Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Ken Kersch
I’m concerned.
In the oft-repeated list of major intellectual influences on Ryan – Ayn
Rand, Ludwig Von Mises, Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek – only
Friedman was American-born. Although the others lived in the United
States when they were older, all were Mitteleuropeans. We hear a lot
about Ryan’s Tea Party associations and appeal (that Revolutionary War
branding, of course, like patriots at a Sarah Palin rally, screams “USA!
USA! USA!”). But Ryan’s tutoring was in what is called “Austrian
Economics” – a label that wears its Mitteleuropean provenance on its
sleeve.
How American is Austrian Economics – that European import, honed, since
World War II, in tutorials and transatlantic tete-a-tetes in the Swiss
Alps?
Two qualifications. First, the fact that Paul Ryan’s political
philosophy has been strongly formed by these Mitteleuropean
intellectuals doesn’t mean he subscribes to everything they say. And,
second, there’s no denying that there has always been a home-grown form
of Red-White-and-Blue anti-statism and penchant for work, markets, and
business. Still, something about the tone and style of Austrian
economics, it could be argued, make it distinctively Mitteleuropean. If
Obama is a European-style socialist (though I doubt it…), then devotees
of Austrian Economics are European-style anti-socialists. In many of
its iterations, Austrian economics is the apodictic mirror-image of
that which it opposes – a cast utterly self-evident in Ayn Rand (who, in
(albeit lesser) mind and temperament, is Vladimir Lenin, flipped).
There are lots of ways to be an American anti-socialist. But the case
can be made that Ryan -- deer-bagging and fish-gutting notwithstanding
-- has made of himself a highly-ideological Mitteleuropean
anti-socialist. In the process, he may have jettisoned some good old
(can-do, pragmatic, anti-ideological) American values along the way.
Might real Americans deserve better?
With a bromance ticket comprised of an uber-capitalist and
Austrian-tutored intellectual worshipper of uber-capitalists, it’s no
wonder that the two habitants of the Republican ticket (reportedly)
can’t bare to be separated: each has found his other half.
Since Austrian economic thought has been a major influence on today’s
Republican Party, and since Austrian thought might soon be the governing
philosophy in the White House, it might be time for Americans to bone
up on the intellectual output of
interwar Vienna and
postwar Switzerland.
After all, my fellow Americans: The Austrians have seen the future – and it works.
Posted
3:48 PM
by Ken Kersch
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