Steve Horowitz is the distinguished professor of free enterprise at Ball
State University's Economics Department he has a PhD in economics from George
Mason and his most recent book is Hayek's modern family classical
liberalism and the evolution of social institutions in the interest of more
clearly identifying the relationship between his highly theoretical
discipline and our evolving set of humane histories here on Liberty
chronicles professor Horowitz joins us now
welcome to Liberty chronicles a project of libertarianism.org I'm Anthony come
agna so Steve Horowitz you're an economist what use have you found for
reading history oh I think there's there's so many and I think one of the
great things one of the great flaws in graduate education and economics these
days is that that that young economists don't read enough history for me when I
think about what two things I think one of the things economics does is to help
us explain history right that it becomes a theoretical framework that we can use
to understand the world as it has been in the world has been both in the
distant past but recently as well I think in some sense one of the whole
purposes of economics is to be able to tell those historical stories but I also
think when we I mean you know good economics or economics rightly done
recognizes that there's a small core of things that are sort of universally true
that economists talk about but we want to apply those to the world we need to
know what the institutional framework is like what the actors were thinking at
the time right all of those things economics by itself economic theory by
itself can't explain much of anything and what what what economists need
history historians in history for is to sort of fill in those details and help
us figure out how our theory applies and why the story that we want to tell in
the historians want to tell might have relevance so it's both the the purpose
of economics but in some sense you can't even you can't even tell a full economic
story without all of that institutional detail with all of that sense of what
people were thinking why they acted the way they did and so on mm-hm
even a you know simple example like how much do you like chocolate ice cream
versus vanilla ice cream is full of all sorts of historical baggage and details
that go into decision making sure right and and again if we want to understand
you know the economists question might be wide wide has you know one flavor of
ice cream cost more than the other right knowing that sort of thing right and
sort of understanding all of that history and institutional detail is what
we have to bring to the party to be able to have those economic
explanations now I'm curious about some of the economist culture here ya know no
one should be furious well in morbidly curious in economics departments how do
they talk about historians how do they think about that discipline in relation
to their own I think that's that's a really interesting question I think you
know part of the problem of having been a sort of George Mason graduate and sort
of in the world of kind of Austrian Virginia political economies I think we
tend to be much more respectful about history and historians than many of our
colleagues do I think then I think the real answer isn't kind of your economist
off the street doesn't pay that much attention to history at all they're busy
model building and and sort of trying to you know come up with an answer to a
puzzle that often abstracts away from the questions that historians finding
I'll just give you one example I had this exchange in a economic journal
watch with gaudiya Gerson who's a big macro economist over the Great
Depression and one of the things that was driving me bonkers in this exchange
was that he had this interesting model and sort of was trying to explain why
you know by the depression linger and and all this and and yet he was either
ignorant of or ignoring important historical details that I think made
that model not nearly as applicable or at least suggested that it was
problematic in some significant ways that he just didn't see but I think that
so many economists got so fascinated by the model and the the sort of aesthetics
of that mathematical model on one end that they don't pay attention the
history on the other end you know you start playing with data and you start
running regressions and you're you know the danger there of course is always
you're just whatever comes up with the strongest correlation the biggest
r-squared whatever you're looking for becomes the thing right and and you're
not actually paying any attention to the to the sort of primary sources right and
to sort of digging into it what do people think what do people say what did
how did they perceive this particular you know set of set of issues at
economics conferences did they have some choice words for historians in the you
know the open bar setting nah you know it's interesting I not it's not him it's
not historians that tenant you know it's like sociologists who tend to be this
the target group I think I think I think historians are sort of neutral it's you
know it's there I don't think they're seen often as a positive nuisance but
but the problem is that they're not they're not seen as a as a benefit right
as some as a group that we should be talking to and engaging with and again
some of the best work in economics I think has been you know they're really
really good economic historians who are willing to dig into that whatever one
thinks or the particulars I mean you know
McClosky Joanne will cure I'm gonna keep going even even the minute Barry
Eichengreen even working the depression I mean all of these folks have done this
kind of really good work and I think among the sort of you know friends of
mine you know Bob Higgs has worked for examples here's this here's someone who
who is not afraid to go digging into history and really in the ways that
historians do and to just not doesn't think that the traditional economic
variable sort of speak for themselves and I think that's the important thing
to me is really going to get in my firm a colleague of mine has a new book out
on has been writing on unsorted the economic effects of race and and he has
just deep into he's an economist right but he's dug deep into these primary
