hysterical and terribly written item, Tom Kostigen of Financial Advisor says Ferguson took “gay-bashing to new heights.” He adds, “Apparently, in Ferguson’s world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society.”
Now, I don’t know exctly [sic] what Ferguson said, and I don’t trust Kostigen’s version of events either. There are few full quotes and virtually nothing like proper context to anything (for instance, he seems to think “effete” and “gay” are synonyms). But Ferguson has offered an abject and total apology [N.S.: See below], which I take to be sincere.
Still, I am a little surprised that so many people have never heard this idea before or that the mere mention of it is now a potential career killer (Felix Salmon of Reuters tweeted in response to Ferguson’s apology, ”It’s conceivable that Niall Ferguson managed to rescue his career with this” (emphasis mine).
I don’t endorse the theory and completely understand why it offends people. But it’s hardly as if it’s unheard-of in academia to speculate that one’s sexual orientation (or race, or gender, etc.) can influence a person’s views on public policy. Is it really nuts now to think that having kids changes a person’s time horizons?
More relevant, this theory about Keynes is hardly new. Joseph Schumpeter, I thought famously, suggested that Keynes’s childlessness was a key issue. In his obituary of Keynes, Schumpeter wrote: “He was childless and his philosophy of life was essentially a short-run philosophy.”
Even a cursory look-see in Google Books or LexisNexis shows it’s been around for a long time. Here, via Nexis, is a passage from a 1986 Harvard Business Review article by George Sim Johnston, reviewing a book by Henry Kaufman:
As I say, Dr. Kaufman counsels bond investors to forget the past. Early in the book, however, he tells us that his most strongly held views, particularly with regard to inflation, probably derive from his past, which began in the Weimar Republic. He was born just after the hyperinflation and was weaned on family stories about the overnight disappearance of life savings. Ever since, he has been wary of the state’s ability to print money.
It would be useful if more economists prefaced their works with such biographical material. As William James pointed out, analytical thinking always begins with some personal bias; scratch a mathematical model and you’ll find that its creator prefers blueberry jam to marmalade. John Maynard Keynes would have done a great service if he had begun The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money with the disclosure that he was a Bloomsbury aesthete and a practicing homosexual. He could have explained how he and friends did not believe in self-denial or consider that they had any obligation to posterity. (An historian has pointed out that Keynes’s famous remark, “In the long run we are all dead,” is easy to make if you have no children and don’t want any.) Perhaps as a result we might have lower federal deficits.
Here’s William Grieder suggesting that Keynes’s homosexuality put him at odds with “social convention” and arguing that Keynes’s economic doctrines stemmed in small part from his rejection of the Protestant ethic.
William Rees Mogg, the former editor of the Times of London went so far as to say that Keynes’s rejection of morality caused him to reject the gold standard. You can read about that in this interesting essay by Keynes’ biographer Robert Sidelsky. Sidelsky rejects the theory, but hardly out of hand. Perhaps because Keynes’ himself described the Bloomsbury mindset as a rejection of all standards:
We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions and traditional wisdom. We were, that is to say, in the strict sense of the term, immoralists. The consequences of being found out had, of course, to be considered for what they were worth. But we recognised no moral obligation on us, or inner sanction, to conform or to obey. Before heaven we claimed to be our own judge in our own case.
Intellectual historian Gertrude Himmelfarb draws quite a few lessons from that mindset. She writes:
In fact, something of the “soul” of Bloomsbury penetrated even into Keynes’s economic theories. There is a discernible affinity between the Bloomsbury ethos, which put a premium on immediate and present satisfactions, and Keynesian economics, which is based entirely on the short run and precludes any long-term judgments. (Keynes’s famous remark. “In the long run we are all dead,” also has an obvious connection with his homosexuality — what Schumpeter delicately referred to as his “childless vision.”) The same ethos is reflected in the Keynesian doctrine that consumption rather than saving is the source of economic growth — indeed, that thrift is economically and socially harmful. In The Economic Consequences of the Peace, written long before The General Theory, Keynes ridiculed the “virtue” of saving. The capitalists, he said, deluded the working classes into thinking that their interests were best served by saving rather than consuming. This delusion was part of the age-old Puritan fallacy.
So Keynes believed that Puritan values inclined people to embrace an economic theory (capitalism), but the Ferguson episode teaches us that it is now beyond outrageous to suggest that Keynes’s rejection of Puritan values inclined him to embrace a slightly different economic theory (Keynesianism)? Got it.
What I find interesting about the Ferguson controversy is how disconnected it is from the past. Even academics I respect reacted to Ferguson’s comments as if they bordered on unimaginable, unheard-of madness. I understand that we live in a moment where any negative comment connected to homosexuality is not only wrong but “gay bashing.” But Ferguson was trafficking in an old theory that was perfectly within the bounds of intellectual discourse not very long ago. Now, because of a combination of indifference to intellectual history and politically correct piety he must don the dunce cap. Good to know.
