Jonathan Chait responds by e-mail to this post yesterday:
Apparently you forgot that I expressly limited my argument to economic issues. I don’t think my argument applies to social or foreign policy and did not claim it did. In fact I agree that on *some* social issues, particularly racial ones, liberals can be anti-empiricist. I’ve written about such issues in the past. So your correspondent’s point is moot.
Me: Fair enough, I suppose. Though it’s worth further responding that Chait believes that liberals are empiricists on economics when A) he agrees with them and B) when they’re empirical. It (still) seems to me that the assertion “all liberals are empirical on economics” is as easily falsified as “all conservatives are un-empirical and dogmatic on economics.” But we’re not going to have that argument again.