sources you know things like wills and and legal documents and so on to sort of
get at this stuff and it's to me that's amazing work and and I think that's what
we need more of - telling telling historical stories when the for people
who are sort of sympathetic to markets and classical liberalism
I think one of the reasons that our ideas have struggled is that we have not
been able to tell good historical stories we've lost the battle over
interpretations of history and the best example of this is the Great Recession
up comes a Great Recession and everyone reaches into their pocket and pulls out
their old high school history Great Depression narrative which we know from
historians and economists others is problematic but there it was right all
of a sudden we're back to this sort of you know Hoover stood by and did nothing
FDR did you know did all these wonderful things that we're all motivated by sort
of you know modern deficit I mean no no we the story is much more interesting
and complicated than that and the bad guys are are more evenly distributed
right but but everyone's you know everyone reached right into their pocket
for that narrative and I think that's that's a problem and I think telling
better historical stories which is why McCluskey's work you know maybe it
didn't take three volumes but but I'm glad she did cuz
it's a it's a glorious story whatever it's whatever its flaws in its details I
have to say it sounds it sounds like economists feel better about historians
than historians do about a concept that's probably you know I notice I
didn't ask what you guys say say the bar but but I suspect it's probably a fair
coatings are fair criticisms right I think it's the same kinds of criticisms
that you and Austrian would have for mainstream economics right it's all top
down with you know like you said model making and basically imposing behavior
right past as opposed to you know investigating from the bottom up and
building narratives of stories that way right and and I think for me you know
those of us who were friends with my good friend Pete Becky sometimes
referred to the good Pete and the bad Pete and and what we mean by that is
that that I think those of us who are who are Austrians and who are deep into
economics at one level we really like those sort of rational choices stories
right and think about Pete Leeson's work here for example right where we want to
say you know there's a peromyscus yes we can reinterpret all these historical
things as people just you know maximizing subject to constraint and I
don't think that's a I don't think there's that's automatically wrong I
think it's useful to start thinking that way but then I think one has to say okay
is this just a sort of just so story right dude let's really go in and look
at the primary sources and see is it really was it really this way and I
think if you can back it up those ways and you've got a really interesting
story and if you don't right then you got something interesting as well but
that's gonna be more complicated now since you brought up Pete listen let me
say he was on the show some while ago a couple dozen episodes ago now and we
talked about pirates of course and I I'm not totally sold on this point of his
and maybe you can sell me on it people are so incredibly bizarre and the
more you the more you look into them and study them at an intense like for you
know eight hours a day sort of level for years on end you just are swept away in
their bizarreness they're so weird they have strange ideas strange notions about
causality and you know the nature of the universe
strange ideas about forces that transcend what we can measure and
observe directly and things like that and it just seems so bizarre the way
people behave sometimes what their motivations are they're totally foreign
to us especially the further in the past you go and you know it strikes me that
we might not be able to call these people rational utility maximizers in
all these cases some pirates had totally joined up because they had a death wish
they were driven to this point of you know I don't know
not quite insanity with something very close they're right there on the border
being pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed by the world constantly maybe
they're not trying to maximize utility and yeah I saw so here's my view of
these things I think I think when you see a practice surviving for some
significant period of time I think it's not a bad sort of first cut to say there
there must be something to this there must be some you know sort function
elapsed Tory that you can tell that this process this institution this behavior
has survived you think about some of the stuff in police ins new book right and
so as a first cut saying you know what let's try to understand this as rational
behavior and maybe maybe we can understand it that is survive that way I
think even if you can construct a good explanation there that doesn't
necessarily mean every actor involved with it is therefore behaving the
rationality is sort of built into the process into the system into the
institution that it's solving some social problem even if the actors
themselves might be in it for the wrong reason I mean the wrong you know sort of
right that the non-rational in the way that you're you're talking reason so I
think that's the really tricky part for for good subtle economists is to kind of
navigate that that distinction and say you know this is sort of Vernon Smith's
kind of ecological rationality story right that these that these practices
and things sort of have survival value to them and that it's not so much that
we are rational but that we be cut we we engage in what amounts to rational
problem-solving because we operate within institutional frameworks that
give us the the information and the incentives we need to solve whatever
that problem is and so sort of moving back and forth between the
the perspective of the actor and that systemic perspective which is I think
what good historians do to write it sort of becomes a way to not have to commit
to all everybody's a calculating machine sort of story
but in any case whatever people are doing their experiences come from you
know a long string and it's basically built from the bottom up again right
