Free On the Wealth of Nations by P.J. O'Rourke

that if the Americans won their independence, 'those factions would be ten times more virulent than ever.' 15 He thought America's internal disputes 'would probably soon break out into open violence and bloodshed'. 16 Smith was wrong – about 'soon'. It would be eighty-five years before the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
    However, if one can't place one's faith in a majority of people, then one has to place one's faith in a minority of them. And Smith did: 'Upon the power which the greater part of the leading men, the natural aristocracy of every country, have of preserving or defending their respective importance, depends the stability and duration of every system of free government.' 17 This trust in a 'natural aristocracy' led Smith into a dangerous, even Latin American, line of reasoning:
    Where the military force is placed under the command of those who have the greatest interest in the support of the civil authority, because they have themselves the greatest share of that authority, a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty … The security which it gives to the sovereign renders unnecessary that troublesome jealousy, which, in some modern republics, seems to watch over the minutest actions, and to be at all times ready to disturb the peace of every citizen. 18
    It's impossible to imagine Adam Smith writing such nonsense about morality or economics. He's got the invisible hand carrying a swagger stick. He's put the Impartial Spectator in a stately home on broad acres. Smith understood how natural liberty works in our ethics and our wallets, but he didn't have a clue how it could operate in the voting booth. When he concocted a recipe for politics he replaced organic natural liberty with processed and genetically modified 'natural aristocracy'.
    It's no use criticizing Smith. After 230-odd years of experience we still don't know much about democracy. We have discovered that it works. If you compare the countries that have the greatest degree of democracy with the countries that have the greatest degree of other things we prize, they are the same countries. But an examination of any democratically elected government leads to deep puzzlement about
why
democracy works. And every democratic election producesa dismal display of
how
democracy works. Maybe we the people, with all our idiocies, cancel each other out. Maybe politically empowered people are different from other pests and predators – the only thing worse than a lot of them is a few.
    Small doses of politics can make life better, in the way that taking small doses of poison every day was said to make King Mithridates of Pontus immune to poisoning. But politics, as an enterprise, does not lend itself to being part of a project for the betterment of human life. Politics is a different project altogether. Smith knew this. He argued for the distinction between morality and politics in
The Theory of Moral Sentiments:
    What institution of government could tend so much to promote the happiness of mankind as the general prevalence of wisdom and virtue? All government is but an imperfect remedy for the deficiency of these. 19
    He argued for the distinction between – and the disentanglement of – economics and politics in
The Wealth of Nations:
    The mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of any body but themselves. 20
    And of politics itself, he declared:
    The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. 21

CHAPTER 13
An Inquiry into Adam Smith
    Adam Smith did admit of one remedy to the violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind – for mankind to rule itself. He didn't propose democratically selecting our own leaders. They turn out to be violent and