Don't Forget About F. A. Hayek!!!

Greg Mankiw reports on the ceremony at the White House as Becker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Unfortunately during his statement President Bush actually states that with this award Becker is only 1 of 2 individuals to win both the Nobel Prize and the Medal of Freedom -- the other being Milton Friedman.  Now I am huge fan of both Becker and Friedman and acknowledge that they are worthy recipients of any honor or prize awarded to economists.  But President Bush should have talked to his Dad before the ceremony, as the first President Bush gave the award to F. A. Hayek.

It reminds me of something I try to tell my students about truthfulness and factual accuracy.  When novelist write we expect their stories to be "true", but not factual.  When journalist write the stories are often factual, but not true.  Scholars, if they want to make a contribution, write books and articles that are both true and factual.  But politicians when they speak or write, we should never expect them to be either truthful or factual.

Unfortunately, in this instance President Bush proved this point once again.

Comments

[max]

Please could you just say Bush instead of President Bush. That dude merits not respect at all.

[Fabio Franco]

Prof. Boettke,
You suggest that journalists' stories are often untrue. That same point of view is devastatingly brought to bear by Jean-François Revel's "The Useless Knowledge" ("La connaissance inutile"), which has an unforgettable first line: "Of all the forces which move the world the first and foremost is the lie" ("La première de toute les forces qui mène le monde, c'est le mensonge"). It came out in 1988 but unfortunately it is more up-to-date than ever. Whoever immerses himself in this book will never read a newspaper or watch a news program the same way again.

But Revel goes much further than just thrashing journalists. He attacks practically all intellectuals (those Hayek would have called "second-hand dealers in ideas") and argues that even "scholars" are often just as dishonest as journalists (he remembers Carl Sagan's involvement in the "Nuclear Winter" farce, for example). As for teachers, perhaps the most influential people in determining a society's world view, he has a special chapter: "The treason of the professors". Revel accuses those teachers who propagate the socialist ideology as treacherous perpetrators of lies (whereas classical liberalism cannot be called an ideology for it is based on empiricism).

Revel's revelations churn up a rather stenchy subject: the fact that so many American universities are still plagued by socialist and left-leaning faculty (Becker and Posner wrote about this in their Oct. 07, 2007 post). Both Revel and Hayek would be proud of the intellectual battle you and your colleagues at GMU wage against this sinister reality, a war they also fought during their lifetime. It is essential to fight this good fight, for the outcome will profoundly influence a society's world view which, in turn, will ultimately determine a nation's future.

[D.G. Lesvic]

Response to Fabio Franco:

Classical liberalism is not based on empiricism. It is based on economics.

[Rafe]

Nit picking a little, classical liberalism is an ideology because the principles of freedom, rule of law, property rights and a robust moral framework cannot be derived, based on or deduced from any set of facts or discriptive/explanatory theories. Of course ideologies have been brought into disrepute because the most popular ideologies of modern times have not produced peace, freedom and prosperity, rather the reverse. However the principles of classical liberalism can claim to offer the best chance of leading to those good things. Still it is an ideology (using the term in a neutral sense) although it happens to be a good one and it is also is informed by the best that we know about economics and other disciplines.

[Ludwig]

I don´t believe it is nit-picking. It is an essential point. "No ideology" is not an option; the choice is between good ideology and bad ideology.

[Fabio Franco]

The commentaries above give me the opportunity to cite another book by Revel, "The Great Parade" (in the chapter "Socialism versus Liberalism: a debate with marked cards"):

"Liberalism was never an ideology, that is, it is not a theory based on concepts conveived prior to experience, nor is it an inflexible dogma independent of the course of events or the results of actions. It is merely a set of observations in relation to facts that have already occured. The general ideas that are derived from liberalism do not constitute a global and definitive doctrine, which aspires to become the model of all reality, but rather a series of hypotheses based on interpretation of events that effectively happened. Adam Smith, when he decided to write The Wealth of Nations, attested that certain countries are richer than others. He worked to identify, in the economy of these countries, aspects and methods which could explain this greater wealth, from which he could extract some recommendations."

More: "... every ideology is an aberration. There cannot exist an ideology that is just. Ideology is intrinsically false, independent of its causes, motivations and ends, which consist in creating a fictitious adaptation of the human being to his own self..."

He also vilifies those who subserviently mimick the same equivocated vision of the socialists, namely that of regarding liberalism as an ideology.

[Rafe]

Not wanting to debate the meaning of "ideology", just noting the is/ought dualism. Economists have often been unclear about the role of ethical or moral values in economic discourse, for instance I can't recall how much there was about moral sentiments in "The Wealth of Nations". In his 1980 Tanner Lecture Stiglitz detected a hint of disapproval in a comment by Jevons on the Morrill Tariff Act of 186, "the most retrograde piece of legislation that this century has witnessed". http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/stigler81.pdf

Those who are interested in the place of values in the liberal order might like to check out the Tanner Series, now based at the University of Utah. http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures.html

Many economists have contributed, among them Robinson, Sachs, Sen (twice), Simon, Solow, Stigler (just among the Ss). http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/rstu.html