Blog on Metaeconomics 

(Post updated July 2025) Instead of looking for an alternative to replace it (microeconomics), we should try to imagine an economic...

--- a  Dual Interest Theory (DIT) Evaluation (Note: The Detailed Review is 40-plus pages , a detailed Chapter by Chapter assessment using the DIT lens. The Brief Review used that material, and, with the help of ChatGPT 5.2, well, here it is... with some editing to ensure accuracy. ChatGPT 5.2 is a powerful partner in editing, cutting to the chase!). This Blog Post applies Metaeconomics and Dual Interest Theory (DIT) to the question of whether the content of the shared oth

This Blog Post applies Metaeconomics and Dual Interest Theory (DIT) to the question of whether the content of the shared other-interest touted by the MAGA New Right has legitimate empirical credentials, or, is it merely ideological and theological platitude? Read on, and, what think? Field (2025) has a background (BA, MA and PhD) in political science, political theory and public law. The book adds new, contemporary, empirical insight into the deeper foundations of the MAGA N

Field points to three groups on the MAGA New Right including the Claremonters , the Postliberals  and the National Conservatives .  As Field (2025, p. .5) characterizes it:  “… the Claremonters idolize the American founding, the Postliberals a particular (religiously inspired) conception of the “Common Good” and the National Conservatives the myth of a traditional American nation.” And, there is a bit of overlap among the groups, leading to a home to “…not only to intellectua

Field points to a major shift in the Conservative frame of reference with the nomination of the “cowboy conservative” Barry Goldwater in 1964.  It shifted the center of power within the Republican party to the Western US from the heretofore power centered in the East.  Goldwater was against supporting the Civil Rights Act, a major factor in Johnson becoming President. And while Rockefeller and other party leaders believed Goldwater to extreme right, a speech  about that time

Even though based in a substantive disregard for the truth, and often with presumed “noble” lies even when the facts are acknowledged, “… the Claremonter crowd has, since 2016, achieved something that could be interpreted … as the vanguard of an illiberal renaissance. After the publication of the Flight 93 essay and the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the Claremont Institute went from being a peripheral group of academics to playing a major role in national politics. The Clare

Field turns attention to post-liberal Patrick Deneen, a political philosopher at Notre Dame, with Catholic Integralist framing. Click here for an earlier DIT framed Review of Deneen’s most well-known work, Why Liberalism Failed (2018) ?? (which it actually did not, at least not completely).  But, some more here.  Field points to how Deneen became ever more extreme, as in a period of about 10 years --- 2012 - 2022 --- going to “… naming the American elite ‘one of the worst of

The next section about the NatCon --- National Conservatives --- which starts by highlighting Peter Theil, the billionaire Libertarian, overlaps with the Extreme Libertarians and Christian Nationalists categories in Hanson and Kopstein (2024). Theil, like the other Extreme Libertarians to include Elon Musk, claims Democracy is not compatible with individual Freedom, at least not the unfettered (even be cruel if you wish, empathy-based ethics are in the way) do as you please f

As Field (2025, pp.  126-127) describes it, “This chapter is about  (the) ugly underbelly of the New Right … personalities we encounter here are adept at weaving tantalizing conspiracies about, for example, the dark female forces that ruthlessly dominate the commanding heights of politics and culture in America today. They have a knack for being deeply aggrieved by the most basic institutions and norms of liberal government, deeming them evil and plotting revenge, in a way th

Speaking of bullshit, as  Attorney General Barr at the time accurately labeled it, the claim of 2020 Stolen Election is front and center.  It is still around in 2025, the total disregard for truth claim that the 2020 Election Stolen, now even required to be taught in Oklahoma Schools, and a Government Website laying claim to the same bullshit. Total Disregard for Truth Starts with  Claims of 2020 Stolen Election John Eastman,  a law professor at Chapman University and a visit