right and as if you do enough digging you you know come to understand pretty
clearly why people are doing the things they're doing
I do think it's I think one of the things that you know when you understand
economics and a little bit of cognitive psych and these sorts of things you kind
of recognize it look at some level human beings share some stuff right I mean
we're products of that same evolutionary process we've got sort of you know the
sort of if you want to use these metaphors the hardware of our brains
right share a lot of things but we also all go through unique life experiences
and we know from how the brain operates the brain has plasticity and people
change and they think differently as they as they move along and I think
again finding out where those universals are and where those you know called
human nature if you want but whatever want to call it right where those
universals are and then where the unique pieces of human beings are and sort of
using that as our way to look at the world I think is is the way to go here
and I think a good subtle economics can handle that I'm not sure mainstream
economics has the subtlety the subtlety of a sledgehammer right to not to do
that well so then what do you think really is the relationship between our
two disciplines here I think they inform each other I I don't
think it's interesting that you're asked this question by the way having I'm in
the process of rereading Mises as human actions cover-to-cover for the first
time since maybe graduate school so I've been thinking a lot about these
questions so so I think you know in amis se in vein economics you you can't I
don't think you can do good history without some understanding of economics
on the other hand I don't think you can economics become sterile if it doesn't
have history and forming it and and and history as the sort of thing it wants to
explain right and and by history here I include the you know the the very recent
past we call policy applications and things like that right so I think there
is the relationship and I think you know
there's a the division of labor here is is is a economists have to learn from
historians and read history I mean if you know I look at getting graduate
students I want to say you want to do a dissertation go first thing you should
do is go read a bunch of history about this thing right figure out how whatever
this event or this thing how it came to be how it works then as you read think
about how might the tools of economics help you tell a story about this event
or this period or whatever this thing is that others haven't told or that adds
something to it that others haven't told and so I think you can't do that without
the history on the other hand you can't do without the economics either so I
think in a healthy if it were a healthy relationship right each side would
recognize you know that that aspect of the other but again I you know I speak
here as someone who does unorthodox economics and I think you know if you
sort of grabbed a random economist off the street I think the answer is more
you know yeah I read some history on the side but I'm not I'm not sure what it
does you know or to them history is simply econometrics right
and all we do with history is we go out and we look you know we find this
statistical data and we look for we look for correlations and we hope we have a
theory to explain them and I think that's you know again that that's not
valueless but it's certainly not it doesn't allow us to get inside and sort
of understand the actors point of view to engage in that kind of hermeneutic
that that sort of interpreting and explaining behavior and its consequences
intended and unintended can the facts of history overturn the laws of economics
oh that's the big question isn't it and here here's where I you know I become a
kind of hardcore Austrian and say not the that's sort of core of propositions
and I think it's a fairly small number I I wrote about this for Cato unbound back
in 2012 and a whole thing on proxy ology in history that several us are part of
and I think there's a small core of ideas that that are really truths about
how humans that are sort of either hardwired into us or truths about how
humans behave in the world that history and other sort of things can't overturn
we can't even sort of make sense of the role without them but once you get
outside that however everything becomes in some sense
institutionally contingent right and and so there you know we learn things from
history we can learn things from cognitive psych we can I think the
behavioral economics revolution has made us think about some things right so we
can learn from other disciplines about where about you know sort of where that
line is I do think you know it's an interesting counterfactual I think Mises
for example and other perhaps you know economists who liked his work 75 years
ago 100 years ago would have had a broader scope of things that they
thought and certainly even today there are sort of I would you know more
rothbard II and Austrians who would put a lot of things into that a priori you
know box I think a careful reading of Mesa suggests is not as many as that but
it's not zero right and I think I think you know we can't we would it's a this
is what when Mises and others talk about that AA priori it's that organizing
framework we can't even begin to understand the world not just as
economists or historians but as actors we can't even understand the world until
we have until we recognize that there's those those universals that are just
truisms about how humans perceive and organize the world so then if you think
that you see somebody in the historical record pursuing their less valued once
first does that mean the economics is wrong or if we severely misinterpreted
the record right I think it's the latter I think you know the economists first
instinct is to say okay something more complicated is happening there we're
missing some piece of a historical puzzle or some piece of historical
information that would help us make sense of this right again I think you
know all the the stuff that that Leeson's doing in the in the new book is
sort of this you know looking at these things that seems so irrational on first
