) At the beginning of 960, Socialist writer Freddie deBoer observed that, “Over the course of a decade or so, virtually all the professional press not explicitly labeled conservative was supplanted by a political school that emerged from the humanities departments of elite universities and began to colonize people. with higher education through social networks. The politics of these people are obscure; ideas are confusing, socially and culturally extreme and expressed through bizarre vocabulary; they alienate dissidents and are unpopular.”
In the journal Axios
, Emily Peck gives a beautiful example of the transformation that deBoer describe. In an attempt to defend the bizarreness that is “Modern Monetary Theory”, Peck totally ignores the content of the debate in order to stick to sex. “Male economists,” she writes, “are furious at the New York Times profile of TMM’s top name, Stephanie Kelton. “Gender dynamics are terrible in this field,” she adds. Really? I hope you’re not trying to make us believe that women are never wrong, never misinformed or never talk nonsense. And if women do make mistakes, are sometimes misinformed and talk nonsense, it is to be expected that they will be subject to criticism – by both men and women – in the same way that all who are wrong, misinformed or say nonsense. In the text, Peck gives only two examples of men” upset” with the profile published in the “Times” and with Kelton’s ideas. The first example comes from former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who, on Twitter, wrote that “it’s a shame to see @nytimes taking MMT as a serious intellectual movement” because “this is tantamount to publicizing fat-based diets.” , magic cures for cancer or creationism”. The second comes from Noah Smith, a former Bloomberg columnist, who wrote in a newsletter that the article was “bad”. Bad? Oh, how serious! How it was colonized by a bizarre, extremist ideology , confused and obscure, Peck seems not to have realized that Summers and Smith actually believe that the ideas of Kelton are “weak” and “misleading”, and that the “Times” article written about these ideas and their progenitors is… bad. Likewise, Peck seems not to have seen that Summers attacks TMM as “an intellectual movement” – without attacking Kelton or her sex per se
—while Smith does just the opposite of sticking to Kelton’s femininity, complaining that the article written by Jeanna Smialek “describes the clothes, the Kelton’s office, home, neighborhood, blog, speech, and personal story” rather than “dealing with the origins of the macroeconomic policy debate,” something he later explores at length. Just say that if there is someone in this debate who is being intolerant, that someone is Peck. In an attempt to give visibility to his text, Peck says that “the economy is a predominantly male and white field, and the women and people of color within it often face resistance and hostility”. Again, this is Peck’s focus,
and not of Summers or Smith. Yes, in this case, the economic theory attacked is being defended by a woman. But is there evidence that men are exempt from criticism for their theories? ) Are critics generous when talking about the problems of Marx, Keynes or Friedman? Do critics of interventionist reforms or the Laffer Curve hold back? Is Robert Reich always polite when debating with other men? Was George HW Bush simply mocked in accusing Ronald Reagan of practicing “economic voodoo”? Of course not. No one in their right mind can analyze current political divisions and conclude that male solidarity has given rise to an era of good feelings at the expense of science. Finally, Peck’s approach is not only profoundly anti-intellectual, as it replaces the debate of ideas with the debate about genitals, it is also a rudimentary form to ask for special treatment. Modern Monetary Theory is regarded by its detractors as one of the most foolish, self-indulgent and dangerous economic ideas of our generation. If detractors stopped attacking the theory just because its main detractor is a woman, they would be practicing the infantilizing sexism that Peck believes he is fighting. Now, wouldn’t that be – again – “a bad sexist dynamic”? Charles CW Cooke is a writer for National Review.
© 2022 National Review. Published with permission. Original in English