Academics are too often cowards. One of the reasons I like Tyler Cowen is that he’s willing to ask simple questions that ask thinkers to call balls and strikes.

On the recent episode with Liaquat Ahamed, he simply asks who were the good guys and bad guys, and Liaquat refuses to answer.

To me, it’s an excellent intelligence question. You can know all the facts, but can you synthesize the information enough to say, “This guy is the hero.”