• Penny Piercy•4 days ago
So if a Queer Studies theorist postulates that there is a "queer" reading of culture or history, or if a Women's Studies theorist postulates that there is a "feminist" reading of culture or history, that is fine. Indeed, that is the premise of their enterprise. But if a straight person or a man suggests that someone might be reading culture or history influenced by their gender or sexual orientation, that's rejected out of hand as crazy and bigoted? (I'm not saying that upon further analysis it might not be determined to be indeed crazy and bigoted. Just that it would be immediately rejected without any further analysis.) Good to know.
• teapartydoc•3 days ago
In this day and age, in which the academic world applies the same reasoning and logic to the entire cosmos, that all are necessarily in thrall to their own particular circumstances of race, class and gender, and that their outlook on things is necessarily, not only tinged by these things, but that they are determinative, how is it that this particular homosexual is exempt? Is this not a form of blatant hypocrisy? Are only the founders of this nation guilty of seeing the world with their own eyes? I suppose the liberals will now go about telling us that it's OK to listen to the advice of priests and nuns about sexual relations and child-rearing, because they can see the world through they eyes of others. If one is going to apply theory, it must be consistent and predictive, otherwise the theory is useless. Particularism of this kind is neither consistent, nor honest, but it is useful.
• teapartydoc•3 days ago
In this day and age, in which the academic world applies the same reasoning and logic to the entire cosmos, that all are necessarily in thrall to their own particular circumstances of race, class and gender, and that their outlook on things is necessarily, not only tinged by these things, but that they are determinative, how is it that this particular homosexual is exempt? Is this not a form of blatant hypocrisy? Are only the founders of this nation guilty of seeing the world with their own eyes? I suppose the liberals will now go about telling us that it's OK to listen to the advice of priests and nuns about sexual relations and child-rearing, because they can see the world through they eyes of others. If one is going to apply theory, it must be consistent and predictive, otherwise the theory is useless. Particularism of this kind is neither consistent, nor honest, but it is useful.
The Regular Guy•3 days ago
Ferguson's apology is more offensive than his supposedly offending comments. In it he offers at least two obvious howlers that I cannot believe a scholar and intellectual of his heft could possibly believe. He writes, "First, it is obvious that people who do not have children also care about future generations." Obvious? Really? It may be true that people who do not have children might care about future generations, but casual observation of human nature strongly suggests that people who do have children tend to do quantifiable things like save more and set up generation-skipping trusts more often, etc. As a historian of economics, Ferguson could have made this case, but simply chose to plead guilty at a show trial instead.
Ferguson next writes that "It is simply false to suggest, as I did, that his approach to economic policy was inspired by any aspect of his personal life." Not just false, but "simply false"? You've got to be kidding me! There are literally thousands and thousands of academic articles and dissertations and monographs and books that are devoted precisely to the premise that the personal life of a writer or intellectual is the key to unlocking the meaning of their thought. Many of those make precisely the case that an author or poet's homosexuality was the key to understanding their writings.
What Ferguson might have said, I suppose is that "It is simply false to suggest that any criticizable aspect of Keynes' economics was inspired by his homosexuality, but arguably true that all of the good and noble aspects were." In the current climate, you are apparently only allowed to laud homosexuals (e.g., Jason Collins for his recent announcement), but never permitted to criticize homosexuals (e.g. Jason Collins for his decade of lies and what amounts to leading on his fiancee and then jilting her at the altar, something only a scoundrel would do).
An Unqualified Apology
By Niall Ferguson
May 4, 2013
Niall Ferguson.coward
During a recent question-and-answer session at a conference in California, I made comments about John Maynard Keynes that were as stupid as they were insensitive.
I had been asked to comment on Keynes’s famous observation “In the long run we are all dead.” The point I had made in my presentation was that in the long run our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are alive, and will have to deal with the consequences of our economic actions.
But I should not have suggested – in an off-the-cuff response that was not part of my presentation – that Keynes was indifferent to the long run because he had no children, nor that he had no children because he was gay. This was doubly stupid. First, it is obvious that people who do not have children also care about future generations. Second, I had forgotten that Keynes’s wife Lydia miscarried.
[How would his wife’s miscarriage have changed the fact of Keynes’ childlessness, or his lack of future orientation?]
My disagreements with Keynes’s economic philosophy have never had anything to do with his sexual orientation. It is simply false to suggest, as I did, that his approach to economic policy was inspired by any aspect of his personal life. As those who know me and my work are well aware, I detest all prejudice, sexual or otherwise.
My colleagues, students, and friends – straight and gay – have every right to be disappointed in me, as I am in myself. To them, and to everyone who heard my remarks at the conference or has read them since, I deeply and unreservedly apologize.
Niall Ferguson.
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