Last updated on November 26, 2023
Duke University historian Nancy MacLean is currently a trendy historian who spent 2017 touring and promoting her book Democracy in Chains. The book has some serious scholarship flaws, which have been addressed by Henry Farrell and Steven Teles on Vox, a website considered progressive on most issues.
MacLean has made the stunning and insulting claim that autism and libertarianism are connected. That’s right. She believes that libertarianism, which she has described as heartless, self-centered, and lacking empathy, has a higher occurrence within the autism community. As evidence, she points to several self-disclosed autistics within economics, philosophy, and other fields who have favorably commented on classical liberalism and libertarianism.
Merely because some autistics who happen to be scholars are either less critical of or predisposed to classical liberalism, MacLean commits the fallacious leap to associate autism with a political and philosophical set of ideologies.
Video of her claiming this has been posted to YouTube. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18EvqPgn98Q)
I first shared this story on social media February 13, 2018, but then other horrific events overshadowed this story. It simply wasn’t the right time to be writing about anti-autistic stereotypes and academic bullies disguised as social justice crusaders.
Though only anecdotal evidence, most of the autism self-advocates I know in education at all levels, working within the media, and (definitely) in social services are “progressives” — not even left-of-center. They are overwhelmingly self-proclaimed democratic socialists or socialists and a handful of Marxists who dream of utopia.
Unfortunately, the same ideological demographics describe the most vicious bullies I have encountered, especially in higher education.
For some reason, the colleagues most eager to proclaim their social justice, John Rawls and Peter Singer values are also the most vocal when my own physical and neurological needs have been disclosed.
From being called a “gimp” to a colleague stating “We don’t need no stinking autistics here” during a faculty meeting, my experiences have not been inviting, welcoming, tolerant, or in any other many open-minded and accepting of my differences.
Apparently, I am not alone.
No, Libertarians Don’t All Have Autism
A Duke historian resorts to ignorant, ugly stereotyping.By Mathieu Vaillancourt
Feb. 28, 2018 7:05 p.m. ET85 COMMENTSNancy MacLean is a historian at Duke University and an opponent of libertarian and classical-liberal political philosophy. Critics have called her 2017 book on the subject, “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” biased and inaccurate. I don’t know enough about her work to judge its quality. But I’m angry about something she said recently.
“It’s striking to me how many of the architects of this cause seem to be on the autism spectrum,” Ms. MacLean said during a February talk at New York City’s Unitarian Church of All Souls. “You know, people who don’t feel solidarity or empathy with others and who have difficult human relationships sometimes.”
I consider myself a classical liberal. I believe in the power of free markets and sound money to generate prosperity. Trade and technological progress allow us to live longer, healthier, easier lives. I believe in a social policy that leaves people alone to make personal decisions as long as they don’t hurt others. I see my political ideology as a consistent defense of freedom, and I regard both prosperity and tolerance as noble values.
I also have autism, and I would like to set the record straight about what that means. Specialists in the field long ago debunked the simplistic stereotype that people with autism have no feelings or compassion. We can be empathic and express feelings, but we tend to do it in a different way.
Ms. MacLean is… wrong in stereotyping people with autism as libertarians. Like everyone else, we believe in different political ideologies and vote for different political parties. We’re humans, not robots.
Nor are classical liberals and libertarians emotionless, compassionless people. The vast majority of us believe in helping the needy; we simply think aid is better given in a bottom-up, voluntary way than dispensed by a centralized government. We disagree among ourselves on how to achieve social goals. But it’s outrageous to suggest that we don’t care.
Diagnosing the “mental health” of political opponents is dangerous and a form of intellectual bullying. It is name calling under the guise of “research.” Across the political spectrum and throughout history this has been done to those with whom cultural elites or the party in power have disagreements. Scholars on the left and right, the statists and the individualists, have cautioned against — and yet it continues and is possibly more popular than at any other time in my life.
Book after book claims to explain the neurology or psychology of broad groups of people. Supposedly, this is to “better understand” the group being “studied” (quotes intended for sarcastic, sardonic irony). People buy these books and listen to these scholars, apparently forgetting the warnings against the political use of psychology and genetic fallacies.
Autism does not make someone anything except autistic.
We are abusing psychology in popular culture and within academia. If this trend of popularizing mass diagnoses of political groups doesn’t stop, there were will calls to “cure” opponents of their mental health issues. That might seem like yet another fallacy, but it has happened historically. Mental health clinics were abused by the Soviet Unions, East Germany, China, Cuba… and also by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
It’s simply too convenient and easy to assume someone with whom we disagree must have a deep, serious flaw.
As I stated at the start of this post, I already distrusted MacLean because there are flaws in her book raising questions about her scholarship and genuine dedication to verifiable truth. She selectively edited quotes, created “likely” conversations between people, and made outright erroneous claims. Now, with her claims about autism and libertarians, she has revealed the depth of biases on a topic she claimed to research fairly.
For more on the scholarship problems with the research see Democracy in Chains and Inter-Disciplinary Problems from August 5, 2017, on Almost Classical.