Category Archives: Celebrity

UPDATED: John Maynard Keynes: Where’s The Genius? (Part 1)

Capitalism, Celebrity, Classical Liberalism, Communism, Debt, Economy, History, Inflation, Intellectualism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media

“John Maynard Keynes: Where’s The Genius?! (Part 1)” is the first part of my conversation with Benn Steil. Dr. Steil is senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book is “The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order”:

1) ILANA MERCER: Congratulations on a beautifully written book, so carefully researched, with both archival and secondary material. Followers of the Austrian School of economics, as I believe we both are, have a reflexive disdain for John Maynard Keynes. Nevertheless, the portrait you drew of him was powerful and persuasive. For example, it is easy to sympathize with Keynes’ frustration with the American mind—so prosaic and anti-intellectual—during the critical Bretton-Woods negotiations. There is much to admire too about Keynes’ “unrelenting nationalism.” I had never before thought of Keynes as an English patriot, first. You, a Hayekian thinker, managed to humanize J. M. Keynes. How did that happen?

BENN STEIL: Thanks Ilana. I’m a great admirer of Hayek’s writing, as you know, but I’ve never been one to wear the Austrian (or any other) label. More importantly, “The Battle of Bretton Woods” is in large measure a parallel biography of Keynes and Harry Dexter White, and no biographer succeeds in engaging readers of any stripe without empathy towards his subjects. In the case of Keynes, I may not sympathize with his economics in the way that his greatest biographer, Robert Skidelsky, does, but I found it not in the least bit difficult to admire him as a gifted public intellectual and to warm to him as a human being, with all his obvious flaws and foibles. One aspect of Keynes that I tried to bring out is how fundamental his English upbringing and nationalism were to shaping both his economic and political thinking. He was a defective diplomat, no doubt, but he took to the role with ease and enthusiasm.

2) MERCER: My mistake. You were awarded the 2010 Hayek Book Prize, so I presumed you favored Austrian economics. But back to Keynes. As you reveal, he “never bothered with a [doctorate]; he hadn’t even a degree in economics,” and “he formally studied economics for a brief period” only. (page 61) His election to “a life fellowship at Kings College, Cambridge, at twenty-six” seemed to rely on familial membership in Britain’s intellectual peerage. Yet, as you contend, he amalgamated the qualities of “mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher” “with a genius that no economist has ever matched.” (page 62) Guide the perplexed, please.

STEIL: It’s important to understand that in Keynes’s day, …”

Read the rest of the conversation, “John Maynard Keynes: Where’s The Genius?! (Part 1),” on WND. Stay tuned for the conclusion, next week, of the Steil-Mercer conversation about Keynes.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:

• At the WND Comments Section. Scroll down and “Say it.”

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• By clicking to “Like,” “Tweet” and “Share” this week’s “Return To Reason” column.

UPDATE (8/15): I forewarned Benn Steil, who is the nicest gentleman—and, unlike J. M. Keynes, a jolly good sport—that our readers are hard-core. If only these readers used respectful language, but there is nothing I can do about the conduct of others.

It has to be obvious from my questions to Dr. Steil (part 2 is still to come) that I have the utmost respect for his scholarship and that I enjoyed what was an impressively researched, beautifully written book. I am not one of those tinny ideologues who’d rather miss out on an important intellectual contribution just because it doesn’t comport 100% with my philosophy. I’m too curious for that.

Benn Steil and I began communicating when I penned an irate blog about a negative review of his book in The Times Literary Supplement.

UPDATED: Xerxes Is On The Move

Africa, Ancient History, Barack Obama, Celebrity, Government, South-Africa

At a cost of “between $60 million to $100 million,” “President Obama goes to sub-Saharan Africa this month,” reports the usually adoring Washington Post. A good part of the comitatus—“‘the sprawling apparatus’ that encompasses … the emperor’s household and its personnel”—is going along for the ride.

The obscene details via The WaPo:

Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bulletproof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.
The elaborate security provisions — which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post.

…

This ugly extravaganza is par for the course—and grounds well covered in Cullen Murphy’s book “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome,” in which Murphy draws the unflattering parallels between the imperial rule of ancient Rome and that of modern America.