glance right but in fact we can explain rationally that's it's fun and it's
counterintuitive and all that but but but I think it's important too that we
at least you know interrogate those things that seem to not follow what we
imagine what economists imagine how people behave and ask ourselves is this
really the case and that gets us into I think looking closely at the details to
see whether or not it is I just you know I think there's a sense in which when we
understand both the economics here but some of the cognitive stuff and and you
know I think reading things like Hayek sensory order and so
we think about how brains work and how Minds work I've been reading Daniel
Dennett these days to this notion that we we have these principles that
organize the world for us right and that sort of things that are that are in that
core of economic theory are might be part of that that simply can't be
overturned because they're they're just built into how we perceive the world so
his historian should read at least let's say Austrian economics well not everyone
should well sure I think that would be an interesting it would be an
interesting exercise for me to sort of look I mean two things I think one for
historians to read through Austrian economics but also to look at the kind
of applied and historical work that Austrians have been doing for the last
thirty years does you know I mean I think one of the may rest in peace down
the boys one of his great contributions was to encourage us we were there at
George Mason in the mid late 80s to do this kind of work say you know what you
got to do history you got to go out and get your fingers dirty in the archives
or in this Center than that right and tell better stories and you look at the
dissertations that were produced under Don they were for the most part these
kind of applied historical we want to overturn a tale type story type you know
bits of economic history and I think that was really really valuable you can
you know it led it to all kinds of debates about the nature of economics
it's one but you strip away those debates some of which were I think a
folly of youth the core point of what economics is forced to go out and
explain the world outside the window and to tell better historical narratives
right yes and at the same time that McCluskey was working on the rhetoric of
economics and this whole argument that would in fact it is all about better and
worse storytelling and you can kind of see how all that stuff was coming
together mouths you know 30 plus years ago yeah I mean if you go to you know
IHS events or libertarian conference or whatever you can barely tell the
difference between a professional economist and a professional historian
they they do the same thing right basically right right and and you know I
just finished this book a couple years ago on the on the family and there was I
mean the fun part for me was was reading all the history right I mean there was I
can wasn't always fun I can think of a couple days where I spent reading these
you know histories of 18th century families and and and how you know the
sort of lives of children and how dealt with their kids or families I was
like okay enough now right right but but sort of that to me was the really
interesting part and and and the intellectual excitement of that whole
project working on family stuff for me came from that ability say look here's
people telling stories that I think are good stories but I can add to those
stories because I have this understanding of these economic ideas or
these broader things that that can come to it that the historian is doing this
work didn't have right and so you're building off that story but you're
adding to it and really well for me we're intellectually exciting ways no I
I have to sort of propositions that I want you to evaluate something I've
gotten from studying Austrian economics is the idea of marginal value and
utility here all value is established on the margins or in the marginal units of
something and I think that in a way all historical change happens on the margins
on the margins of society you know marginal considerations that people make
during their day every time they're choosing to change their condition
they're doing so based on margin marginal valuations marginal populations
usually end up making the biggest difference is the most profound
revolutionary changes or what have you what do you think about that yeah I
think that I think that's right it seems to me right that you know I think this
is so so this is argue perhaps one reason why you know Tyler Cowen and Alex
Tabb rock named their blog marginal revolution my friend Tom Bell has been
known to say that he's in favor of revolution and then pause at the margin
right and I think it and I think there's a profoundly important point there that
you cannot engage in wholesales social change you just you can't swap out one
set of institutions for another a very Austrian point right that that
institutions evolve and that any social change that we want to push for is going
to be I think you know evolutionary not revolutionary it's true I think that
there are sometimes crisis points you know where where we we reach a turning
point and we find ideas on the shelves to use Friedman's in a sort of image
that come in and and and and can have a kind of turning point but
even there you're never gonna replace I mean we've saw in the 20th century what
happens when you try to replace institutions wholesale and I do think
equally going the other way right I mean if we think about moving towards a freer
Society it's not as though we can just you know kind of rip out all the wires
at once we have to think carefully about how to get from here to there and and
and you're not going to change people's ideas all at once right it's it's you
know persuading people of the value of markets and and and limited government
and so on itself happens on the margin by multiple exposure you know two good
stories and good ideas so so yeah I think that's right I think one of the
again sort of follies of youth is that you're impatient and you think you can
make change happen quickly and I think the older I get the more patient I am
and part of me is somewhat sad about that because I'd like to see change a
