Sheldon Richman
TGIF: Liberty versus Social Engineering
So David Brooks, the New York Times‘ resident conservative intellectual, must think he’s a pretty clever fellow. In trying to characterize “the choices we face on issue after issue,” he presumes to enlist the aid of philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and David Hume (1711-1776). Considering that Bentham believed human beings could consciously design society and Hume did not, this might have been a worthwhile approach. Unfortunately, Brooks got Hume wrong — unforgivably so — and missed a chance to present a fresh alternative in the stale political debate.
The rest of TGIF is here.
