Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

I was promised a recession.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

I really should read my own blog.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

We still have time to mess this up!

Consistently wrong since 2002

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

People are complicated. Love is not.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The damage done

The damage done

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As long as everyone is having a good time talking about U. of Chicago law prof Todd Henderson, here’s a question I like to ask people: which has done more damage to the world, the University of Chicago Economics Department or the Committee on Social Thought all the Straussian stuff? I asked two friends who went to Chicago this question recently and one was adamant that it was the econ, the other that it was the committee thing Straussian stuff.

Let’s make this an open thread also too. Just for fun, this is one of my favorite YouTube clips:

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  3. 3.

    Citizen Alan

    I had to go look up the Committee on Social Thought — it sounded liked something Chairman Mao would have started. What specific horrors is it blamed for? The evil wrought by the Chicago economists is well-known to me.

  4. 4.

    Punchy

    University of Chicago Economics Department or the Committee on Social Thought?

    Whereas on Fridays, we used to have beer blogging, now Dig Dug has to go uber esoteric.

    God dammit, Boulevard Wheat or Moose Drool in 3 hours?

  7. 7.

    Steve

    I’m going to take the know-nothing position and say that while I’m very familiar with the Chicago School of Economics (having been to law school and all that), I have never ever heard of the Committee on Social Thought.

  10. 10.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    @Mark S.:

    I still don’t really understand what it is, but it’s the birthplace of neoconservatism.

  11. 11.

    Kelrian

    Oh, the Chicago Econ group, by far. Been reading Naomi Klein’s book about economic shock therapy recently and it’s slow going.

    I have to keep putting it down because I get so mad that I can’t see straight.

  13. 13.

    Ailuridae

    The Economics Department without a doubt. If you were assessing blame for the current U-3 and poverty levels about 2/3 to 3/4 of the blame would go solely to ideas produced from within the Chicago School.

    Now, the Committee on Social thought folks (especially the undergrads in Fundamentals: Issues and Texts) are far more irritating but haven’t had substantial impact outside of annoying people like me.

  17. 17.

    John PM

    I will say the Econ department because it was Milton Friedman hammering a young David Brooks that has given us the modern Bobo. I graduated from Chicago in 1996 and I still have no idea what the Committee on Social Thought entails.

  19. 19.

    Loneoak

    Their Department of Human Genetics puts out some of the most egregiously stupid genomics claims. The Econ department is truly loathsome, but some of their geneticists are now working with economists. It’s a terrifying combo.

  20. 20.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    @John PM:

    So I think it may not actually be the center of the Straussian stuff. My friend had told me it was.

  21. 21.

    beltane

    Whatever the Committee on Social Thought is, it cannot possibly have done more damage to our world than the University of Chicago Economics Dept, which is arguably the wellspring of FAIL in our times.

  23. 23.

    Ailuridae

    @Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:

    When were you at U of C?

    DougJ: Hrmm, When I think prominent neo-conservatives I tend to think of them nearly all being Ivy League educated. I guess Wolfowitz and Perle are actually pretty big fish in that tank though

  24. 24.

    ...now I try to be amused

    I hope I live long enough to see the Chicago School as discredited as the Soviet system.

  27. 27.

    jayjaybear

    @Mark: To be fair, when Christie is throwing his weight around, it’s generally all you CAN see.

    *I’m a fattie, so I’m allowed…

  28. 28.

    Medrawt

    I really, truly, endlessly, bemoan all the public and semi-public figures who go around devaluing my college degree.

    Ailuridae – the Fundamentals kids always struck me as weird and unbalanced as well, but I must admit that one of the best classes I took at Chicago was listed as a Fundamentals class*, and in retrospect I wish I’d taken more classes devoted to the close reading of a single important text.

    (That class would be Ulysses, which was taught by arguably the most impressive teacher I had at Chicago, who taught James Joyce as a sideline, his primary appointment being in the medical school [a pathologist, I believe].)

    Also, at least in my personal experience, the vestiges of Strauss’ influence on the actual curriculum as experienced by contemporary undergraduates is pretty benign; I really got a lot out of my Western Civ class, but I think I had a good teacher.

  32. 32.

    Chyron HR

    @Loneoak:

    Their Department of Human Genetics puts out some of the most egregiously stupid genomics claims.

