Nick Gillespie of Reason has done one of the best interviews I’ve seen from him, and that’s a fairly high bar. It’s of my friend and co-author (on hopefully a forthcoming journal publication) Phil Magness. Phil is the most productive 40-something in the world on issues I’m interested in.
He found huge problems with Nikole Hannah-Jones 1619 Project. He called out Princeton history professor Kevin Kruse for plagiarism. He’s found huge problems in Nancy MacLean’s hatchet job on James Buchanan. He finds some pretty scary thinking behind Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s work that’s critical of immigration. And one of his latest targets is Karl Marx.
The interview is long, but I found I could easily follow it and take notes with it at 1.25 speed.
The first few minutes are about Kruse’s plagiarism. At about 8:30, they turn to Nancy MacLean. At about 13:00, they turn to Nikole Hannah-Jones.
They then turn to the sea change in academia that has occurred since I became an assistant professor in 1975.
Some other highlights, with approximate times:
28:50: George Mason University economics department and law school as Moneyball.
33:40: Phil’s resources versus Nancy MacLean’s.
42:00: Interesting comment on Victor Davis Hanson.
43:45: Ludwig von Mises on migration.
44:00: Hans-Herman Hoppe inverts Mises’ thoughts. Hoppe is a Habermasian critical theorist and a fan of eugenicism.
50:30: Fascinating story about Mises attending Keynes’s talk in Germany in 1926, a talk that later led to Keynes’s “The End of Laissez-Faire,” and then writing a critique in which he calls Keynes out for talking positively about eugenic theory with actual Nazis in the audience.
54:25: David Hume on Oliver Cromwell. I realize the deficiencies in my Grade 10 correspondence course on British History. Either this wasn’t covered or I totally missed it or forgot it.
56:30: Marx as almost a nobody until the fateful year 1917.
1:02:20: No citations to “neo-liberal” before 1990.
1:04:45: NIMBY housing policy making it really hard for the young generation.
1:10:00: Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo (who is now Secretary of Commerce) setting up illegal border check points.
1:13:50: Neil Ferguson’s opening to push extreme lockdown policies.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Sep 15 2022 at 9:51am
Phil is one of the most intelligent individuals I know. I have learned so much from him, both in informal conversations during conferences and also in the brief time I worked doing archival work for him on the Nancy MacLean stuff. Every interaction with him has been rewarding for me.
David Henderson
Sep 15 2022 at 10:38am
Yes to everything you said.
That’s one reason I like having him at my cottage in Canada. He follows so many things, not just casually but carefully, and I learn from every conversation. Plus, in one evening at my cottage, we put together an outline of a comment for an economics journal.
Ross Levatter
Sep 15 2022 at 11:44pm
I am struck, as I think back over the years, had I been asked in my youth where I thought one would find the most intelligent intellectuals, I would have said “in philosophy.” And of course there are many there. But, on reflection now, I think the correct answer is history. Phil shines as an example, but there is also Jeff Hummel, Stephen Davies, Anthony Gregory, the late Leonard Liggio, among others. I am often in awe of the breadth as well as depth of their knowledge.
Manfred
Sep 15 2022 at 10:57am
“He found huge problems with Nikole Hannah-Jones 1619 Project. He called out Princeton history professor Kevin Kruse for plagiarism. He’s found huge problems in Nancy MacLean’s hatchet job on James Buchanan. He finds some pretty scary thinking behind Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s work that’s critical of immigration. And one of his latest targets is Karl Marx.”
DH, yes to all of this you mention, and let me add one more: it is his criticism of the Piketty-Saez-Zucman approach to inequality, calling them out for sloppy and, at times, dishonest, research. I think Magness’ criticism created a whole literature correcting and improving concepts on income inequality.
Jon Murphy
Sep 15 2022 at 12:15pm
Good point. That work, by the way, was just accepted at one of the top journals: The Economic Journal
Todd Moodey
Sep 15 2022 at 7:34pm
David–
The reference to “Ferguson” in the discussion about Covid lockdowns (1:13:50) is to Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, not the academic historian Niall Ferguson.
Regards,
Todd
David Henderson
Sep 15 2022 at 8:08pm
Oops. Good catch. Thank you. I’m so used to spelling my Hoover colleague’s name while pronouncing it correctly. 🙂
Jens
Sep 16 2022 at 2:00am
Hans-Hermann Hoppe studied in Frankfurt, among other places, and was a student of Habermas, who probably also supervised his dissertation (hard to ascertain stuff I got from wikipedia). But to what extent does that make Hoppe a critical theorist ?
Jon Murphy
Sep 17 2022 at 8:06am
As Phil explains in the interview, it’s his work and approach that makes him a Habermasian critical theorist
Protik Nandy
Sep 16 2022 at 9:21am
Art Carden
Sep 17 2022 at 7:13am
I don’t think he’s even 40 yet.
Jon Murphy
Sep 17 2022 at 8:05am
No. He’s just a few years older than me
David Henderson
Sep 17 2022 at 11:35am
Actually, he’s 40.
Comments are closed.