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

unjust anyway. And foolish. They have a dilly of an ego. They have a dally with their staff. They dillydally on issues of national urgency. They listen to their harebrained spouses, obey their raving political advisors, and they get their pictures taken with Gerry Adams and Jack Abramoff. What Smith wanted us to do was use our mental and physical capabilities to render the rulers of mankind as unnecessary and as inconsequential as possible, to leave them in their drafty castles throwing chicken bones on the floor.
    In this and other ways Smith's philosophy was solidly based upon and securely fastened to reality. His thoughts could be used.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
and
The Wealth of Nations
leave the reader with workable rather than ontological (whatever that may mean) ideas. It is as if my Introduction to Philosophy class had dropped Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason
and taken up a critique of my little sister's attachment to that long-haired creep with a motorcycle.
    But Smith was a philosopher.
Moral Sentiments
and
Wealth
may offer a program for practical thinking, but they do not offer a practical program. They certainly do not offer a practical political program, as Smith's advice on politics showed.
    Philosophy is, I crib from
Webster's Third New International,
definition 4a, 'the sum of an individual's ideas and convictions'. (And, incidentally, you have to read down to 4a before you arrive at a useful definition of philosophy.) There is no need for us to examine the sum of the ideas and convictions of the man who repairs our car, unless he's been convicted of grand theft auto or has an idea that molasses should go in the carburetor. The mechanic's – or even the president's – private life shouldn't much concern us. But a philosopher is different. We have a legitimate interest in knowing what sort of existence the sum of Adam Smith's ideas and convictions resulted in. A man's life doesn't confirm the truth of his thoughts. Men's thoughts about Charlize Theron demonstrate that. But a life is an exhibit of evidence – Exhibit 4a, if you will – in the trial of those thoughts.
    This evidence is of special importance in the case of a philosopher who espouses freedom and has the freedom to exercise his own espousal. For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, so admired by eight or nine generations now of romantics and radicals, should be indicted. The author of
The Social Contract
kept an illiterate laundress as his mistress and treated her like hell for thirty-three years. Their five children were put in orphanages at birth. Rousseau didn't bother to name them. Smith himself once admired Rousseau, telling a visitor that 'Rousseauconducts the reader to reason and truth by the attractions of sentiment and the force of conviction.' 1 But Smith also wrote a letter from Paris to David Hume about 'this hypocritical Pedant', telling Hume, 'I am thoroughly convinced that Rousseau is as great a Rascal … as every man here believes him to be.' 2 It is doubtful that Smith allowed himself to be conducted by Rousseau to reason or to truth or to anywhere else without keeping a close eye on the path down which he was being led. It was Rousseau, and definitely not Smith, who wrote, 'Everything is at root dependent on politics.' 3
    Who Adam Smith Really Was, and to What Extent It's None of Our Business
    We have good reason to learn about the life of Adam Smith, but there are two problems. The first problem is Smith. He didn't keep a diary. He was a fitful correspondent without much interest in collecting the letters he received. He burned his scholarly notes. He had no toady to write down his every aperçu. He didn't blog.
    The second problem is us and what we're used to learning about great men and women or the people who pass for them. What we're used to learning is everything. There is an ongoing biography of Lyndon Johnson, the writing of which is taking a span of time equal to that of LBJ's active political career.