    But I’ve heard now that people will be shorter in height, they can fit twice as many in the same building site. (They say it’s alright.)

  33. 33.

    Ailuridae

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:

    In the sense that Strauss is the intellectual underpinning of neo-conservatism I can see blaming the CST or the PoliSci department at U of C for some disastrous foreign policy decisions. But that is painting with too broad of a brush, right? John Mearscheimer is in the poli sci department too.

    Random side note: A lot of departments at U of C have a pretty open animosity towards the CST. So Allan Bloom (who died the week I arrived on campus) or Leon Kass could teach a course of Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Ethics but the course would never be cross listed with Philosophy or Classics. I asked a Philosophy professor once why that was and he said something to the effect of “You are more qualified to teach that course than Leon Kass is”.

  34. 34.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    Ok, one is also allowed to crow, right? I mean, one does so in this space all the time, and so one will take it upon oneself to do it again:

    Ta-Nehisi not only front-paged me — he gave me an entire post! Eeep! http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/09/endorsement-deals/63509/

    I don’t know what’s happened with my internet mojo lately, but oh my, if having TNC write an entire post about my blog isn’t just the cherry on the top…!

    (The whole ice-cream sundae having been started by this very blog right here. Balloon Juice is the scoop of chocolate!)

  35. 35.

    El Tiburon

    @Punchy:

    Whereas on Fridays, we used to have beer blogging, now Dig Dug has to go uber esoteric.

    Yeah, somebody got a set of Encyclopedias* for his birthday.

    …which has done more damage to the world, the University of Chicago Economics Department or the Committee on Social Thought all the Straussian stuff?

    I think Naomi Klein would suggest the Chicago School.

    *For those under 25, an Encyclopedia was the book form of Google.

  38. 38.

    Ailuridae

    @Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:

    92 to 97 but then I worked for the University through 2000 or so. I actually took Islamic Civ there and had a false “a ha!” moment where I thought you might have been my TA.

    @Medrawt:

    But that’s because Stephen Meredith is awesome. I worked at the Pub and he was easily my favorite customer ever.

  39. 39.

    Ailuridae

    Random question:

    Who is the person behind Colbert on his right who is spending the entire opening remarks not trying to laugh. Glasses, unkept hair – he’s awfully familiar

  40. 40.

    Ailuridae

    @Napoleon:

    Seconded. Its really a must read. Fox is basically the best thing that Time has going for it right now.

    Emily, that’s fantastic on the TNC front. Awesome actually

  41. 41.

    Medrawt

    Ailuridae –

    Yeah, he was really awesome. One of many professors I should have made an effort to get to know, but didn’t, unfortunately. By the time I showed up on campus (01-05) Kass had shuffled off to advise GWBush on ethics and write about his disgust for ice cream cones, so I assumed that when I heard professors referring to him dismissively, they were being freer than they would’ve been had he still been around.

  43. 43.

    Allan

    x79 myself, by the way.

    The number of us among the BJ ranks reminds me that we mustn’t neglect the Chicago School of Comedy and its salubrious influence on us all.

    Compass Players, Nichols & May, Second City, and all that.

  44. 44.

    John PM

    @Allan: #42

    Agreed. The Compass and Something Wonderful Right Away have prominent places on my bookshelf. I attended 92-96 and spent a great deal of my time in Off-Off Campus and University Theater. If Chicago had had a theater department in my day, I would have graduated with a theater degree, but instead I went with history.

  46. 46.

    El Cid

    Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez improves her outreach to the local Vietnamese community.

    Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, said in a recent Spanish-language interview that “the Vietnamese” and Republicans are trying to wrest control of her seat in Congress, from which “we have done so much for our community.”
    __
    Her opponent, Republican Assemblyman Van Tran – who immigrated from Vietnam — asked for an apology Thursday. He described Sanchez’s remarks as “offensive and wrong.”…
    __
    …”The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, (trying) to take this seat – this seat (from which) we have done so much for our community – to take this seat and give it to this Van Tran, who is very anti-immigrant and very anti-Hispanic.”

    According to the article, just under 10% of the local population is Vietnamese.

  47. 47.

    jo6pac

    I’m sure the citizens in Chile in the late 60s and through out South America would agree. Then now the Balkan States along with Poland fell the same pain. Yep uncle milton plan is coming home soon. Hang kids it’s about to get weirder.

