Why not to bother with Brad DeLong

The guy absolutely refuses to post any comments that provide any evidence whatsoever that he does not know what he's talking about.  See this post of DeLong's that is a "reply" to an earlier Bob Murphy post about Hoover and "liquidationism".  First, DeLong cuts off the part of Murphy's post where he provides the evidence that Hoover rejected that view and that it did not dominate his administration.  Brutally dishonest.  Bob replies in the comments, and I follow up.  DeLong then truncates the part of MY comment where I point to Larry White's JMCB paper that demonstrated that even MELLON was not a "liquidationist" and neither were the Austrians.  DeLong can wave his hands all he wants, but it doesn't make him right on this one.

An honest scholar would let his readers decide rather than refusing to post any evidence that might possibly contradict him.  And DeLong has the chutzpah to call critics of Obama's stimulus package "ethics-free"? 

Comments

[Bogdan Enache]

And I was suspected of sharing an excessive judgement in a previous comment regarding the knowledge seeking and bestowed with laurels of glory academia!

[Sukrit]

There seems to be a common tendency among left-wing blogs to shut down dissent. It's a good thing, because it probably means they don't like being shown up by better ideas, and are intellectually "on the run".

Right-wing hacks (one Republican blog, whose name escapes me at the moment, banned Ron Paul supporters) also do the same thing, but to a lesser degree.

AFAIK, libertarian blogs have the most liberal comments policies. You should see the comments on the Reason Magazine website for example.

[John V]

DeLong is a Democratic economist. He's a unbelievably partisan person. That matters more to him than anything else. He's Pelosi with a PhD in economics.

Seen that way, his hallmarks antics are never surprising...nor should they be.

[Jay Chambers]

I don't get it. Wouldn't it be easiest for him to simply moderate all comments like some blogs rather than edit them post-posting?

(Or does that happen now?)

Or maybe he wants people to know he's an ass outright?

[aje]

You are not entitled to your own facts

Unbelievable!!

[libertyfirst]

This makes it clear that intellectual honesty is not a major issue in DeLong's agenda... but there's nothing new: the true believer, Hoffer docet, is insensible to reason and facts, and a fortiori to ethics.

[Mike]

Have any of DeLong's colleague's spoken to him about his blogging?

Seriously, whatever you think about his politics, he doesn't demonstrate any devotion to any of the core values of intellectual discourse on that blog.

I'd hate for him to be the face of my department.

[Unit]

"Editing reality with both hands"....

[Steve Horwitz]

Oh Unit wins the thread .... very nice!

[Steve Horwitz]

And yes, I'm evidently not entitled "to my own facts." DeLong appears to accept a Nirvana theory of historical truth whereby we already live in the world where all truths have been revealed and therefore there can be no "new" facts that might challenge the status quo. As if we needed more evidence of his lack of intellectual honesty and scholarly values.

It certainly explains his policy toward dissenting comments.

[Euler]

It is amazing to me that this guy is a tenured professor at one of the top university's in the world. I would be embarrassed as a student or a colleague to have my department associated with such an intellectually dishonest clown.

[Euler]

That should be universities obviously not university's. I need some coffee.

[Roger Koppl]

I don't think it's a accident that the left is worse than the right about squelching intellectual diversity, whereas libertarians are best. The liberal tradition of Hume and Smith is skeptical and places a lower relative weight on both codified knowledge and individual intelligence. Hume and Smith were anti-rationalists, though not irrationalists. You sort of have to be a rationalist to be hard right and, especially, to be left. You have to believe in the power of experts. That quickly and easily morphs into the posture of a wizard. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" We can legitimately stifle dissent because we are smarter and better than the dissenters. We suffer the tyranny of experts.

[Steve Horwitz]

Come to think of it Roger, DeLong kinda does look like the little man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

[russell]

i had never heard of delong until i started reading bob murphy's blog. it's hard not to draw conclusions about the guy based on things like this incident. and then i saw the guy in a couple of videos...and my premature conclusions were proven correct. the guy is not a serious debater of ideas. now, i know name calling is no way to argue, but basically, he's comes off as a jerk.

[simone]

DeLong should be ignored as the result of his intellectual dishonesty. I no longer read his blog nor pay particular attention to his ideas when he is referenced. I suggest all do the same.

[Dave Prychitko]

In the voice of the Soup Nazi, we should shout to DeLong "No two dollar tip-jar donation to YOU!"

http://www.typepad.com/t/app/public/tj?__mode=tip_confirm&id=122712&user_id=106400

[Bill woolsey]

Thanks to the pointer to White's paper. I hadn't read it before.

Were there any liquidationists?

[Bill woolsey]

Delong's reponse to Murphy appears to be that Mellon determined fiscal and monetary policy regardless of Hoover's preferences. If a President wants a different policy than his Treasury secretary prefers, he must replace him, because naturally, the Treasury secretary would defy the President.

An alternative theory is the Mellon took issue with Hoover's policies in private and then carried them out as ordered. I would also note that Mellon might have been arguing against various Hoover administration policies and what Hoover heard, understood, or remembered were liquidationist claims.

