On Responding Publicly to Crackpots, Charlatans, Hypocrites, and Tenured Professors
Remnant Review
I have written many times that I select my intellectual battles carefully. It is unwise to waste time refuting fringe people with little influence.
There are fringe people who need refutations. That is because they have large followings. Even if they don't have large followings, they have hard-core dedicated followings in conservative or Christian circles. So, it is worth refuting these people, but only if you have expertise in the field.
I adopted this strategy of selective refutation early in my career. In 1965, I wrote an article refuting a crackpot Greenbacker named Gertrude Coogan. She had written a book, Money Creators, in the 1930's. The book was kept in print by an obscure Greenback publishing house that published cheaply printed paperback books. You may ask: "Why bother?"
I wrote it specifically because my future father-in-law, R. J. Rushdoony, had been taken in by Coogan and other Greenbackers. I had known this ever since he hired me as a summer intern for the Center of American Studies in 1963. The Center was the final incarnation of the libertarian William Volker Fund. The Center had shelves of giveaway books for staff members. There were Greenback books on the shelves. Rushdoony, newly hired, had placed them there.
He recognized that the Greenbackers were opposed to fractional reserve banking and central banking, just as he was, having been influenced by Ludwig von Mises. But he did not grasp the extent to which they were fiat money statists. So, I wrote the article. I sent a photocopy to him. Fortunately, he took me seriously, and he never again went down the path of the Greenbackers. I published this article in 1973 in my book, An Introduction to Christian Economics. In 1965, I never intended for anybody else to read it. I wrote it for a specific reason: to immunize Rushdoony against crackpots. My effort was successful. I'm happy to say that the Mises Institute published an updated version of my article as a mini-book: Gertrude Coogan's Bluff (2010). Download it here.
I repeated this effort in my refutation of Greenbacker Ellen Brown in 2010. She is a terrible economist. She is an equally terrible historian. In this respect, she is comparable to all of the Greenbackers. Unlike the others, she has a large following in the conservative movement, despite the fact that she is a hard-core leftist in her views on the state. I spent something like 200 hours refuting her book, Web of Debt, line by line. I created a department on my website devoted exclusively to refuting her errors, economic and historical. I did this because nobody else was going to do it, and I'm the most qualified person to refute Greenbackers. I was convinced that somebody had to do this. It is suicidal to let crackpots speak in the name of the conservative movement.
I did the same with the fringe inflationist movement known as Social Credit. I wrote and published Salvation by Inflation: The Economics of Social Credit in 1993. You can download it here.
This doesn't mean I have to refute dozens of these people. I target the major representative of a crackpot position. I go after this person if I have superior information and expertise in a particular area. Every spokesman who publicly promotes a position should be prepared to refute intellectual leaders who have successfully promoted a rival position. You can't beat something with nothing. You also should not expect to be victorious if you allow your opponents a free ride.
HAYEK'S STRATEGIC ERROR IN 1936
Probably the best example of letting an establishment spokesman get a free ride was Hayek's decision not to respond to John Maynard Keynes's book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, which was published in 1936. Hayek gave several reasons for this in retrospect, but the most famous one that he offered was this: he had spent many hours refuting Keynes's book on money, which was published in a journal, and which led to a series of exchanges in print. Privately, Keynes told him that he really didn't hold that view any longer, and that his next book was going to present his latest views. Hayek decided not to spend time refuting The General Theory because he feared that Keynes would simply change his views again. Keynes did this repeatedly. Hayek admitted decades later that this was a strategic error on his part.
Well-informed economists expected Hayek to respond in print. When he did not, they assumed that he could not respond intellectually, so younger economists began to move in the direction of Keynesianism. In 1948, Paul Samuelson's textbook on economics appeared, which became the most widely assigned college economics textbook in history. He was a neo-Keynesian. Keynes had died in 1946, so this left the field open to Samuelson, who became the Brigham Young of Keynesian economics.
By 1950, the vast majority of classroom economists under the age of 45 had become Keynesians. They no longer remembered Hayek. Hayek fell into obscurity between 1946 and late 1974, when he unexpectedly was a co-winner of the Nobel Prize. He remains the only Austrian School economist to win it.
