Brad DeLong

Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Volokh Conspiracy Commits "One of the Most Immoral Paragraphs [He Has] Read in a Long Long TIme"

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Post reminds me of Aunt Sally and Huck Finn in Mark Twain's novel (yes, Samuel Longhorne Clemens knew what he was making his characters say):

HUCK FINN: "It warn't the grounding -- that didn't keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head."

AUNT SALLY: "Good gracious! anybody hurt?"

HUCK FINN: "No'm. Killed a nigger."

AUNT SALLY: "Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.

Ta-Nehisi Coates::

Slavery Is A Love Song: A commenter sent me this piece [by David Post] from The Volokh Conspiracy…. I made the mistake of reading it and thus stumbling on one of the most immoral paragraphs I've read in a long long time:

Jefferson, Finkelman tells us, was not a "particularly kind" slave-master; he sometimes "punished slaves by selling them away from their families…" believed that "blacks' ability to reason was 'much inferior' to whites'…. So what? Really - so what? If you want to think that he was a bad guy -- or even a really bad guy, with truly grievous personal faults -- you're free to do so. But to claim that that has something to do with Jefferson's historical legacy is truly preposterous.

That's pretty deep. 

One way to approach this is with "facts" and "arguments." I think the sort of callousness that allows you to look upon the visage of human trafficking and say "So what?" probably inures you against such tactics.  I, myself, always like to remember that I'm writing actual people, who were more than happy to give us some sense of precisely how it feels to be among the So Whats of America. This is a letter… written to Laura Spicer by her husband, who was sold away, much as Jefferson sold people away….

I would much rather you would get married to some good man, for every time I gits a letter from you it tears me all to pieces. The reason why I have not written you before, in a long time, is because your letters disturbed me so very much. 

You know I love my children. I treats them good as a Father can treat his children; and I do a good deal of it for you. I am sorry to hear that Lewellyn, my poor little son, have had such bad health. I would come and see you but I know you could not bear it. I want to see and I don't want to see you. I love you just as well as I did the last day I saw you, and it will not do for you and I to meet. 

I am married, and my wife have two children, and if you and I meets it would make a very dissatisfied family. Send me some of the children's hair in a separate paper with their names on the paper. Will you please git married, as long as I am married. My dear, you know the Lord knows both of our hearts. You know it never was our wishes to be separated from each other, and it never was our fault. 

Oh, I can see you so plain, at any-time, I had rather anything to had happened to me most than ever to have been parted from you and the children. As I am, I do not know which I love best, you or Anna. If I was to die, today or tomorrow, I do not think I would die satisfied till you tell me you will try and marry some good, smart man that will take care of you and the children; and do it because you love me; and not because I think more of the wife I have got then I do of you. The woman is not born that feels as near to me as you do. 

You feel this day like myself. Tell them they must remember they have a good father and one that cares for them and one that thinks about them every day-My very heart did ache when reading your very kind and interesting letter. 

Laura I do not think I have change any at all since I saw you last.-I think of you and my children every day of my life. Laura I do love you the same. My love to you never have failed. Laura, truly, I have got another wife, and I am very sorry, that I am. You feels and seems to me as much like my dear loving wife, as you ever did Laura. You know my treatment to a wife and you know how I am about my children. You know I am one man that do love my children…

In Which I Feel Bruce Bartlett's Pain: Why He Can Vote for Neither Romney Nor Obama

I'm going to be pulling the lever for Barack Hussein Obama on election day. But Bruce Bartlett won't be:

Why I will be staying at home on US election day: I really don’t know who I will vote for this year – or if I will vote at all. This is why….

Mitt Romney Believes in Cold Fusion?: Yes, It Is Authentic

Is this authentic? If it is, now I have heard everything:

Q: What role should government have in promoting certain industries or economic activities such as homeownership, or manufacturing, renewable energy or fossil fuel energy, exports, or just advanced technology? What sort of subsidies and incentives do you favor? You had some of these in Massachusetts, I know.

ROMNEY: Very limited -- my answer to your first question. I’m not an advocate of industrial policy being formed by a government. I do believe in the power of free markets, and when the government removes the extraordinary burdens that it puts on markets, why I think markets are more effective at guiding a prosperous economy than is the government.

So for instance, I would not be investing massive dollars in electric car companies in California. I think Tesla and Fisker are delightful-looking vehicles, but I somehow imagine that Toyota, Nissan, and even General Motors will produce a more cost-effective electric car than either Tesla or Fisker. I think it is bad policy for us to be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in specific companies and specific technologies, and developing those technologies.

I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with -- with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it...

 

Can Somebody Please Tell Me Why Niall Ferguson Thinks William White Presented His "Ultra-Easy Monetary Policy" Paper at Jackson Hole This Year?

Niall Ferguson:

Niall Ferguson on The Fed’s Dirty Easy Money: Which mattered more to you last week: the Republican National Convention in Tampa, or the Federal Reserve’s annual economic-policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo.?… [I]f you’re one of the fortunate few who manages anything above $100 million in financial assets, it was Jackson Hole…. Everyone knows about the fiscal cliff…. But could there also be a monetary cliff? The Fed has thrown a lot at our ailing economy…. The Fed is in a hole—a Jackson Hole…. The Jackson Hole symposium is one of the highlights of the wonk calendar, and I am sorry I had to miss this year’s. Back in 2005, U of Chicago’s Raghuram Rajan gave a paper titled “Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?,” which presciently warned that bankers were “flirt[ing] continuously with the limits of illiquidity” and that “we should be prepared for the low probability but highly costly downturn.” This year’s hit paper was published ahead of Jackson Hole: William White’s “Ultra Easy Monetary Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences”…