An article appearing in “Real Clear Investigations” on May 19 2026 by Vince Bielski, celebrated as “interesting” by various leading lights of the Make Sociology Great Again movement well exemplifies the confusions and bad faith of those who wrap their hard right politics in the banner of science. The piece recapitulates all the confusions and lazy argumentation typical of the neo-positivist brand, among which are the following:

1) There was a time when sociology was non-political and now it has become political. But exactly when and where this golden age existed is unclear.

2) There are two groups of sociologists: “empiricists” who are scientists and “activists” who are not. (The irony of equating a dogmatic philosophical position with a scientific bent is of course lost entirely on the author, but also, it must be said, on many of the leading lights of MSGA).

3) Science is made up of a series of a-theoretical observations of “facts” and “trends”. This banality is offered by one of the candidates to lead sociology’s professional organization.

But the part of the piece that is unintentionally most humorous is the invocation of Weber’s Wissenschaft als Beruf essay as a great defense of a neutral and apolitical social science. Remember the context of this essay. This was the first of two “vocation” essays that Weber produced at the end of a catastrophic war which he had fully supported in the hopes that it would launch Imperial Germany to the status of a great power. Far from being a neutral defense of science, the essay is a searingly polemical attempt to implausibly draw a complete separation between fact and value. Why would Weber want to do this? Primarily because it allowed him in all good conscience to protect his own nationalistic political stance from any empirical critique. Another way of putting it more generally is to say that Weber’s sundering of the two spheres allowed for a complete irrationalization of politics. It’s amusing, but quite logical, to see Weber’s epigones tread this same path. What they want are facts and values. What they don’t see is that precisely this is a recipe for an irrelevant social science and an idiotized politics. Is that the project?