Who cares about future generations?

Niall Ferguson has gotten a lot of attention lately for having bashed the “effete” J M Keynes for his selfish worldview, which was due to his homosexuality-induced childlessness rendering him indifferent to the fate of future generations. (This was apparently NF’s interpretation of Keynes’s “In the long run we’re all dead” quip, which is such a bizarrely dishonest distortion that it can only be understood as a sort of carry-over of the toff’s empty PPE cleverness into his new life as intellectual masseur to the wealthy; he seems to have momentarily forgotten that his personal brand depends on him maintaining the veneer of an intelligent academic historian.)

Brad DeLong has pointed out that there is a long tradition of right-wing intellectuals slurring Keynes as a pervert, and his economic theories as sharing the taint of his perversion. Where you stand depends on where you sit, though Henry Blodget says it is unheard of for

a respectable academic to tie another economist’s beliefs to his or her personal situation rather than his or her research. Saying that Keynes’ economic philosophy was based on him being childless would be like saying that Ferguson’s own economic philosophy is based on him being rich and famous and therefore not caring about the plight of poor unemployed people.

Maybe that’s true, though plenty of non-economists state openly that the economics Weltanschauung derives from the pampered condition prevailing among its devotees.

But do you know who was really effete and childless and indifferent to the fate of our children and grandchildren and future generations? There was that guy who said this

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

and this

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal;

and this

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

I can’t wait to see Ferguson and his ideological compatriots go after that guy. I bet they’ll really nail him.