bit more quickly but at the same time I think it's just the reality of existing
in a world of human beings that you can't you can't change things overnight
yeah it's something I've been struck by in my personal research is how many
revolutionaries who wanted to be were actually really regretted what they did
and the costs that it that had put on people around them now what about the
idea that all of history is really a mass of individual conspiracies oh so
all right so I have I have a really fascinating relationship with conspiracy
theories in general part of sort of indirectly why I'm a libertarian has to
do with conspiracy theories when I was a kid in my mid-teens I was reading kind
of anyone who had a theory a weird wacky theory of the world so so by Bible
prophecy and Erich von Daniken cherry to the gods right I mean I was just
fascinated by all that stuff and then I got fascinated by the Kennedy
assassination and there was a period I came oh how old I was and would before I
can tell you this it was before I was 16 because I can remember clear as day
coming home from school when Reagan was shot right in 1980 and and coming home
and hearing the news and like yelling at my mom who was said so don't tell me you
put the VCR on a tape this we need we need to have visual evidence right right
you know I'm thinking about suddenly I'm Zapruder like no one else has a VCR I
mean it was early in VCR years right but I was but I was that
was so I was in the middle of it right then and so I think all of that stuff it
so happened that the when I began to read sort of libertarian stuff when the
folks first books I read was a book called restoring the American Dream by
Robert Jay ringer which kind of I was working at the library at a time and it
came across the desk and I look at this thing I said oh here's another guy with
a wacky theory right and it turns out it was a good one right and so that got me
interested and it was because of that sort of fascination by all this weird
stuff so so I love conspiracy theories fascinate me and and I think so here's
here's why I think libertarians are attracted to conspiracy theories because
it for some of us for many of us the world
is such a messed up place and it's so obvious to us how messed up it is and
how much better it could be if we only did these other things of course someone
is messing it up on purpose you know some evil actors must be frustrating the
good right I mean if you have any belief in the sort of good of ideas and human
beings why are we so why are things so messed up and I think by the way the ant
the antidote to that is sort of like public choice theory and these sorts of
things would help us understand how we can get in such a bad place
even if people's aren't evil right that institutional structures guide people's
behavior in those ways but so I think at one level right it's some libertarians
are attracted to it because it helped it it sort of helps explain why we haven't
won there's these evil forces and we're not even poor not powerful enough all
right these are still good and we've expressed them well just these guys
they're out they have all these magical on the other hand libertarians should be
the last people to believe in conspiracy theories because at some level it
suggests that there's people have the ability to manipulate social outcomes
according to their intentions I mean I wrote a piece for few years and years
ago called conspiracy theory socialism right which is sort of making this point
that if you really take that version of conspiracy theory why don't you know you
should socialism should work right the difference is you just have the bad guys
with conspiracy theory socialism just a good guy conspiracy theory right if you
really believe that people can manage outcomes and manipulate us like puppets
that way so so I think there's you know I think that's all in there I also think
we're forced as libertarians that confront
she theories because there are people attracted on the fringes who for whom
right and this has become certainly a bigger problem with the alt-right and
all this sort of stuff so so we can't we can't ever avoid it and I find them
endlessly fascinating I also find the sort of you know their their their
resistance to falsifiability to be one of the most intellectually amusing
things to watch right the lanes people will go to say well the evidence you
think undermines it actually shows that it's right you know you can think of the
way people create this epistemic bubble around conspiracy theories I think
that's really important for the returns to understand and think about right and
sort of realize that hey wait a second we don't want to do that around our own
ideas right we want to make sure that we're making claims that are you know in
that broad sense of the term falsifiable that that we're backing with evidence
that we don't just automatically reinterpret every piece of evidence
right and go back to our earlier conversation it's a problem mainstream
economists have is reinterpreting every piece of history to automatically fit
the neoclassical model right and I think we just have to be we have to be able to
step back and look at our own biases that way no I mean on the one hand we
know that and actors designs are never the same as the outcome of a situation
or at least you can't count on right and that's and that's the important insight
from the people sometimes forget about public choice theory right public choice
theory is an unintended consequences story about how bad things happen that
are not the intention of the actors right and that's different cuz people
would say to me well wait isn't public choice just a version of conspiracy no
it's it's not conspiracy theory seems to me to neglect unintended consequences in
a way that public choice doesn't well maybe it's more correct to say public
choice is a story about why conspiracies go wrong that's not that would be
another way to put it right because I mean part of the Austrian credo here is
that individuals act always to satisfy their own interests you know and and to
change their condition to one more satisfactory so and it's in some sense
at least everything is a conspiracy to improve yourself you're you know people
you value their condition or whatever but things definitely don't always work
