![]() Economist David Friedman vets the legitimacy of these claims and finds them mostly wanting in "Adam Smith Wasn't a Progressive" ( page 22). ![]() This pattern established by the American Founders has continued to the present day, when one will often hear progressives summoning Smith's words to battle for the causes of antitrust, publicly funded schooling, labor unions, taxing the rich, and more. Jefferson's lifelong opponent Alexander Hamilton lifts entire passages from Wealth of Nations in his "Report on Manufactures" to Congress, for instance, only to be met-as Yuval Levin notes in his anniversary tribute to Smith at National Review-by James Madison, citing Smith (rather more credibly) in opposition to Hamilton's proposal for a national bank. Three hundred years after Adam Smith's inauspicious birth in Kirkcaldy, it's not hard to make the case that it's still true.Ĭlaiming the endorsement of the greatest of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers for one's own arguments has been a successful rhetorical gambit for at least as long as Smith's books, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, have been available to the public. ![]() "In political oeconomy, I think Smith's wealth of nations the best book extant." So Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend. ![]()
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