Repositioning Keynes

(as Mailed to Paul Krugman at half a dozen email addresses. This mail has most probably been relegated to the bottom of half a dozen spam/trash folders as you're reading this)

You will see from what is to follow that I am not an economist nor is this a discussion on one of the finer points of economics. I write this, rather, in a lighter vein. Even so, it doesn't take even my cursory understanding of macroeconomics to completely agree with your views regarding the religious right cozying up to the "malefactors of great wealth", the free market fundamentalists, the Freidmanites, the Neocons.

I see the current economic debacle as a great opportunity to 'reposition' Keynes so as to be more palatable to religious right; and there is no better person to do it than you - the foremost Keynesian of our times. You see I am almost convinced that the religious right's pathological aversion for Keynesian economics is probably related to the personal traits of Keynes himself rather than any of his theories. His sexuality and agnosticism is probably what is repugnant to the religious right. Well, it must be more his sexuality than his agnosticism since they thought that Freidman, an atheist was alright.

How I propose going about this repositioning is to highlight some of the things that Keynes said that may endear him to the R.R somewhat (most quotes are from Wikiquote):

1. Keynes hated the commies.

"...youth had no religion save Communism and this was worse than nothing."

-as told to Virginia Woolf and T.S.Elliot at a dinner party.

2. Keynes really hated the commies.

" I am not ready for a creed which does not care how much it destroys the liberty and security of daily life, which uses deliberately the weapons of persecution, destruction and international strife."

-A Short View of Russia (1925)

3. Keynes alluded to that holiest of holies... creation.

"The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion."

- First Annual Report of the Arts Council (1945-1946)

4. Keynes was gung-ho about capitalism.

"For my part I think that capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight..."

-The End of Laissez-faire (1926)

5. Even Bush can borrow a line from him the next time he's asked about WMDs in Iraq.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

-quoted in Lost Prophets: An Insider's History of the Modern Economists (1994) by Alfred L. Malabre, p. 220

6. Keynes even shouts out to the extreme right. Sarah Palin and the other doomsday prophets should be delighted.

"In the long run we are all dead."

- A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923)

Of course, after harping on all this, all that we'll have to do is call all the other things that Keynes (here we say, "is purported to have") said that might not go down so well with the religious right, is all a grand left-wing conspiracy.

(end of email)

And all of you definitely oughta take a look at this.