The First Family will be stopping in our former hometown of Cape Town. (As if the FLOTUS has not already propagandized from South Africa, during a 2011 trip. Inoculate yourself. Read “Clueless in South Africa With Mrs. Obama.”)

UPDATE (6/14): In case you forgot who Xerxes was, read “‘300’: Defending Civilization Can Be Messy.”

Self-Mutilation In Pursuit Of Certainty

Celebrity, Healthcare, Hollywood, Intellectual Property Rights, Pseudoscience, Science

Angelina Jolie tells of undergoing a radical procedure, a “preventive double mastectomy,” to remove all her healthy breast tissue, so as to mitigate against the possibility of future disease. Jolie carries the “‘faulty’ gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases [the] risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.” She writes:

My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.
Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.
Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer …

In response to an earlier spate of such surgeries, Karen de Coster spoke out against “Big Pharma and a medical establishment that has … [built up] a tremendous level of hysteria that has people lining up for quick solutions to complex problems that have yet to materialize.”

… this has nothing to do with a noble choice between life and “beauty.” Allyn, like so many other women, was frightened into this procedure by the medical establishment that has so much to gain from these costly interventions that insurance companies agree to cover. Yet, try getting your insurance company to cover $500 worth of acupuncture or non-standard physical therapy. The government’s cancer institute gently promotes this procedure, as well as the satellites of Big Cancer.

And back in 2009, Karen panned the “truly sick development of the modern medical state. Women who are told they are at-risk for breast cancer choose major, invasive surgery, based on these risk conclusions, when they are perfectly healthy”:

Cancer organizations recommend genetic counseling before and after the test, produced by Utah-based Myriad Genetics. During the past 13 years, the company has tested thousands of blood samples, and revenues have grown 50 percent in the last year, though the company declined to reveal details about the number of tests taken each year.
Myriad is the sole source of the test, for which it holds a gene patent — a controversial issue that is being challenged in federal court in New York by numerous medical groups, including the American Medical Association, which argue that granting a patent for a part of the human body impedes research and treatment.
So there is one company that can conduct the test, and it holds a patent to keep out competition?

These are poignant questions.

UPDATE II: The Mad, Moronic, Unapologetic Showmen & Women Of Mainstream Media (The Bombing Suspects & The Know-Nothings Of Big Media)

Celebrity, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Objectivism, Propaganda, Terrorism

Over the course of a few hours today (April 17), the hysterical and histrionic US media—front men and women for CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the rest—have gone from asserting the arrest of a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, to screening amateur images of their fantasy felon, to decamping to the courthouse in expectation of an arraignment, to confessing without a smidgen of shame that nothing of the sort had transpired.

We lied. OK, we fibbed. Let’s move on. Quick. There is to be no meta reporting about the misreporting.

“No arrests in Boston bombing.”

How ironic, then, that readers have demanded that I justify, even atone, for my assessment of the sum-total of one coequal (female) branch of the media-military-congressional complex:

“Big hair, an overbite, botox and mind-numbing banalities.”

UPDATE I: “FBI scolds media…” Justifiably. Still, pot, kettle, black.

UPDATE II (April 18): BEATING JON STEWART TO CALLING THE MEDIA’S BLUFF. You’d have saved time—and spared yourself the confusion generated on the Colosseum of cretins that is American mainstream media—had you, my reader, come straight to Barely A Blog for news and commentary served up straight. Think about it: Jon Stewart, a comedian who cleaves to fact (if not to liberty’s principles), only aired the truth later that evening.

Barely a Blog beat Jon Stewart to it. BAB called the media’s bluff @ 11:20 am on that day (April 17).

Show your appreciation.

UPDATE III: THE SUSPECTS & THE KNOW-NOTHINGS OF BIG MEDIA. “Arrogant, blasé, completely casual, brazen”: These are some of the adjectives the big mouths of big media are using to describe the demeanor of the 2 Boston bombing suspects in the footage released by the FBI.

These security and counter-intelligence loudmouths festooning cable and news networks and carrying forth on TV know nothing; they know no more than you do. They are just moving their giant gobs, performing as the compulsive exhibitionists that they are.