Monday, August 14, 2017

Sandwichman on the Higgins Memo


Now that the US Civil War 2.0 has broken out in violence, it is good to be aware of this. The background is given in the links Sandwichman provides at the beginning of the first post. The AltRight is livid that Gen. McMaster is cleaning house, and it seems that Gen. Kelley is too, having sidelined Steve Bannon.

Econospeak
The Higgins Memo, Anders Breivik and the Lyndon LaRouche Cult

The “Narratives” of Higgins’s “Warfare”
Sandwichman

The full text of the memo that Sandwichman links to at FP is behind a pay wall. The full text is not widely available. Here is a link to the full text of the Higgins Memo that Mike Cernovich obtained.

Here is a link to Kenneth Burke's "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'." Note: "Hitler's Battle" signifies Mein Kampf, which Burke is critiquing.

See also

Angry Bear
In light of Charlottesville, I noticed…
Dan Crawford

4 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

Thanks for the links, Tom.

Dan Lynch said...

Higgins: "opposition to President Trump manifests itself through political warfare memes centered on cultural Marxist narratives." Uh-huh.

Higgins takes a few half truths and mixes it with paranoid conspiracy theory stuff -- we're supposed to believe there's a cultural Marxist Islamist hiding behind every bush. Before I read the memo, I had no opinion on the firing of Higgins. Now that I've read it I totally support his firing. He's NUTS!

MichaelH said...

Your hyperbolic ridicule has not DISPUTED anything of factual elements of the memo. Suggesting denial and / or willful ignorance; where' you been last 16 years. Peace.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Economics: a ‘science’ from suckers for suckers
Comment on Sandwichman on ‘The “Narratives” of Higgins’s “Warfare”’

Economists claim to do science and communicate this every year to the general public with the “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”. Whether the claim to be a science is self-delusion or fraud does not matter much. Fact is:
• the profit theory is false since 200+ years,
• Walrasian microfoundations (including equilibrium) are inconsistent since 140+ years,
• Keynesian macrofoundations (including I=S, IS-LM) are inconsistent since 80+ years.

Economics is a failed science or what Feynman called a cargo cult science. Fact No 1: There are opinion and brain-dead blather. This is called politics. There are knowledge and proof. This is called science. Fact No 2: Theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). Fact No 3: Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in 200+ years. Fact No 4: Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism is mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and materially/formally inconsistent. Fact No 5: Economists are quite content with the pluralism of false theories, they do not have any real scientific ambitions. Fact No 6: Economics is a cargo cult science from suckers for suckers. Fact No 7: Economic debates between orthodox and heterodox economists or between left-wingers and right-wingers are ALWAYS inconclusive and not more than an intellectual Pygmy wrestling show.

These are the recent topics at the EconoSpeak blog:
• The “Narratives” of Higgins’s “Warfare” (cultural Marxism, Frankfurt School, Marcuse’s Repressive Tolerance, Breivik’s Manifesto, Hitler’s Mein Kampf)
• “Rational” Optimism? (realized material benefits, risks of catastrophic climate change, nuclear war)
• The Buchanan-MacLean Controversy (socialism, racial segregation, Austrian libertarianism, Mont Pelerin Society, neoliberalism, Koch brothers, Trump, climate change denial, Hayek-Friedman-Pinochet, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Kim Il Sung, public choice theory, corrupt government agencies, rent seeking, crushing labor unions, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises).
• The Higgins Memo, Anders Breivik and the Lyndon LaRouche Cult (Lunatic fringe, Norway mass murder, White Christian Nationalism, Multiculturalism, White House, Foreign policy)
• The Financial Crisis Tenth Anniversary (Bubbles, FED-ECB actions, bail-outs, collateral Euro near-crash)
• Avik Roy Claims Reagan Embraced Universal Health Care Coverage

All this is sociology, philosophy, politics, folk psychology or gossip. There is not one iota of science or consistent theoretical economics. To recall, theoretical economics is supposed to figure out how the economy works just like physics is supposed to figure out how the universe works.

Entrance is free in politics and every sucker can climb on a soap box and demand tax cuts or tell something about freedom and democracy. The entrance to science is only free for those who are able and committed to advance scientific knowledge. Until now economics could not get the suckers off its back.

It is pretty obvious that EconoSpeak is not committed to anything else than political blather. But, then, what is to be expected from proto-scientific storytellers like Sandwichman, ProGrowthLiberal, Peter Dorman, and Barkley Rosser.*

Needless to emphasize that the other economics blogs are not any better.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

* See also ‘Fact of life: your econ prof is scientifically incompetent’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/08/fact-of-life-your-econ-prof-is.html