Hoover--we need to plow under the crops and kill the calves and lambs to get farm prices up. Mellon--this is an insane destructive policy. You must be kidding. Hoover--but what will the farmers do? They can't pay their debts. Mellon--it is better for the famers to go bankrupt than to plow under crops. Hoover thinks or remembers -- Mellon just wants to let the farmers go bankrupt.

I found DeLong's list of things that Mellon supposedly stopped Hoover from doing to be more aimed at baiting Murphy than anything realistic.

In fact, a lot of them looked to be more like a list of what DeLong thinks should have been done in the Depression rather than what Mellon stopped Hoover from doing, or even what the Roosevelt administration did.

[Doug Thorson]

I did not know DeLong before this post and will not waste my time getting to know him now. It seems that this pattern, of censoring the facts, has become the course of action of the "anointed" in their endeavor to force their remaking of America into a socialists society. Thomas Sowell makes the point in his book, "The Vision of the Anointed," that to push their political agenda that,

"...Typically, there has been an additional and crucial ingredient - some method by which feedback from reality has been prevented, so that a dangerous course of action could be blindly continued to at fatal conclusion."

Thanks again Steve for engaging in the battle of ideas.

[Greg Ransom]

Check out the contempt Boldrin has for DeLong in this UCDavis debate on the CATO letter:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/03/debate-at-uc-davis-between-brad-delong-and-michele-boldrin.html

Also, don't miss the picture of Hayek grabbing a giant bull named "Inflation" by the balls on the Taking Hayek Seriously blog: http://hayekcenter.org/?p=498

[Grant]

I once took the time to post a point-by-point refutation of one of his posts as a comment. He simply truncated it down to one or two sentences and tried to disprove them (not even correctly!). I was unable to comment on that post again.

Not being part of academia I don't expect equal treatment, but it was still pretty low of him.

[Mario Rizzo]

Hoover reviewed his policies in his 1932 speech accepting the Republican nomination for president. It is quite long. Not a word about liquidation. In fact, it is just the opposite: preserve or restore all economic activity.

[Lawrence H. White]

I want to publicly thank Steve Horwitz for fighting the good fight here. (I've been traveling and unable to chime in sooner.)

Brad DeLong wrote:

[I'm sorry. You are not entitled to your own facts: please use the facts that Milton Friedman and the rest of us are using.]

The most charitable interpretation is that DeLong meant: "You are not entitled to make stuff up". But since he's the sole judge of what is fact and what is not, it really boils down to: "You are not entitled to introduce evidence that clashes with what I believe."

DeLong continued:

[Note that Larry White's "evidence" that Mellon was not a liquidationist is an undocumented and unsupported claim that Herbert Hoover was a liar...]

This is not a strong move on DeLong's part, because anybody who reads my paper (link in Steve's post above) will see that it offers more than an "unsupported claim that Herbert Hoover was a liar". I offered reasons to believe that Hoover's memoir, written long after the fact, was intended to make Hoover look good by using Mellon as a foil, and so should be suspected of offering a caricature of Mellon's views. Having combed through Mellon's public speeches and writings, I provided evidence of views that were expressly non-liquidationist. I noted that Mellon supported Fed rate cuts (as an ex officio member of the FOMC) and increased public expenditures after 1929. If DeLong doesn't know all this, he shouldn't suggest that he's read my paper. If he does know all this, draw your own conclusion.

As I pointed out in the paper, it's inconsistent for DeLong to accept the veracity of Hoover's memoir regarding Mellon's views, while rejecting its veracity regarding Hoover's own views.

[Barkley Rosser]

Brad DeLong does censor a lot of comments, and is notorious for doing so. But then, Greg Mankiw does not allow any comments at all.

[James]

I had never heard of DeLong either until reading Bob Murphy.

Like some others, I wrote two comments on DeLong's blog. One was removed immediately. The second was never posted. Both comments were brief, clearly articulated, relevant. And polite!

I have to agree with the others: I see very little interest in honest debate -- certainly not with Austrians.

[James]

Speaking of intellectually dishonest Keynesians, I saw a clip of Krugman on CSPAN the other day and a caller asked him why Americans should trust Krugman and the Keynesians to "fix" the economy when they never saw the crisis coming. Meanwhile, the caller added, Ron Paul and the Austrian economists DID see it coming, AND they can explain why it happened.

Krugman, after regaining speech, muttered something about "I'm not even going to talk about the Austrians (not a major school), but...look...uhhh..."

Not a major school? What is this, football? Purely dishonest.

[Paul Yarbles]

I just got censored by J. Bradford! I guess my crime is that I think the Geithner plan is horse manure. As is Delong's lame defense. At least he didn't edit it this time. I once got into a debate with him and he started to edit my responses so that their points were greatly weakened.

What is his problem? Is he an academic or a dishonest partisan hack? Does he want a job in the Obama administration so bad that he censors opposing views? What a tool!

[History Kid]

Yes, I've noticed the same, regarding De Longs editing. I started commenting after being annoyed by some comments he made at a lecture, that were plainly ignorant. Delete. Delete. Delete.