  48. 48.

    AlanDean

    Leo Strauss had the idea that the only human right was for the few to rule the many, in tyranny. Of course he was the among the few. This shocked the crap out of me when I first read about him. Even my conservative cousins recoiled when they found out what a pig he was. Jan Allen has good articles on him with references but it is at myOpera and I don’t feel like signing up. Any Opera users?

  49. 49.

    Joseph Nobles

    @Ailuridae: I don’t know who that guy is. He is finding it hard to keep a straight face.

    So I finally make it to the Steve King/Stephen Colbert exchange. 1:49:00, right at the end of King’s 5 minutes. King says that Colbert was not actually packing the corn. He was taking crates off the truck and not putting them onto the truck, says King.

    I was outraged at Colbert’s deceivery. Even though I figured it would be Colbert doing some comedy bits about being hapless on the work site, I went to the Colbert Report website and watched both segments on the migrant farm worker “fall back position.” Sure enough, Colbert is cracking a lot of jokes about how hard the work actually is. The Laverne & Shirley shout-out was especially cute.

    But get this: there’s no footage at all in either segment of Colbert taking crates off a truck. Or putting crates onto a truck, for that matter. Sometimes the corn and beans get “diverted” from another person’s crate or basket into Colbert’s, but the corn is always flowing the correct direction.

    Why did Steve King do that? Why did he have to say something patently incorrect and easily verifiable when there was plenty of things he could have legitimately pointed to?

    OK, don’t answer that.

  51. 51.

    nancydarling

    Since this is an open thread and Anne Laurie paid homage to Pinky and the Brain in an earlier thread, what are your favorite Pinky responses to Brain’s question, ” Pinky, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” My favorites are: “Well, yeah, Brain, but how are we going to get a monkey to dental floss?” and “Well, yeah, Brain, but if I marry Pippi Longstockings, what will our kids look like?”

    I need some silliness right now as the world is too much with us. On a lighter note, I recently dug almost 40 pounds of yams in my garden, the heaviest weighing 1lb. 8oz. Any ideas on how to use a yam that big? I’ve considered sweet potato pie and combining it with my Yukon Golds in a potato salad.

  52. 52.

    JGabriel

    DougJ:

    I asked two friends who went to Chicago this question recently and one was adamant that it was the econ, the other that it was the committee thing Straussian stuff.

    Don’t they kind of go hand-in-hand? I have a friend who refers to the whole scene/gestalt as the UChicago Boys, with kind of the same tone I usually reserve for Ayn Rand. Although I suppose it’s possible that he’s referring strictly to the economics school.

    If forced, I guess I’d pick the econ side as worse than the Straussians. The Straussians have been a fairly evil bunch, but the econ policies have harmed more people through anonymity, influence, and implementation.

    .

  53. 53.

    JGabriel

    @srv:

    I would argue it is a toss up between the UC Econ dept and the Harvard MBA school.

    The damage from UC Econ dept. is much more global and large scale than that of the Harvard MBA program and its graduates.

    .

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @nancydarling:”I think so, Brain, but how will we get a pair of Abe Vigoda’s pants?” and “I think so, Brain, but how will we get the Spice Girls into the paella?”

  55. 55.

    fasteddie9318

    Econ. If this country ever really adopts neo-conservatism permanently, then maybe you can rethink that, but the Chicago School has ruined lives and killed people all over the world, whereas Strauss’ brain-damaged progeny have only really fucked over a couple of places.

    Besides, the CST wasn’t all or even mainly Strauss; he did a lot of his work out of poli sci, while the CST also from time to time housed credible folks like Marshall Hodgson.

  59. 59.

    Kerry Reid

    @John PM:
    For a school without a theater department, U of C can claim some heavy hitters. Not just the Compass/Second City founders, but also Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis (the Tony-winning team behind the hilarious Urinetown! The Musical) and David Auburn, Pulitzer and Tony-winning author of Proof.

    I graduated from Columbia College Chicago — Sheldon Patinkin was our theater department head, and one of the smartest men I’ve ever known. His book on the Second City is well worth reading (and listening to – it includes a couple of CDs with classic routines).

  60. 60.

    Sly

    Depends on who you ask. You’ll get clear but differing answers whether you ask an Argentinian or an Iraqi.

