We could see either side then as protectionist in a sense. Republicans as wanting to protect what the communists call “privilege,” and Democrats as wanting to protect what everybody calls “Affirmative Action.”

Hard to know who or what’s affirmative in an objective sense.

I figure that Smith thought the “invisible hand” would work if everybody simply did whatever they wanted, as long as it was within the law.

Perhaps even these two “takes,” are an aspect of the invisible hand trying to tilt the system in their favor.

I’ve always seen political correctness as a (Republican) right reaction to the desire of the left (Democrats) for equal opportunity. PC is not something Democrats want; it’s a codification by the right of democratic demands. An incident occurs perceived on the left as racist or sexist and the argument is pursued by identifying uses of language in the incident that may be a product of racist or sexist attitudes. The aim isn’t to correct or police speech. It is a matter of pointing out or highlighting entrenched attitudes that pose obstacles and are reflected by speech. The right interprets this as a challenge to a game of employing acceptable euphemisms instead of opening race and gender doors to enhance diversity. Some people unwittingly get caught in the crossfire; others abandon personal goals to avoid being targeted. A few, often foolishly, try to exploit the conflict.

Kirby – there’s a whole school of political philosophers emanating out of the contractarian tradition, most of whom are organized around Rawls (whether as expositor or detractor). Jeremy Waldron at NYU is a consistently enjoyable writer. A ton of other mainstream American political/legal thinkers exist, too: Martha Nussbaum at Chicago, Richard Posner, Michael Sandel at Harvard, and so on and so forth. Marxists and Deleuzians are definitely still minorities (quantitatively, in this respect) in the American academy.

I looked up these guys and all of them want to limit culture in some way, or so it seemed. I want a completely libertarian/anarchist view of culture, and yet I would like to see free (but fair) trade. That is, I want the intellectual world to be completely unfettered, and yet I want the economic world to be Smithian. Aside from someone like James Madison, do we still have anybody who is for such things in American intellectual life?

It seems to me that Republicans in general want free trade, and the Democrats don’t.

Republicans on the other hand want freedom of speech, but the Democrats want political correctness.

At least those are the broad streams, whereas of course there are many crosscurrents.

I’d like a Smithian economics with Smith’s caveats against shoddy goods (such as those Chinese toys soaked with lead that have been recalled).

Kirby

Communism is a degraded version of the Western message. It retains its ambition to conquer nature, to improve the lot of the humble, but it sacrifices what was and must remain the heart and soul of the unending human adventure: freedom of enquiry, freedom of controversy, freedom of criticism, and the vote.

But now I teach in a very rural area. Many of my students are farmers. I just can’t talk about Deleuze with them. They would all drop out. So I’m trying to find something a little more sensible and something within the American experience. Perhaps Rawls and Rawlsians will help.

We don’t even get NPR out here. We don’t even get Limbaugh. You only get extreme Christian stations. Not that anybody even turns on the radio.

And not that I mind the extreme Christian stations.

I just need a language that will make immediate sense to my students.