And when discussing Buchanan and Koch’s attacks on public sector unions, MacLean is unwilling to acknowledge any rational reason behind their quest-the possibility that employees are unaccountable or that their excessive pensions are leading states and localities to bankruptcy is never mentioned. This is most notable when it comes to Buchanan’s importance: he was a respected but somewhat peripheral figure to the broader libertarian political project. MacLean has no sense of proportion, and her political biases continually taint her analysis. She refers to Buchanan’s acolytes as fomenting a possible “fifth column assault on American democratic governance,” before hysterically defining the fifth column as “stealth supporters of an enemy who assist by engaging in propaganda and even sabotage to prepare the way for conquest.” But MacLean’s unvetted attacks are extreme and ungrounded. Buchanan’s disciples often extend public choice theory too far, by reducing almost all political behaviors into rational-interest models. Conservatives, for example, find fault with Buchanan’s understanding of Madison’s views on majoritarianism.
One can legitimately criticize public choice theory, but MacLean seems ignorant of these critiques. Insinuating racism is the heart of MacLean’s strategy. Calhoun and Buchanan, despite little evidence linking the two. MacLean ignores them and numerous others in favor of drawing a thin line between the property rights views of pro-slavery partisan John C.
While Buchanan is its most important progenitor, liberal economist Kenneth Arrow and political scientist Mancur Olson were important theoretical contributors. Public choice economics is a broad field, but fundamentally, it analyzes political actors’ motivations through their self-interested economic incentives. In his review of Democracy in Chains for the Independent Institute, Michael Munger, former president of Duke’s Public Choice Society and former chair of its political science department, notes that MacLean never contacted him or her Duke colleagues to discuss the book project. It is a difficult book to review the author is ignorant of public choice economics and libertarian conservative politics. MacLean argues that Nobel Laureate James Buchanan’s critical role in the creation of public choice economics-when combined with the money of billionaire bogeyman Charles Koch-helped give motive force to a bewildering array of organizations whose influence replaced mainstream Republican politics with a radical libertarian vision that has now taken over the party and its agenda. In contrast, Democracy in Chains has none of Perlstein’s subtlety. Sharply critical liberals can write insightfully about the rise of libertarian conservatism Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm, for example, was a serious, nuanced, and informative examination of Barry Goldwater and conservatism. I was embarrassed for the author, embarrassed for Duke University and MacLean’s colleagues in its history department, embarrassed for the liberal reviewers who lauded such obviously shoddy and dishonest work, and most of all embarrassed for the prestigious National Book Award for having given it their imprimatur. And when reading Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, which was one of five finalists for the National Book Award for nonfiction, I felt nauseated. I feel queasy when a colleague misspeaks in a public forum. I turn off talk radio when callers make a stupid point. Hen people embarrass themselves, I tend to cringe and look away.
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