The Anti-Hero [Another Lying Leftie Exposed]

The New Republic ^ | February 24, 2003 | Richard A. Posner

[Pukka Puck]

Enjoyable read.
Thanks for posting it.

[okie01]

Thanks for the ping.

Justice William O. Douglas holds the honor of being the subject of the first article that I independently recognized as what is now called a "puff piece".

In the mid-fifties, Collier's (I believe it was) published a fawning essay on Douglas, including 4C photos of him pondering the law in his chambers and as a hunter in the field (posed next to a downed moose). The overall effect was entirely unbelievable, so that one instinctively recognized it as full of exaggeration and (probably) misrepresentations and untruths.

At 14-or-so, one isn't overly concerned about politics. But I don't believe I ever took Douglas seriously from that point forward...

[Pagey]

The Reviewer writes:"...I cannot begin to imagine his thinking in publishing lies that were readily refutable by documents certain one day to be discovered...

Take into account the amount of activity/activities/treacherous actions that #42 perpetrated upon this nation for 8 years, those that we know occurred and many that won't be made public for YEARS (ie. all the possible impeachment evidence that the Senators refused to view against #42 that now resides in the National Archives for 50 years) and you see that some Former Presidents are just a little more crass than their predecessors.

[CatoRenasci]

I like Posner, but I don't think he'll make the Supremes. His Economic Analysis of Law is brilliant, but I don't think he could be confirmed, much less get nominated in this environment.

[Abundy]

Thanks for the ping...his personality doesn't surprise me given the amount of respect he had for precedent, the Constitution and traditional principles of interpretation.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I am an admirer of the UoC Economic Law group. Having heard Epstein in debate I became a great admirer of his. And, of course, Ronald Coase did get the Nobel.

[CatoRenasci]

I remember reading about the Coase theorem years before I became an economist or lawyer. As much as I am trained as a mathematical economist and as a lawyer, and as much as I respect Posner, I am suspicious of some of the more expansive claims of the law and economics types. Although as an economist, my training precedes the "ratex" heyday, my views were shaped by lots of Gary Becker (Human Capital, Economic Theory), Armen Alchian, Gerard Debreu, etc.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Are you a UofC alumnus?

[CatoRenasci]

Depends on which UofC you mean: my graduate work was at the University of California.

[CatoRenasci]

Law School was at UCLA -- where I did an economics/law seminar on A.K.Sen's Collective Choice and Social Welfare with Brian Ellickson in which the two of us tried to teach George Fletcher (now at Columbia Law School) the rudiments of economic theory. In fact, I spent a whole summer trying to get George through Stigler's Theory of Price, but George, charming fellow that he is, was absolutely impervious to economic theory. He simply couldn't suspend his disbelief in the three fundamental assuptions (continuity of demand, non-satiety, and rational preferences) long enough to understand how economic theory worked. I tried to explain that all he had to do was suspend disbelief long enough to learn the system, at which point I could introduce the math to relax the assumptions, but he wouldn't bite. Sooooo many people who don't understand economic theory miss the point of the assumptions, which is to simplify things enough that you can demonstrate results with 'ordinary' mathematics every college sophomore should know, i.e. integral and differntial calculus. You can get your assumptions much closer to 'reality', but the mathematical price of admission is fierce: you need graduate level competence in real analysis, topology and measure theory. Indeed, in my mathematical economics seminar as a graduate student, it felt more like a math class: we took turns proving for the seminar the key theorems in Debreu's Theory of Value and Hildenbrand's Core and Equilibria of a Large Economy. Can you use Lebegue Measure? Sure you can.....

[justshutupandtakeit]

It is particularly difficult to get the pin heads around here to understand the role of assumptions. They hate economists and economic theory and think Pat has an understanding of economics never realizing that his prescriptions would be a disaster for the U.S. and the ROW.
I swear most of them don't care how much the U.S. is harmed as long as other countries are too.

My grad. Micro courses were entirely math. I still have my Debreu text from grad. school.

[CatoRenasci]

Indeed. Sorry if I seemed preaching in my last, I didn't realize I was talking with a real economist (these days I only play one occasionally). Unfortunately, while working at a major NY law firm some 15 years ago, I lent my copy of Debreu to another lawyer, who had an undergraduate degree in economics. Never saw it again. I really should get another copy....

You're surely right about the difficulty getting the kiddies to understand the role of assumptions -- but, then, economists use assumptions like mathematicians, almost as axioms. Our assumptions represent intentional oversimplification. But, the kiddies who remain obdurate in the face of economic theory usually never much cared for mathematics, either.

The best comment on the study of economic theory I've ever seen came out of the introduction to the second edition of Alchian and Allen's University Economics, published in the early 70's:

[more or less] The economics most professional economists use in their work is the economics they learned as sophomores. All the work they've done subsequently through graduate school is to convince themselves that what they learned as sophomores is correct..

[justshutupandtakeit]

Preach on not a problem. It is particularly amusing to read the free trade, federal reserve/national bank and gold standard threads here. Talk about a conglomeration of ignorance. You would think Thomas Jefferson had come back to life.

There are a few who do actually know something about the subject. But they are in a distinct minority.

[CatoRenasci]

It is particularly amusing to read the free trade, federal reserve/national bank and gold standard threads here. Talk about a conglomeration of ignorance. You would think Thomas Jefferson had come back to life.

Nicely put, and too true. I especially love the ones who have read a second or third hand account of Adam Smith (possibly in the Freeman or some Libertarian Party tract) and think they are experts. Almost a parody of Gilbert & Sullivan's parody of the esthetes in Patience... "and convince them if you can, that the reign of good Queen Anne, was culture's balmiest day...." Or those who unknowingly endorse Ricardo's labor theory of value. As much as I enjoy FreeRepublic, on economic ideas I regard it as a proof of a sort of Gresham's Law of ideas.

[tet68]

Once, when the dean of the law school was too drunk to find his way to the railroad station to catch a train to a city in which he was to give a speech, Douglas considerately drove him to the station--and put him on a train to a different city.

This IS funny!

[justshutupandtakeit]

LoL actually there are a number here who have demonstrated a universal ignorance. They are ready to demonstrate it in fields as far ranging as history, political science, philosophy and culture. They also believe that hurling a few epitahs like: statist, Marxist, commie, nazi settles all arguments.

Generally a thread without an insulting attack I consider a wasted thread.

[CatoRenasci]

and this has to be my last post for the day.....

Don't even get me started thinking about the ignorance of history, philosophy, culture and politics: before studying economics and the law, I aspired to be a European intellectual historian, lacking but a dissertation (and a job) for that when I switched fields. I am particularly struck by the lack of understanding of the philosophical and historical bases of classical liberalism (which, as you know, undergirds economics) and the misunderstanding of the Enlightenment. I especially love the ultramontagne religious conservatives -- Catholics with views that would have made Bishop Boussuet or Joseph D'Maistre blush and Protestants whose views make William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Trial sound like a Unitarian -- whose defenses of the Constitution fly in the face of the dogmas they hold. This is not just Emerson's foolish consistency [which] is the hobgoblin of little minds, much beloved by small statesmen and divines, it is ignorance so colossal as to beggar the imagination. My only consolation is that, whereas liberals once (40 years ago or so) were better educated and more cultured, now liberals are such caricutures of political correctness that they know even less history or philosophy.

TTFN!