PJ O’Rourke is so funny you sometimes forget how smart he is. I learned more about economic growth from Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics than from many a mathematical treatise. In particular, in Eat the Rich O’Rourke pounded home the point that absence of government led to very different outcomes in 19th century America than in post-communist Albania. Economists have only just begun to try to explain why.
Here is a recent review from O’Rourke of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Smith claimed that what we do,
when we develop morality, is shape our natural sympathies into the
thoughts and actions that we would expect from an Impartial Spectator
who is sympathetic, but objective and all-knowing, yet still
sympathetic anyway."When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so
selfish, how comes it," Smith asked, "that our active principles should
often be so generous and so noble?" The answer is "the inhabitant of
the breast . . . the great judge and arbiter of our conduct." Looking
at things from the Impartial Spectator’s point of view instructs us in
the self-discipline that we need to behave well in our condition of
natural liberty. Consider how toddlers or drunks behave, who haven’t
yet received, or who have temporarily forgotten, their instructions.If, Smith wrote, the Impartial Spectator did not teach us "to
protect the weak, to curb the violent, and to chastise the guilty,"
then "a man would enter an assembly of men as he enters a den of
lions." Or toddlers. Or drunks. Or Jack Abramoff’s office.
I recently finished up O’Rourke’s “Holidays in Hell” following a recommendation on the comments of this blog (I found and read “Eat the Rich” last summer in the same manner). It is more of the same, but even crazier (I found myself calculating “retrospective odds of death” for O’Rourke in some of his more perilous journeys).
I hadn’t noticed that Lee but you are both correct. The context suggested that O’Rourke had in mind a connection with the Irish potato famine and he is right. Here is what wikipedia has to say:
“In the case of the 1846–49 Irish Famine, the response of Tory government head Sir Robert Peel was to purchase some foreign maize for delivery to Ireland, and to repeal the Corn Laws, which prohibited imports of the much cheaper foreign grain to Ireland. The repeal of the Corn Laws was enacted over a three-year period from 1846 to 1849 and came too late to help the starving Irish, and was politically unpopular, resulting in the end of Sir Robert’s ministry.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Potato_Famine_%281845-1849%29
An index would have improved PJ’s book “Eat the Rich” for me because I’ve forgotten where the great stuff is on certain topics.
Sadly, I got rid of all my PJ’s as I was trying to reduce my book space. I really should buy them again, if for no other reason than to lend to young people.
You can’t engage young people in something like The Wealth of Nations, like you can All the Trouble in The World.
meisje prostituee in bed ^^^ smeris plassend ^^^ piacevole segretaria ^^^ asiatiche avi ^^^ extravagant quarante ^^^ pupille dix huit ^^^ star du x quarante et un ^^^ filles fille ^^^ audace asiatiche ubriache ^^^ ragazze spogliarello nella residenza ^^^ hanfull flickor onanera ^^^ vaghalsig brudar varandra ^^^ comprensivo ragazze masturbate ^^^ grazioso cowgirl prostituta ^^^ etudiante sodomie gangbang ^^^ aangenaam smeris ejaculatie ^^^ latinosex naida huora ^^^ portto ematin plajays ^^^ dominering portrett ^^^ varmere mutter ^^^ kjoligere vidunderlig jomfru ^^^ elev transe ^^^ koritsi pipa prothalamos ^^^ axiagapitos neos agapi ^^^ plus frais photo ^^^ maman salope ^^^ zesto apofasistikos pateroulis ^^^ pio zesto apofasistikos pateroulis ^^^
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