I laughed out loud at this excellent burn.
http://mises.org/daily/5001/Hazlitt-and-Keynes-Opposite-Callings
And then here: http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2011/02/assault-of-thoughts-292011.html#comments
Gene Callahan:
Callahan is a dilettante drifting from ideology to ideology and acting smug and superior about everything. I can’t stand him anymore, now that he’s become a ‘communitarian’. It was bad enough when he was a smarmy libertarian, I’m not even going to bother reading a smarmy crypto-Nazi.
I don’t like Rockwell’s attempt of making a psychological assessment of Keynes, nor do I like Callahan’s attempt to make a psychological assessment of Rockwell. It really doesn’t make much sense either way.
I do like Callahan, though. Often makes some valid points/criticisms/interesting ideas.
Again on the post where Prateek quotes a part from.
I don’t think he’s a ‘cryto-nazi’ though. I haven’t seen him defend the government as such, nor did I see him attacking the core of libertarianism. It’s clear he isn’t a (standard) libertarian anymore (I believe he said so himself that he doesn’t consider himself a libertarian anymore) but I can’t get a grasp on his fundamental normative stance. Most, if not all, of his ‘communautarian points’ appear to be commutable with libertarianism.
Lew is weird, Callahan is an a-hole. And I don’t think he makes many good points anymore.
I don’t think he’s a ‘cryto-nazi’ though. I haven’t seen him defend the government as such, nor did I see him attacking the core of libertarianism. It’s clear he isn’t a (standard) libertarian anymore (I believe he said so himself that he doesn’t consider himself a libertarian anymore) but I can’t get a grasp on his fundamental normative stance. Most, if not all, of his ‘communautarian points’ appear to be commutable with libertarianism.
Well, Communitarianism is Nazi. But I suspect Gene is just a man with no fixed beliefs at all, like FDR. So, rather than crypto-Nazi I should call him a useful idiot for Nazis.
I don’t mean to sound overly hostile to him, actually he is pretty much a non-person to me, but although Callahan certainly has a brain capable of doing fancy tricks he has the same kind of comparmentalization that makes Obama the perfect anti-war imperialist Marxist corporatist.
You do like using loaded terms, aight? Could you give a definition of nazism, so we kind a know what you are talking about?
Why do you consider him to be a useful idiot? What views has he defend that are ‘useful’ for nazis? And where did he explicitly say he was a communautarian?
National socialism. The belief in an identarian in-group towards which one has duties and to whom one ultimately derives any rights from (as a member), which entails economic control by or in the name of this communitarian agency. Pat Buchanan is also a Nazi. Obviously by this I don’t mean NSDAP. Also, see what I added above.
I don’t know if he’s said it in his blog, but I have seen and heard enough of him talking to other people to know that.
As to why I consider him a useful idiot, it is because overeducated trust-funders like him are exactly what we had in the 1920s and 1930s - drifting from Progressivism, then to Fascism, then to Communism, then to Anti-Communism. Individually he is irrelevant, but as a group these people serve the political class by undermining libertarianism; as soon as one rationalization for anti-libertarianism falls out of favor they quickly find another and never see the contradictions they might have from one sentence to the next.
I am happy to acknowledge what services he has done for libertarianism, especially his book Economics for Real People. It’s a really stellar treatment. But as he has rejected individualism, I don’t think today’s Gene is going to be of much use to us. Much like Robert Nozick he has gone on the path to cloud-koo-koo land, where he is more interested in ‘puzzles’ than logic.
I don’t think a careful reading of his arguments warrant such a overly negative interpretation as ‘he has rejected individualism’ or that he beliefs in ‘an identarian in-group towards which one has duties and to whom one ultimately derives any rights from (as a member), which entails economic control by or in the name of this communitarian agency’.
But oke; I can’t judge based on what I’ve not seen or heard.
But oke; I can’t judge based on what I’ve not seen or heard.
I am trying to muster examples right now, I will get back to you when I have more textual support to go on. In any case, I don’t think he’s evil or anything. I just think he’s gone off the rails.
