Sunday, September 5, 2010

Rudimentary, insular, in error, pseudo-scientific, overweening egotism, scornful, unbridled ego, felt born to be a ruling elite...

... hatred and contempt for conventional morality and the basic institutions of family life, revisionist, extraordinarily pernicious, malignant, power-driven statist Machiavelli, who embodied some of the most malevolent trends and institutions of the twentieth century. In short, human betterment, civilization’s advancement, and scientific truth and progress are significantly hindered as a result of his work... guess who!

3 comments:

  1. The first was his overweening egotism, which assured him that he could handle all intellectual problems quickly and accurately and led him to scorn any general principles that might curb his unbridled ego. The second was his strong sense that he was born into, and destined to be a leader of, Great Britain’s ruling elite."

    These are accurate from what I have read and ought not to be that surprising. Keynes was born and bred in a fairly rigidly class based society (especially in comparison to the U.S. - where the rigidity of class was never anywhere near what Adams, Washington and Hamilton hoped it would become within a generation or two) and it shows.

    Anyway, here is the full text of "Keynes The Man" (published in 1992): http://mises.org/etexts/keynestheman.pdf

    Have you just now discovered this commentary on Keynes by Rothbard?

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  2. No - as you note the Rothbard criticism has been around for a while.

    I'm not responding to Rothbard here - I'm responding to a guy that has so little originality he has to spend half his word count quoting Rothbard.

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  3. Ok, sounds like I am missing some background then. For the record, I've never been fond of the Mises blog.

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