RON SIDER
Here is another example. In 1977, an obscure historian at an obscure Baptist college, Ronald J. Sider, wrote a book on economics: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study. The book was unique, in that it was co-published by the evangelical Protestant InterVarsity Press and the Paulist Press, which promotes a non-violent version of liberation theology. I don't remember any other book co-published by two more theologically opposed publishing houses. They were not theologically opposed to Sider's position, which was an updated version of the social gospel. Sider's book became a bestseller within Protestant evangelical circles. It sold 350,000 copies, which is enormous.
It was a terrible book. It was a bad book theologically. It was a worse book economically. I had started the Institute for Christian economics in 1975. I had started my twice-monthly Remnant Review in 1974. I was busy. I didn't respond.
In late 1980, I received a phone call from a student at an evangelical Protestant seminary. He invited me to come to speak. A student group wanted to bring me in. I really didn't want to go. So, I told him that the only way that I would come to speak was if I got to debate Ron Sider. Astoundingly, he responded as follows: "That is exactly what I am inviting you to do. I have arranged for Sider to come." So, having spoken what I thought was an effective evasive response, I was trapped.
Now what? I had a great idea. I contacted David Chilton. I knew that Chilton was a good writer. I had published his unusual essay on John Knox when I was the editor of The Journal of Christian Reconstruction. In 1980, I didn't know how great a writer he was -- the best I ever edited or employed (1981-1987). I asked him to write a refutation of Sider's book. I told him what I wanted in terms of its structure. I wanted every chapter to begin with a Bible passage. Next, I wanted a direct citation from Sider's book. Then I wanted him to apply the Bible verse to Sider's position, showing that Sider's position was anti-biblical. I also had the title for the book: Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators.
I had a deadline for the manuscript, which was about two months before I was scheduled to debate Sider. I wanted the book in hand so that I could sell it for a dollar a copy at the debate. Chilton met the deadline, and my typesetter and then the printer made their deadlines, all of which was something of a miracle. Printers never meet deadlines. Typesetters rarely do. Authors rarely do. Several boxes of the books were delivered to the seminary the day before the debate.
I shall never forget the experience. I sat next to Sider at a table in front of at least a hundred students. I had the book in front of me on the table. The cover was my design: a man holding a Bible in his left hand. His right hand was holding a rope with a noose around his neck. He was suspended in midair. Sider looked at the book. He then asked me this: "How long has this book been out?" I responded: "24 hours."
Chilton's book became the most popular book that the Institute for Christian Economics ever published. It went into several editions. You can read the final edition here.
A year later, Sider wrote an updated version of his book. On the front cover, it said that in the book, Sider responds to his critics. Yet he did not mention Chilton's book once. He didn't mention Chilton. He never responded to Chilton's book in the next 20 years. Finally, in 1997, the year Chilton died of a heart attack, a new publisher published the 20th anniversary edition of the book. By then, he had abandoned most of his most obviously socialistic recommendations. He even adopted some of Chilton's recommendations, which Chilton had offered in 1981 as a refutation of Sider's position. This is one of the most extraordinary intellectual retreats I have ever encountered. Chilton beat him up in full public view, and Sider never recovered. But he would never admit just how badly Chilton had beaten him up. I discussed all this in a 1997 essay, which I reprinted as Appendix F in my economic commentary on Deuteronomy. I titled my essay, "The Economic Re-Education of Ronald. J. Sider." You can read it here.
JIM WALLIS
Jim Wallis is a hard-core Leftist who operates under the umbrella of evangelicalism. He is in the far-Left wing of the Democratic Party. He runs a tax-exempt organization, Sojourners, for which he is paid $190,000 a year, all in the name of helping the poor. (I never took a dime for 20,000 donated hours to the Institute for Christian Economics, 1975-2001.) I devote a department to refuting his social gospel articles: https://www.garynorth.com/public/department61.cfm. I do this because someone has to. Nobody within the camp of evangelical protestants took up this task. He was given a free ride intellectually for 30 years. I decided in 2005 that this was way too long.
CONCLUSION
Intellectual conflict is a battle for hearts, minds, and souls. The stakes are high. It is not sufficient to make a positive case for any position. There must also be confrontation: defense and offense. An intellectual leader must be both willing and able to refute prominent critics of his position. He must also be willing to refute expositors who promote opposing positions, but who ignore his position.
As I like to say, silence is not golden. It is yellow.