The Invisible Hand solves everything

Tom Levenson has a nice post at Balloon Juice about Adam Smith, and modern simplification of his philosophy. Maybe it appears ridiculous to be referencing John Dickinson in a blog name, and criticizing people who misappropriate 18th century figures for modern political arguments, but it seems like Smith is greatly simplified by today's anti-regulatory vanguard.  I really liked the following quote, both because it points out the flaws in our polarized debate, and it highlights what makes it hard to have informative discussion in a region where 70% of the electorate supports one party:

In fact, there’s a passage early on that captures beautifully what the Randian and Tea-Party right (which is to say, the entire Congressional GOP, functionally at least) don’t get about what underpins the wealth and long term health of nations.  In it Phillipson talks about the roots of Smith’s ideas about the way the social world works—or must, if groups of humans are to prosper both materially and morally (two categories always intertwined in Smith’s ideas about human relations).  Discussing Smith’s education in the small-town school of his childhood and  youth, Phillipson writes that Smith was being taught to cultivate

...the ability Robert Burns was to characterize so brilliantly as seeing ourselves as others see us.

Which capacity leads to an approach to life lived in the company of others in which it would be not just possible, but valued to

exchange the company of cronies for the friendship of strangers who belonged to different walks of life….The company of strangers would teach one to moderate one’s own prejudices and would give one more ‘extensive’ views of the world.  It would encourage tolerance, taste, judgment and a respect for that sense of propriety that played such an important part in securing the decencies and pleasures of ordinary life…

I think this criticism really applies both to the Left and the Right, but I think the Right is better at shutting out differing opinions.  Maybe I'm blinded by the liberals at NPR, but to me they seem to go out of their way to present opinions from the Right, both rational and crazy.  Fox News tends to stick exclusively to allowing the crazy people on the Left to voice their opinions, without ever giving the rational voices any air time.  That doesn't do their viewers any justice.