In agreeing with Robin Neill's comment, John Medaille wrote:  
> ... the study of history is so crucial to a proper study of economics,   
> or indeed to any humane science. Human ideas arise from a response to   
> particular historical circumstances and it is difficult to understand   
> them without understanding the cultural milieu that produced them. An   
> author advances a proposition x in preference to rival propositions y   
> and z, and casts his thoughts in a form he feels best suited to answer   
> y and z. It is really impossible to understand x without understanding   
> y and z. Even if x really is a universal proposition, it is normally   
> expressed in terms that are valid mostly within a particular culture   
> or time. Too often students receive economic propositions in the form   
> of received and ahistorical dogmas that are beyond question. The   
> inevitable result is that students lose the practice of thinking   
> historically and end up trying to fit reality to the dogma rather than   
> the dogma to the reality. That is what I mean by theorizing in the   
> abstract.  
>  
> This is not to say that there are no universals, but man reaches the   
> universal only through the particular, which is to say through history   
> and culture.  
  
  
I earlier tried to direct Medaille to the history of the comparative   
cost advantage theory of trade with my request for him to show where in   
Ricardo's writings the latter had assumed (a) full employment and (b)   
balance of trade in arguing the benefits of free trade.  I was hoping   
that if he failed to find those conditions in Ricardo's works, which I   
don't think exist, he would then be inclined to think differently about   
the benefits of NAFTA.  Instead, he responded with threats of debating   
me on free trade, as if such threats were a legitimate substitute for   
the textual evidence I requested.  (If I needed any clarifications on   
the benefits of free trade, I would rather consult the writings of Adam   
Smith or David Ricardo than John Medaille's.)  Now he writes as if it is   
those who argue the benefits of the comparative cost  advantage theory   
of trade that lack the historical context or are oblivious of reality.    
Not so.   Indeed, Smith's and Ricardo's views were very much informed by   
reality.  
  
And on the assessment of the actual turnout of events in regards to   
migration after NAFTA, I had in mind J.S. Mill's advice on the   
evaluation of theories in one of his Essays on Some Unsettled Questions   
of Political Economy.  Before one declares a certain hypothesis to have   
been falsified, one needs to be sure that all possible countervailing   
forces or events have been taken account of.  That way, hasty judgments   
would be avoided.  
  
I think historians of economic thought would illustrate the usefulness   
of their subject by drawing on the original sources of theories when   
these come into question in modern debate.  In particular, "full   
employment" as a condition for arguing the validity of any classical   
proposition is just ill-advised.  I am yet to find any classical   
proposition that depends on it.  
  
James Ahiakpor