Among the most-recent of the late Jim Buchanan’s writings are his essays on what he called “parentalism”: the desire of many people to have others take some responsibility for their lives. (Many of these essays are gathered in this 2005 collection. I reviewed this collection here.)
True to form, Nancy MacLean recklessly uses quotations from these later writings of Buchanan in ways that give the appearance that Buchanan held views that he certainly did not hold. James Taylor uncovers one such careless use by MacLean of a Buchanan quotation.
Nancy MacLean seems to possess extraordinarily poor reading comprehension. She is either incapable of understanding what she reads, or she reads so spottily from the materials that she uses in her research that she misses the meaning of these materials. Perhaps both.
