{"id":20187,"date":"2013-05-09T08:47:31","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T13:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20187"},"modified":"2013-05-09T08:47:31","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T13:47:31","slug":"delingpole-ferguson-shouldnt-have-apologized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/05\/09\/delingpole-ferguson-shouldnt-have-apologized\/","title":{"rendered":"Delingpole: Ferguson shouldn’t have apologized"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although James Delingpole<\/a> concedes that Ferguson pretty much had to apologize for his off-the-cuff remarks on Keynes, he still thinks it was the wrong thing to do:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think there\u2019s much doubt about Keynes\u2019s latent gayness: not without reason was he known as the \u2018Queen of King\u2019s\u2019. And I\u2019m not really sure that the fact that he later married and attempted (unsuccessfully) to have children proves anything very much. Unless, of course, you\u2019re a modern, professional-offence-taking gay activist, in which case it\u2019s the final clincher in your compelling argument that Ferguson is totally evil and really should lose his Lawrence A. Tisch professorship at Harvard right this second for \u2014 as one angry commentator put it \u2014 taking \u2018gay-bashing to new heights\u2019.<\/p>\n

New heights? Really? As Jonah Goldberg has noted, it\u2019s not like there\u2019s anything particularly new or controversial in Ferguson\u2019s theory, tossed off lightly in response to a question at an economics conference. \u2018He was childless and his philosophy of life was essentially a short-run philosophy,\u2019 wrote Schumpeter in his obituary of Keynes.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Which is why, of course, Niall Ferguson was forced to issue an apology. Not, I suspect \u2014 or rather, I hope \u2014 because he thought he\u2019d done anything wrong, but because all too easily it could have become the chink in the armour into which his many enemies were able to insert their fatal stilettos. (I know whereof I speak here, you may recall.)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it works: lots of liberal-lefties utterly loathe Ferguson for having committed the unforgivable crime of being an articulate and prominent exponent of right-wing views. Unfortunately, we don\u2019t (yet) live in an era where voicing right-wing views is an indictable offence; so the way to get at such dangerously outspoken defenders of free markets, liberty and small government is through the back door, a bit like Al Capone eventually being done for tax evasion. Racism would have been the ideal charge (except Ferguson\u2019s marriage to Ayaan Hirsi Ali scuppered that option); as too would perceived sexism (which did for Harvard president Larry Summers, remember); but the homophobia charge \u2014 had not Ferguson nipped it in the bud \u2014 would have surely worked its poison just as well in the end.<\/p>\n

I perfectly understand why Ferguson apologised but I wish he hadn\u2019t and I\u2019m sure in his heart he knows he shouldn\u2019t have done. As an economic historian, he\u2019ll be familiar with Danegeld: the more you concede to the enemy, the more they\u2019ll demand next time round.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although James Delingpole concedes that Ferguson pretty much had to apologize for his off-the-cuff remarks on Keynes, he still thinks it was the wrong thing to do: I don\u2019t think there\u2019s much doubt about Keynes\u2019s latent gayness: not without reason was he known as the \u2018Queen of King\u2019s\u2019. And I\u2019m not really sure that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,7,28],"tags":[86,196,238,355,255],"class_list":["post-20187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-history","category-media","tag-criticism","tag-lgbt","tag-offensensitivity","tag-prejudice","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5fB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20188,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20187\/revisions\/20188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}