Niall Ferguson’s “Johnnie was a homo” assault on the economics of John Maynard Keynes, which, as Jonah Goldberg helpfully points out, has been made many times before (so there’s nothing wrong with it, I guess), suggests just how much the neo-con right hates Keynes, hates him for being right. Keynes’ monumental crime was not buggery but rather the creation of an economic theory that justifies government intervention in the marketplace in times of crisis, a theory that bears the highly inconvenient distinction of being correct. No wonder Fergie and his ilk rage! The damn fairy got it right!
Afterwords
If Niall could get his nose out of his own arse once in a while, he’d notice that the neo-Keynesian U.S. economy, as goosed by totally not Niall’s favorite black guy Barack Obama, is outperforming Britain’s neo-Hayekian train wreck. But since he can’t, he won’t.
Actually, there’s a lot not to like about Keynes, as his biographer Robert Skidelsky points out. Keynes was a snob, a racist, and cared little for the lower classes. He always thought socialism was a joke, and not a funny one. The thought of the horny-handed sons of toil laying their horny hands on the levers of power repulsed him. But the thought of millions being condemned to idleness and poverty repulsed him as well. And he thought government could do something about it. And he was right.
Afterwords, Part Two
As Brendan O’Neill points out, Keynes wasn’t just a snob and a racist; he was also director of the British Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944, at a time when Adolph Hitler was giving eugenics a pretty bad name, at least to a lot of people.
As Brad DeLong points out, in a posting headed “Keynesian economics: The Gay Science?”, Niall Ferguson has been bitching about Keynes’ homosexuality for a long time.
Update
At the American Prospect, Jeet Heer gives a far more coherent take on the right’s fear o’ Keynes than this brief squawk.
