Jonah Goldberg isn’t happy about all the attention some of us pay to so-called experts:
The cult of experts has acolytes in all ideological camps, but its most institutionalized following is on the left. The left needs to believe in the authority of experts because without that authority, almost no economic intervention can be justified. If you concede that you have no idea whether your remedy will work, it’s going to be hard to sell it to the patient. Market-based ideologies don’t have that problem because markets expect events in ways experts never can.
No president since Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt has been more enamored with the cult of expertise than Obama. That none of his economic predictions have panned out is not surprising. What is surprising is that so many people are surprised.
What’s remarkable about this column is that Goldberg isn’t disparaging a particular kind of expertise or a particular kind of bias he finds endemic. His specific shots are limited to economists and climate scientists, but the column is basically a takedown of all expertise. (Which he conflates with prediction, but never mind.) In the conservative world Goldberg prefers, it’s apparently much better to ignore the experts and just let events unfold.
Next week’s column will undoubtedly be an attack on liberals for claiming that Republicans are anti-science — with no sense of irony at all. I can’t wait.