The matter of the need for Patriotic Education really starts into motion after the 1619 Project which was published as and intended to be supplementary materials to e used in education institutions. The Project was done by investigative journalists and researchers with substantive credentials in the sciences & humanities. The Project sought to put more emphasis on the early history of slavery --- first load of slaves brought in 1619 to the shores of what would become America

Perhaps best to frame the notion of the siege with the Field (2025, p. 193) reporting findings from a historian by the name  David Sessions about how Claremonters actually formed an effort, a strategy and a tact to guide a siege, to carry out an assault on American Institutions. In DIT terms, the siege is to orchestrate an assault on the content of the shared interest represented especially in left-wing thinking and replace it with extreme right-wing interests, shared among t

The claims about the truth, the good and the beautiful all wrapped in a frame of common good constitutionalism is perhaps the most bizarre of all the supposed intellectual --- hopefully based in serious and systematic inquiry – claims of the MAGA New Right. Somehow banning empathy-with the other --- except for the dark empathy within the MAGA New Right --- is going to lead to realizing the common good. Governor DeSantis has been claiming that the Florida education system had

The claim here from some parts of the MAGA New Right is that being “woke” somehow destroys manhood.  We have to presume that a testosterone loaded egocentric male is the only kind of male that is to be encouraged and tolerated.  As DIT makes clear, said framing assures chaos and destruction of an economic and social system with needs balance in the ego & empathy (woke), which gives empirical evidence that the End of Men claims that only ego-driven men are to dominate, well, s

Amazingly, the “Christian” Nationalists seem to be all in, counter to any reasoned interpretation of what Jesus Christ actually stood for and against. It starts with an evangelical Jim Garlow in 2016 likening Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton to Jezebel … with some help here from ChatGPT 5.2:  “…he was not making a colorful remark. He was: delegitimizing female political authority; sanctifying opposition; transforming politics into moral warfare; justifying authoritarian

The notion of Ecce Furor us a Latin phrase translated to  “behold the fury, come now” and/or “see the madness, proceed.”  Ecce has to do with behold, see, or look.  Furor has to do with loss of social order or control when one was overcome by intense passion.  Field sees the MAGA New Right in said light.  The fury is framed by the claim that the modern world is lost track of the virtues, about which the New Right self-righteously lays claim. Field (2025, p.  303) quotes Mansf

This Blog Post applies Metaeconomics and Dual Interest Theory (DIT) to the question of whether Authoritarian Nationalism is in any sense a better system than a Constitutional Democracy. It seems an Authoritarian Nationalism in any form just leads both economy and society down Another Road to Serfdom ? Read on, and, what think? It follows earlier Blog posts —  The Two Roads to Serfdom  and  The Two Roads from Mont Pelerin  — by mapping a third road:  Authoritarian National

Preface:  Building on a Review of Smith, Helmut Walser. Germany: A Nation in Its Time, Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020, 591 pp.   This Review was stirred by a recent vacation trip, a Danube River Cruise from Amsterdam with stops in several German towns and cities along the way to Vienna. The stop in Nuremberg --- the place where the Authoritarian Radical Nationalism of 1933-1945 in Germany was born, nourished, and died in

Smith (2020) explores the history and evolution of what sacrifice for country might mean, with the turn toward sacrifice for the fatherland coming into play in the 1300s, which is a kind of pre-condition for Nationalism.  By the 1900s, it was especially entrenched as represented in World War I, accepted by soldiers and others. But, Nationalism did not really appear until after WWI.  As Smith (2020) indicates:  “before 1914, perhaps even before 1918, Germans lived in an age of

Victory in Europe was accomplished by May, 1945 --- V-E Day is celebrated on May 8.  Hitler had committed suicide on April 30, 1945, in effect avoiding taking any responsibility for what had occurred.  Smith (2020) details the huge numbers of both civilian and military deaths leading to the end. A LIVING CONCEPT OF FATHERLAND c. 1945–1950 Smith (2020) provides lots of statistics on the losses during the waning months of the war.  And while 80 percent of the Jews that had been