Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America. By Lynn Parramore
Ask people to name the
key minds that have shaped America’s burst of radical right-wing attacks on
working conditions, consumer rights and public services, and they will
typically mention figures like free market-champion Milton Friedman,
libertarian guru Ayn Rand, and laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and
Ludwig von Mises. James McGill Buchanan
is a name you will rarely hear unless you’ve taken several classes in
economics. And if the Tennessee-born Nobel laureate were alive today, it would
suit him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians,
and even many economics students have little understanding of his work.
New Economic Thinking
The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.
New Economic Thinking
The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.
That is a dangerous
blind spot, MacLean argues in a meticulously researched book, Democracy
in Chains, a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. While
Americans grapple with Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency, we may be missing the
key to changes that are taking place far beyond the level of mere politics.
Once these changes are locked into place, there may be no going back.
An Unlocked Door in
Virginia: MacLean’s book reads
like an intellectual detective story. In 2010, she moved to North Carolina,
where a Tea Party-dominated Republican Party got control of both houses of the
state legislature and began pushing through a radical program to suppress voter
rights, decimate public services, and slash taxes on the wealthy that shocked a
state long a beacon of southern moderation. Up to this point, the figure of
James Buchanan flickered in her peripheral vision, but as she began to study
his work closely, the events in North Carolina and also Wisconsin, where
Governor Scott Walker was leading assaults on collective bargaining rights,
shifted her focus.
Could it be that this
relatively obscure economist’s distinctive thought was being put forcefully
into action in real time?.. read more:
