The Rules Made Me Do It!

Here’s a story ripped from the headlines.  Yesterday at the US Open, Novak Djokovic accidentally hit a linesperson with a tennis ball.  He had just dropped his serve at love, and – clearly frustrated – took a ball out of his pocket and knocked it behind him.  (He might have hit it a tad bit harder than usual, but sending a leftover ball to the back of the court after completing a service game is standard practice.)  A split second after thoughtlessly hitting it, Djokovic looked back to see it had struck a linesperson, and was clearly horrified to see what he had done.  After rushing back to apologize, a lengthy conversation with the tournament referee ensued.  The outcome was that Djokovic was defaulted from the match and tossed from the Open.    

I’m of two minds about this.  A longtime Federer fan, I’ll cop to a little schadenfreude for any misfortune that befalls The Djoker.  (What’s a good nemesis for, anyway?)  But as a human being interested in rules, fairness, and normativity, the decision strikes me as a mistake. 

Here’s a second case.  In the 2018 US Open Final, Serena Williams played Naomi Osaka.  Early on, Serena’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, was cited for nonverbal coaching.  This gave Williams a ‘code violation’—basically a verbal warning from the chair umpire.  Serena protested that she had not cheated, and the chair umpire admitted her point, responding, “I know that.”  From there, however, the match “descended into chaos”.  In the second set, Serena broke her racquet in frustration.  Because she had already been issued a formal warning, this time the rules required her to be docked a point.  Serena was incensed.  She declared the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos, to be a thief.  He issued a third code violation for “verbal abuse,” resulting in Williams dropping a game at a crucial moment. 

It’s easy to see things spiraled from what appeared to be a simple ambiguity.  When Serena initially talked to Ramos after Mouratoglou’s coaching violation, she had insisted that she had not cheated.  Ramos agreed that she had not cheated.  From the player’s point of view, they had settled their difference.  From the official’s point of view, the issue was not that a player had cheated, but that the rules demanded a code violation for a coach’s action.  So when the racquet incident came around, it could appear either as the “first” of Williams’s violations, or as the “second” violation assessed to Williams, depending on how you were counting.

My present concern is not to resolve what was or was not retracted by implicature of Ramos’s from-the-chair speech act, “I know that.”  Rather, my claim is that for the US Open to turn on niceties of this sort is ridiculous.  Serena herself was the first to make this point.  When Donna Kelso, the Grand Slam Supervisor, entered the court to explain how Ramos was following the letter of the law to an understandably upset Williams, Serena countered: “I get the rules, but I’m saying that it’s not right.”

Serena’s case is different from Novak’s.  The most basic rights are those protecting one’s physical person, so it matters that someone suffered harm in today’s episode.  The only physical damage done in the 2018 final was to Serena’s Wilson Blade racquet, which I strongly suspect she owned outright.  But anyone on the ground of a grand slam tennis match appreciates that tennis balls will be moving through the air.  Djokovic is the responsible party, as he also understood.  However, it’s hard for me – at least – to see how altering the course of the Open in response to a truly bizarre accident serves anybody’s interests (except, well, Federer’s – and so by extension, my own).  Like I said, I see both sides of this one.

Don’t worry about that.  Believe as you will about Novak and US Open rules.  I’ve taken my (and your!) precious time getting to it, but what I’m really after here is The Rules as a kind of normative banner.  In the wake of today’s decision, lots of commentators have insisted that the tournament referee had to throw Djokovic out because The Rules required it. 

Two points about this.  One: whenever anybody says “The rules require it!” I strongly recommend consulting the fine print.  Two: what The Rules require is not conceptually transparent to what’s right. Serena was too smart to be go in for that bit of bureaucratic doublespeak, and we should be, too. 

I teach a big intro class at a university.  Alas, there are rules.  Lots of rules.  My syllabus is full of them.  Yours probably is as well.  But here is the thing.  I – for one – have learned by sad experience that I’m just not clever enough to construct any set of rules such that their strict enforcement will serve the values I care about.  I don’t know quite why this is.  My experience is that enforcing the rules is bad for me, and for my most vulnerable students.  Now, you might think I haven’t thought hard enough about how to make the rules fair.  And maybe so.  But no matter what rules I put down, those rules aren’t even dry on the syllabus before Ambitious Students will have figured out how to maximize their interests within the game those rules constitute.  And because I have to grade on a curve, that’s not great news for not-so-ambitious students.  For whatever it’s worth, my very consistent experience is that the students who stand to win from The Rules are overwhelmingly upper-middle class or rich, white, and male.  Nothing against those students, who are within their rights to play by the rules.  But a system where you only get ahead by figuring out The Rules and playing hard within them will not be neutral in upon whom in confers benefits and burdens.

I’ll end with a jeremiad.  I have met The Rules.  I hate them.  Including my own.  Sometimes I feel a temptation to enforce The Rules against a student whom I really feel has it coming.  “They called me a thief!” I’ve said in my own way.  But when I’m in that state, I’m not seeing things right.  People I trust have to tell me to suppress my vanity, to let go of the rules.  I have never regretted following their advice.  I’ve also had students try to enforce The Rules against themselves.  (Curiously, never the same students eager to use the rules to get ahead.)  That’s not good, either.  I don’t work for The Rules, and nor should they.  Were we created for the syllabus, or the syllabus for us?   

What’s my thesis?  When someone tells you they are just following the rules, it’s also true that they are following the rules.  We cannot divest ourselves of responsibility for our actions by saying the rules made us do it.  They didn’t.  There’s a question about what the rules say, and there’s a question about what’s right.  Running those questions together is more dangerous than a flying tennis ball.

More on Angry Mobs

 You might have some imperfect obligation to speak out against some issue. (It can't be a perfect obligation, can it? Does anyone think you are literally obligated to speak out for or against some issue at all times you're awake?)

Even if so, it doesn't follow that other people have permission to make you speak out on demand. For instance, even if you should speak out against the genocide of the Uighurs or against closed borders (two things that are far more important, morally speaking, than Black Lives Matter), it doesn't follow that I, Jason Brennan, may approach you at any time and insist that you speak out on the spot. If I further harassed, harangued, and threatened you, you would be justified in defying me.

At any rate, I am please to report that last night in DC, I found that exactly zero protesters were wearing "Free the Uighurs/Fuck the CCP" or "Open Borders" T-shirts. I beat up 300 people with a baseball bat, thus protecting the world from their horrifically violent silence. 

In Defense of Lori Loughlin

 If you read this blog, you’ve probably noticed its writers largely agree that the political state does more than its share of unjust things.  But that point is pretty mundane.  I’d venture that a majority of academic folks we associate with across the political spectrum broadly agree about the most egregious examples of political injustice. 

Sometimes, however, there is a case where something seems obviously unjust to me, but for some reason a lot of academics I know see it differently.  This post is about Lori Loughlin, who yesterday was sentenced over her well-publicized ploy to get her children into USC under the guise of a rowing scholarship.  I confess this strikes me as crazy.

Here’s a case to warm you up to my view.  Imagine you want to get into Fancyperson Richclub, an exclusive fraternity for the well-heeled and well-mannered.  One of the rules of admission is that your parents and grandparents must have also met certain criteria of membership among the social elite.  As it happens, your family’s past is checkered with markers of low and middle class heritage.  Your application is turned down.  Indignant, you fabricate a new family history, purging old family pictures of birthdays at Cheesecake Factory and photoshopping in nights at the symphony, etc. etc.  Unused to your plucky ambition, Fancyperson Richclub is duped.  They admit you.

Is your action wrong?  Well, there is some deception, which is often wrong.  But in some cases, deception as a way of parrying unjust background conditions – or what philosophers sometimes call defensive deception – is ok.  I’ll admit mileage may vary on this question.

Is your action unjust?  Here I say no, it’s not unjust.  If they smell you out as a low class striver, they’re free to excommunicate you.  That’s freedom of association.  But nothing more.

Second case.  Over the years, Fancyperson Richclub starts losing members and money.  Sure, they still have their pride, but that doesn’t pay for the ice sculptures.  They decide to take a few members with less distinguished pedigrees, provided they can make a “donation” up front.  You just have to take your "donation" to the Appropriate Office.  As long as you do, you’re in.  But if by chance you take your “donation” to the Inappropriate Office, the attendant there calls the police on you.  As it happens, you bring your briefcase of cash to the Inappropriate Office and get made.  The police arrest you.

Here is what puzzles me.  I don’t know why the state should intervene at all.  And if the state intervenes, why take the side of Fancyperson Richclub?  Doing that looks plain suspicious.  It’s almost as if the state had some interest in defending the old class structure. 

I’m going to introduce a technical term.  I will call something a “scam” whenever some agent or group represents themselves as something they’re not in order to get a positional advantage.  Elite colleges like to represent themselves as not trading admissions for money.  That way they can maintain certain reputational gains that give them a positional edge.  At the same time, elite colleges trade admissions for money.  So elite colleges are engaged in a scam.

Astonishingly, Lori Loughlin got the better of them.  How did a middle class divorcee turned B-list celebrity do it?  The answer to that question is the stuff of what I regret will probably not be first Hallmark true-crime thriller. 

How should an egalitarian minded political society regard people who scam the scammers?  Polite indifference?  Public commendation?  A medal of some kind?  Those are my pre-theoretical intuitions. 

Not so.  Lori Loughlin was sentenced to two months in jail.  I think this is unjust. 

I’ve had this argument with a few people.  Sometimes I’m told that it wasn’t fair for Lori Loughlin’s kids to get admitted to USC because they took some else’s spot.  Three responses.  First, I want to note that most academics tend to think “you took my spot!” reasoning betrays a kind of category mistake.  Second, for spot-taking to be unfair, it must be the case that the person who’s spot was taken was in fact more deserving.  But third, let’s say for the sake of the argument they were more deserving.  Now some star high school rower is slumming it on the crew team at UC Santa Barbara instead of USC.  And we’re going to put Lori Loughlin in a cage used by some humans to physically contain other humans as a form of punishment?  Insanity.  At the worst, we should make her send a note of apology or something. 

But really, why should the state intervene at all?  To me it looks suspicious.  It’s almost as if they had some interest in defending the existing class structure.  Maybe you disagree.  I realize I’m in the minority.  But if you’re on the other side, I am curious who you think the bad guys are in any heist movie you’ve ever watched. 

 

Blood Plasma: Peter Jaworski vs. the Hired Guns at Bloodwatch

My colleague Peter Jaworski has been leading the charge to change Canada's policies on blood collection, in particular, on whether Canadians can be paid for their blood plasma. 

Here's a short video explaining the issue.

Along the way, he's getting attacked by various intellectual prostitutes at an astroturf organization called "Bloodwatch", which describes itself as being all about public safety, but which actively lies to the public about the safety of paid plasma. They have never complained bout imports from the United States. They pushed for a law against paid plasma, but in fact, it was only a law that prevented Canadians from getting paid. This law protects certain Canadian jobs against competition. 

Peter makes clear how absurd their position is. They claim that it is wrong, exploitative, unsafe, and whatnot to pay Canadians for blood plasma. So, what does Canada do? It imports almost all (84%) of the blood plasma it needs from...wait for it...paid plasma "donors" in the United States.

Jesus Christ. These people are like Ayn Rand villains. I would find this implausible if I read it in one of her novels, yet here they are, real people, utterly without shame. 

They're also attacking him (see Twitter) for, I guess, having some sort of connection with Cato, even though he has... wait for it... published extensively on this issue in the very best peer-reviewed outlets.

Voltaire famously prayed for God to make his enemies ridiculous. Peter has no need for such a prayer. 

The Harm Principle and Toleration: An Interview with JS Mill

As many of you know, I am a trained necromancer. (I learned this skill after I wrote Why Not Capitalism? I so thoroughly destroyed G. A. Cohen's book that Satan was forced to relinquish Cohen's soul to me from hell. I now keep it in a shoebox under my desk and use it as a footstool.) One of my skills is talking to the dead. Today, I'm interviewing John Stuart Mill on his book On Liberty.

Brennan: "You say that neither government nor society should regulate or control actions unless they cause harm to others."

Mill: "Correct."

Brennan: "So, what you mean by that is so long as someone claims an action--such as writing an op-ed criticizing their philosophy of gender identity--harms them, then the action should be regulated heavily by society or government."

Mill: "Uh, no, that doesn't follow."

Brennan: "Wait, why not?"

Mill: "Well, for one, anyone can claim they are harmed by anything. We can't just let individual people decide by fiat that they were harmed. A principle like that would surely be abused. I mean, if all it takes for you to be able to assert control over others is that you were harmed by them, people will claim to be harmed all the time. Human beings are pretty crappy and will generally take advantage of structures of power for their own benefit. Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence that this is how people behave. A church may be created for the purpose of saving souls, but give it 10 years and its new purpose becomes amassing wealth and real estate. You can't trust people--whether in social mobs, bureaucracies, or in governments--with much power. That's one of the big reasons I oppose paternalism, you may recall, if you read the second half of that book."

Brennan: "But suppose they could be trusted, would that be enough? And suppose it did cause real harm by some objective standard."

Mill: "Well, no. The other problem is that you are confusing a necessary condition with a sufficient condition. I'm saying that we should tolerate anything people do that doesn't harm others. But I'm not saying that if something does harm others, it should therefore automatically be subject to any, let alone significant, social or political regulation."

Brennan: "Why not?"

Mill: "I mean, to simplify the argument I make in that book, it comes down to this: When we decide what level of freedom people should have, and how much we should tolerate, we should draw the line where doing so produces the most overall social progress and overall best living conditions for people. High tolerant, risk-taking societies produce great social, political, scientific, artistic, and cultural progress, while heavily moralizing, indignant, puritanical, risk-averse, and mobbish societies do not. Tolerant societies make people flourish, intolerant societies do not. I realize that's an empirical argument and requires empirical proof, but I think history and economic analysis rather clearly demonstrates I'm right."

Brennan: "Can you give me an example of a harm that we should tolerate?"

Mill: "Take one from economics. If a competitor comes along who builds a better mousetrap, she might put your mousetrap company out of business. It's plausible to say that you've been harmed--probably far more than a person would be harmed by, say, allowing a conservative speaker to come to campus, a speaker the person is free to ignore. So, imagine we said that in order to prevent harm, we never allow people to outcompete each other in the market. What do we get? Stagnation, poverty, rent seeking, and a political system run by insiders who control the anti-competitive regulations for their own benefit at the expense of everyone else. See the medieval guild systems, for example. We all are better off in a system where such competition is allowed, even though each of us would prefer that we, and we alone, be immunized and protected against such competition. Similarly, overall, we each benefit greatly from living in liberal, open, tolerant cultures, even though we each selfishly might wish to crush and destroy those who have ideas and beliefs we despise."

Brennan: "People are much less racist, ethnocentric, sexist, and so on today then back when you were writing, say, The Subjection of Women. Do you think we're a more tolerant society?"

Mill: "Yes, for sure. But at the same time, we should be careful not to credit people with being tolerant when they really aren't. Most people today are not very tolerant overall, even if they are more tolerant than most people were through most of history. Toleration means putting up with things you dislike and disapprove of. For instance, Jay, do you disapprove of homosexuality?"

Brennan: "No, not at all. I think there is no moral difference between heterosexual or homosexual sex, or really any consensual sex among adults."

Mill: "Then you can't really be said to tolerate these actions, because you don't disapprove of them. It's a bit like saying you are tolerant of people using red toothbrushes. Toleration means putting up stuff you dislike and disapprove of. In contrast, if an evangelical Christian thinks homosexuality is sinful but puts up with it, doesn't harass gay people, and generally leaves them alone, that's tolerance. So, what are some things you disapprove of?"

Brennan: "Illiberalism, for one. Liberalism is the correct theory of justice. I also, frankly, tend to think that non-liberals are almost universally motivated by a will to power and that their putative reasons for illiberalism are a cover for their self-interested actions."

Mill: "Ok, so as a liberal, you have to tolerate illiberal people. Here, read this FAQ to understand what that means. Toleration is an extremely demanding principle, and most people don't live up to it."

Is Academia a Right-Wing Institution with a Left-Wing Cover?

In this post at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen speculates that Los Angeles is the most "right-wing" city in the US in terms of practice, rather than people's political beliefs. Here, "right-wing" signifies strong inequality in status. 

In LA, there is winner-takes-all kind of tournament, and people are strongly motivated to raise their own status while willing to accept radical inequality in prestige. People are treated differently based on their status and prestige, and in particular, how they look, whom they know, and who's in their network. All of this is tolerated and celebrated, despite the overtly "left-wing" politics people claim to espouse. 

If I recall correctly, in another post, Cowen speculates that often times the political ideology of a place tends to counteract, balance, or cover up the underlying politics. So, for instance, LA and New York are very hierarchical and status-driven, but espouse left-wing politics, while red cities often have much lower income inequality, but espouse conservative ideas.

I similarly wonder if academia is a right-wing institution with a left-wing cover. Below is a partial excerpt, modified in various ways, from a paper forthcoming in an edited anthology:

Given how poorly universities behave and given how much they undermine social justice, it’s strategic for administrators to use social justice talk as much as possible. While academia is supposed to aim at a higher mission and be non-profit, the actual people inside academia are normal, selfish, for-profit people. Egalitarian talk is often a cover or disguise for the pursuit of self-interest, just as talk of salvation in the medieval Catholic church was often a cover for the pursuit of real estate, power, and wealth. 

While academia is filled with people who posit egalitarian ideals, it is not an egalitarian place. In behavior, academia may be the most right-wing institution in the US, even more than the military or the police. (Think of how open the military and police are to accepting and promoting common people. Now think of how open the good colleges and universities are.) Higher ed serves a very right-wing function, namely, to reinforce class hierarchy. Academia is highly hierarchical; everything and everyone gets ranked, and everyone is acutely aware of such rankings. Finally, while nearly all academics pay lip service to left-wing ideals, their actual behavior is predominantly selfish. In short, academics simultaneously promote egalitarianism philosophy and inegalitarian outcomes. Status, not education, is the sine qua non and the essential product it sells; if it stopped providing this, it would quickly go out of business. Higher education strongly contributes to income inequality, especially in the United States.

 

People often use moral language to disguise their pursuit of self-interest. Academics in general are trained to use moral language in a sophisticated way. Perhaps we should regard academic egalitarianism as cheap altruism. If I say I’m an egalitarian, I come across as nice and caring, even though I haven’t thereby done anything to help others or sacrificed my self-interest to help the poor. On the contrary, many egalitarians go out of their way to explain why their egalitarian commitments do not require them to donate their excess income to others.

 

Liberalism at Work

In general, bosses shouldn’t fire workers for stuff they do on the weekends. Bosses should be legally permitted to fire workers for this reason. But people shouldn’t cheer bosses on when they do.

Lately, several people lost their jobs based on social media postings or their conduct outside of work. (Examples here, here, here, here, and here) Each case is different, but in many of them, it seems that bosses were firing workers in an attempt to demonstrate the company’s commitment to workplace inclusivity.

 

I agree that inclusivity is an important value at work. Nevertheless, I think liberals and progressives should generally oppose these dismissals because they should oppose workplace domination. Libertarians should oppose these dismissals too because even though employers should have a legal right to fire people at will on the basis of their social media posts or behavior outside of work, they still shouldn’t do it. Workplace domination is bad even if it shouldn’t be illegal.

Elizabeth Anderson makes a compelling case against workplace domination. When she joined Russ Roberts on EconTalk to discuss her book, Private Government, one of her examples of workplace domination was political pressure at work. She described “white-collar workers who are quite commonly pressured by their bosses to contribute money to favored political campaigns or political action committees.” Employers can monitor employees’ donations and employees with disagreeable politics could be disadvantaged in promotion decisions. 

 

Roberts then noted that employers can often dictate what workers do when they are not at work. Anderson replied,

Quite right. And this, I think, is even more objectionable. Normally we think that once you are off duty, you should be free from any kind of control or regulation by your boss. But, in the United States, the default rule of employment is employment at will. And that entails that your boss can fire you for any or no reason at all, including things that the boss finds out about your off-duty activity. For instance.…stuff that you might post on Facebook expressing perhaps controversial opinions can get one fired even if the Facebook posting isn't addressed to fellow workers or harassing them in any way but just expressing an opinion that the boss disagrees with. …In reality, people are fired for what they do over the weekend, and in their leisure time.

In contrast, Tyler Cowen wrote in response to Anderson,

A business usually should have the right to fire a worker for Facebook postings or other forms of “outside the workplace” activity. For a start, a lot of workers put racist, sexist, or otherwise discomforting comments and photos into their Facebook pages. When employers fire them, very often it is to protect some notion of the freedom of the other workers….The question of workplace freedom often boils down to one set of the workers against another. In that setting, allowing for a lot of apparently arbitrary firing decisions on net may support rather than oppose worker autonomy. (Private Government p.112)

In this exchange, I think Anderson and Cowen are both half-right. Anderson is right in saying that employers shouldn’t monitor employees’ social media accounts or speech outside the workplace, nor should they pressure employees to contribute to their favored political causes. Cowen is right that employers should not be legally prohibited from doing these things.

On the other hand, I also think Anderson and Cowen are also both half-mistaken. Anderson shouldn’t support regulations that limit employers’ ability to dismiss employees at will because this solution just trades workplace domination for political domination, which is even more pervasive and less escapable.

And Cowen should have been more worried that employers would fire people for bad reasons, or that it could be bad for employers to defer to an employees’ fellow workers to decide whether a person should be fired. The same reasons Anderson gives against subjecting employees to surveillance and arbitrary threats of dismissal from their bosses are also reasons against subjecting them to the same kinds of threats from their coworkers.

Another worry about firing people for their social media posting or behavior outside of work is that it is likely to be counterproductive if the goal is creating a welcoming workplace, even when bosses target speech and behavior that would undermine the values of corporate inclusivity. 

Consider a workplace that fails to make everyone feel welcome, a workplace that does not live up to its company’s commitment to inclusivity. In a workplace like this, expanding employers’ ability to dismiss people on the basis of their speech and conduct outside of work is may seem appealing in the short run. But without deeper reforms, corporate policies that permit bosses to fire people whose private conduct is viewed as objectionable or disagreeable could backfire in the long run.

Ultimately, expanding the power of the government, the bosses, or even the majority of workers is likely to end up harming the workers who have the least social power.

Let's Also Purge the Left's Racist Heroes and Influences

I have an acquaintance who is dishonest but dumb. Because she's dumb, she doesn't realize that her lies are transparent.  She fools no one.

A similar problem holds for pseudo-leftist activists' and intellectuals' calls to purge academia (especially economics) of past racist influences. They are dishonest but dumb, and no one is fooled.

For instance, the New York Times dug up some non-peer-reviewed piece George Stigler published in an obscure newsletter. Stigler said low black wages might be tied not merely to discrimination, but to "inferiority as a worker." He compares them to Jews, who were also subject to heavy discrimination, but who, he claims, tended to cultivate various intellectual and moral virtues which made them extremely successful despite that. Stigler does not say these behaviors are biological rather than cultural. Nevertheless, it's bad stuff. 

Now, on Twitter and elsewhere, you see people calling for purging academia of his thought. You see similar calls for purges of other intellectuals on the right or who have some connection to libertarianism, though in the latter cases, these allegations are often fabricated. No one bothers to investigate whether Stigler's views on black work culture in any way affect his peer-reviewed work. He said racist stuff, so therefore everything else he said is suspect.

But here's why this doesn't fool anybody, not even the people doing it: They aren't consistent. They aren't digging up the same dirt on intellectual heroes or influences on the left. They aren't saying we should eliminate the anti-Semitic, racist Marx ("lazy Mexicans")--or all of those he influenced--from the curriculum. They aren't saying we should purge the anti-Semite, eugenicist Keynes. They aren't digging up dirt on left-wing intellectuals from the 1940s and 1960s, though plenty of such dirt is there. They aren't saying we should oppose, say, the minimum wage even though its original purpose was to starve undesirable races. They aren't saying we should oppose progressive politics despite progressivism's heavily eugenist origins. They aren't demanding we purge philosophy despite so many 20th century philosophers expressing sympathy with totalitarianism and gulags. Why not?

Probably it's because they aren't really interested in racism. Anti-racism is simply a cover for a long-standing agenda developed back when their intellectual forbears were all racists. They instead want to push for various socialist political ideas unconnected with race. They recognize there are various economic and philosophical objections to their ideas. Unable to defeat them, they instead look for (and, if they can't find it, invent) dirt from the originators or influences on some of those ideas, and then declare the ideas dead through tainted genesis. 

If you offer a principle or a method, but you only use it as a weapon against others while ignoring what it means for your own views, you aren't sincere. It's transparent.

Now, I wouldn't go so far as to claim the people doing this are themselves racist. But, nevertheless, if someone attempts to co-opts people's legitimate concerns about racism for self-serving purposes, that person can't be said to care much about racism. 

UPDATE:

Here's an example of Nancy MacLean nodding in agreement with actual, outspoken, explicit racists and eugenicists in the book where she dishonestly tries to smear Buchanan with racism.