out that way and the notion you know the other problem is I call it the sort of
the Rodney problem right is is it is it our people
incompetent you know what you can't think people are both incompetent and
brilliant enough to hide their incompetence at the same time right and
so you know conspiracy theories face that too for people who are skeptical of
the of this you know who don't even think that the government can deliver
the mail that it could hide a multiyear you know a generational conspiracy of
powerful people to do what's right you know you can't even deliver the mail but
you somehow you kept all this in secret space / right yeah so so to me that's
another you know another problem here so let's run down then a couple conspiracy
theories that you think are true oh okay so I mean I the the one I mean I'm um
you know it'll take a lot of work to convince me Oswald acted alone I still I
still I can't you know I think I stopped reading that stuff sometime in college
and so I'm gonna you know people are gonna hear this and start sending me
emails saying well you haven't read this book a nice book yeah I haven't all
right but but but sort of the you know the to a young to a fourteen or fifteen
year old right there were all kinds of things that just pushed all the buttons
there right and so even even today you know part of me would I don't I'm not
sure I really believe that he didn't act alone but but it's like a hurdle that
has to be overcome right I'm not sure there's I mean that's the one is sort of
convene if you want to think about second traditional conspiracy theories
that's the one and it's only because I think that I've been so probably so
primed at just the right age to think to think critically about it I should I
suppose since I've written a lot about I should say a word about the Fed here
right because we do there's plenty of people right who want to you know make
that point to that this was some again some kind of conspiracy theory okay but
it's a really nice example of what we were just talking about which is it's
true there was some bad actors and and and who thought that they could get
control of the monetary system and sort of do bad things with it but they
couldn't their intentions didn't play out the way they thought because the
creation of that beast happened through the democratic political process and and
the real problem with the Fed is not that it's the creation of four guys or
six guys at Jekyll Island who dreamed it up but that was a political compromise
right that was this thing that's you know is a decentralized
central bank and all the problems that come with it right so here's an
interesting case where we where we want you know there's some evidence it makes
it look like the conspiracy theory story is true yet when you dig deep enough
into it you realize now it's actually just really just the same old public
choice in the same old public joy story right that about how the ultimate result
doesn't bear out the intentions of those within the political process and
compromise is necessary and you get these weird things that that that you
know that that that don't work very well right and that and and the and did you
know the Fed does real damage but that's not because the Rothschilds are behind
it or or apparently now the Rothschilds controlled the weather as we've learned
hahaha couple weeks nope speaking of that story by the way what do you think
are some of the more important conspiracy theories that we should
whether true or not that we should take seriously because enough people find
importance there sadly all the ones that you might just call the sort of tropes
of anti-semitism I mean I you know for this is personal for me at one level but
I do think it's it's not just personal it and it's been it's getting worse
again over the last really I think decade this sort of you know whether
it's just people thinking it's funny to troll with this stuff I don't think it's
just that I think we really are seeing a return of this belief that that that
that Jews have not just and what's interesting this time not just
manipulated like the world of finance in the ways that historically been the case
but the new one is that Jewish ideas are responsible right that that Jew that
that Marxism is a Jewish thing socialism a Jewish thing though the the you know
sort of the the Frankfurt School is a Jewish thing right Google is immobilized
I'm I'm happy to call myself a globalist in a cosmopolitan be anti-semitic we
should we should we should not let those words go but anyway yeah so I think
these this kind of stuff again a they're there they are conspiracy theories
because the the form that anti-semitism frequently takes
is-is-is this kind of thing right where Jews secretly manipulate in control not
just again the material world but now the world the world of ideas you know I
mean there's the versions other anti-semitic stuff like you know blood
libel and all that which isn't quite conspiracy theory it's nasty in its own
right but but I do think that's that's the one that I'm seeing these days and
and frankly you know that's gonna lay all the blame on the right I think our
friends on the Left have to be careful here too in their stories they tell
about AI you know a pact and and the Jewish lobby and all this kind of stuff
the sort of whole influence of Israel thing verges into conspiracy theory of
time from people who ought to know better right and and and again it's just
more complicated than that and one of the things I tend to say to people who
on the Left who sort of bring that stuff up is have ya have you actually gone to
a temple or synagogue recently and asked the people there what they think of
those issues cuz ask forty people you'll get 50 different opinions right it's not
like there's this sort of you know monolithic Jewish view of Israel and of
the Middle East and that whole conflict it's very--it's and for American Jews
it's really difficult and troubling and this haven't reduced down to this sort
of story about money and AIPAC and whatever is is you know it's not as
nasty as the other stuff but it's in the ballpark
if you've liked what you've heard today from Professor Horowitz then keep a
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