You guys really don’t play nice.
Gene Callahan is a “crypto Nazi”, “useful idiot”, “overeducated trustfunder”, and what not.
Such talk is highly irresponsible. I understand libertarians pride themselves on their lack of manners, but this talk reminds me of those who call Thomas Sowell a “house n*****” because he says that there are education problems within the black community that require their own initiative to change.
score one for callahan!
Just gonna throw this out there: I loved Callahan’s “Economics for Real People.” The only problem was that his chapter on business cycle theory was utterly confusing and did not explain ABCT (this was in his Austrian days). Now, he supposedly has “defected” and he has criticized ABCT. Considering the fact that he couldn’t even give a good explanation of the business cycle when he was an Austrian, I doubt how much he actually knows about the ABCT.
“Considering the fact that he couldn’t even give a good explanation of the business cycle when he was an Austrian, I doubt how much he actually knows about the ABCT.”
And the exact same goes for everything libertarian.
You’re the one constantly posting idiotic and inflammatory things then telling us how it amuses you.
What hypocrisy. When you post smarmy quotes and egg on personal comments about individuals, you have no place to lecture anyone else on their content.
Paul Samuelson said the same thing as Lew Rockwell,
“It is a badly written book, poorly organized; any layman who beguiled by the author’s previous reputation, bought the book was cheated of his five shillings. It is not well suited for classroom use. It is arrogant, bad tempered, polemical and not overly generous in its acknowledgements. It abounds in mares’ nests and confusions.”
He added “it is a work of genius”. I dunno.
Liberty Student.
Why be hostile in a situation where, with a little charity, you could make friends?
I am not perfect and nobody is, and that could be corrected with straightforward suggestions and appeals. Supposing that I speak temparementally in one situation, it would be no more wrong for me to be politely suggested against it by another otherwise temperamental person, than it would be for me to correct anyone else for being temperamental. Even Gandhi behaved nastily with people from time to time.
Let’s relax the prosecutorial tone - this is not an internet courtroom.
Could you point out criticisms he made that are blatantly wrong?
Same goes for his remarks on the ABCT. I haven’t encoutered anything on his blog that was blatantly false.
https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/how-might-libertarians-solve-the-trolley-problem/1392 +
Doesn’t understand what libertarianism is. So called “abandoning it” is thus a joke.
I fail to see the problems with his comments. If one respects the difference between what ought to be legal and what is moral - you know; the difference Rothbard, for example, emphasizes over and over again - I fail to see what’s so blatantly wrong with his comments.
One could argue that it ought not be illegal to not make the switch and still say it’s moral to, in fact, make the switch.
The problem I have with Callahan is more in style than content; he’s often relatively obscure in what he means, so that it can be interpreted in different ways.
The trolley case - as far as I see it - is a case where libertarian natural rights come into conflict with certain other moral requirements. Something can be, at the same time, be a moral requirement ànd not be allowed if one wishes to respect certain people’s (natural) rights. That’s the whole idea of the dichotomy between morality and the philosophy of law/rights.
I’m not sure that I would call it moral cowardness or something like that - as he did - the issue is a wee bit more complicated than that.
But anyway; anyone can make his own assessment. I assess (some of his) comments and challenges valuable, although I hardly think they are fundamental critiques of the idea of a libertarian conception of natural law, the idea of praxeology and Austrian economics and the normative idea of anarchy.
The personal remarks, well, they expose his character as a human being, not his capacity to reason.
I just read that thread. Hmmm, I was unaware of that context.
A lot of nasty comments and namecalling in there. I thought Callahan was just being cheeky with his comment about Rockwell and he interacts with Bob Murphy regularly in his blog. But I had no idea he had such a hostile discussion with posters here, even those with whom he was speaking for the first time. He referred to Nir as infantile, although Nir is one of the most mature posters here.
I don’t get it. I agree with what LS was saying in that thread that his unfair comments were uncalled for, considering posters here regularly cite his works. Oh well.