    In terms of direct violence, I’d say the Straussians. In terms of total human suffering it gets a bit more murky, because the Chicago School did a lot of damage that can’t be statistically measured very easily. For instance, it’s kind of difficult to accurately measure how much of the decline in global GDP came from reliance on concepts like the Efficient Market Hypothesis, and even harder to put that suffering into manageable and measurable terms that can be compared with something else (say, Bolshevism or Fascism).

    At the end of the day, it’s still an argument over who is worse: The guy who kills your parents or the guy who kills your entire family and burns down your house. They’re both pretty fucking evil.

  63. 63.

    Cain

    A friend of mine is going to Saudi Arabia for a class. Wow, those guys are nuts. Apparently, if you have a visa with an Israeli stamp on it you can’t enter. If you admit you know a Jew, you can’t enter, if you put on the form that you are atheist or a jew, you can’t come in.

    Wahabism sucks. The sheer number of social rules seems really staggering. Definitely marking Saudi Arabia off my visit list. I rather hit Iran, Lebanon, and over.

    cain

  64. 64.

    JenJen

    That YouTube clip of Sammy pretty much captures exactly how I feel right about now, as I crack my first beer of the weekend.

    Thanks, DougJ!

  65. 65.

    Origuy

    I bought a case of various brews from the Mendocino Brewing Company (Red Tail Ale, etc.) earlier this week. I haven’t had a chance to try any yet. There’s a bottle of Blonde Ale in the refrigerator calling me but I won’t be home for four hours or so.

  67. 67.

    Nutella

    I vote for the “Chicago Boys” from the University of Chicago Economics Department but both groups have caused unspeakable suffering and violence all over the world so it’s a tough call.

  68. 68.

    Seth

    Speaking as a U of C alum, I’d argue that this is actually a three-way race between the Straussians, the econ department, and the physics department, which was responsible for the early phases of the Manhattan Project. When it comes to sheer destructive potential, its hard to compete with the atomic bomb. Of course, that’s potential. You could still make the case that the other two have been responsible for more actual damage.

  70. 70.

    SectarianSofa

    @…now I try to be amused:

    When I was at UChicago briefly, I had one Marxist professor who was pretty cool. No real Conservatives/Neo-conservatives or Straussians (ay, I was a lowly undergraduate anyway. Probably the more expensive and expansive wankery was saved for business school or publication.). Anyway, I don’t remember clearly, but I thought the Committee on Social Thought was more or less just an academic grouping like Physical Sciences or Maudlin Theatrics. (I don’t actually remember the others, obviously.) Since there were ‘concentrations’ instead of majors (and less course latitude), they had to do freaky things with nomenclature to remind you how hard you had it (and that you weren’t at some soft school like Harvard or a Loose Soft school like Brown). Like many UC things it could have been copied from Oxford, Camembert, or one of those European Institutions of longer History and similar (it was hoped) Intellectual Gravity.

  72. 72.

    gogol's wife

    @Phoebe:

    I’m late for this thread, but that James Mason clip is the most brilliant thing on YouTube. I watch it almost daily.

    Sammy Davis, Jr. seems to be channeling Bill “Bojangles” Robinson here. In a very nice way. (See “The Littlest Rebel.”)

  73. 73.

    gerry

    The economists win hands down. The Straussians know they are evil. The stupid Chicagoans actually believe there scientistic bullshit and work tirelessly to convince others.

  74. 74.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    @Phoebe:

    That is awesome. Maybe we could start doing regular liquor commercial threads.

  75. 75.

    Brother Cod

    Dont the two complement each other?

    The neocons do the outside world, the economists screw the country up internally?

    Another thought –

    If you take outsourcing – as an indirect result of the Chicago economists – its definitely done lots of good for my country (India) – while its obviously screwed Americans over.

  76. 76.

    Phoebe

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.: Please do! I love liquor commercials even when they don’t feature the world’s most sophisticated voice praising the flavor of wino wine.

    Maybe because I was an impressionable youngster in the 70s who could not wait to try the fantastic nectars of Martini and Rossi [on the rocks! Say yes!] and Riunite [it tastes so nice!] and Boone’s Farm Strawberry Wine, which just sounded delicious. What a wonderland of promise.

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