If there is anyone who can put some amusement and levity into an often tedious subject, P.J. O’Rourke would be at the top of the list.

On The Wealth of Nations
by P. J. O'Rourke
published Atlantic Monthly Press (December 4, 2006)
Hdbk., 256 pgs.
ISBN-10: 0871139499

I was intrigued to say the least when I discovered Grove Atlantic Press was putting out a series called “Books That Changed The World.”  The authors selected to write in this series are almost a greater source of curiosity than the works themselves.  Christopher Hitchens take on Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man should be at least as fascinating as his take on George Orwell.  However, Grove Atlantic’s decision to have Karen Armstrong pen a book on The Bible may prove to be a more dubious selection.  

For his part, P.J. O’Rourke isn’t quite sure why he was chosen to write a book on Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations but since he needed the money opted not to object to strenuously.  Though if there is anyone who can put some amusement and levity into an often tedious subject, O’Rourke would be at the top of the list.  So he did it so we don’t have to. 

What was even more intriguing was when I heard O’Rourke would be delivering a lecture at the Coolidge Corner Theater on his new tome.  For those of you unfamiliar with the terrain of Boston, the Coolidge Corner Theater is situated in the Town of Brookline, which runs along the C Branch of the Green Line on the T.  It is a non-profit movie house that shows classic movies and indie films, usually with a left-wing bent such as the Dixie Chicks’ Shut Up and Sing, and has in the past hosted the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival.  To give one an idea of how left-wing Brookline is, it makes Cambridge look like the buckle of the Bible Belt.  With this in mind I wondered how O’Rourke, a self-described “right-wing Republican,” would be received in one of Brookline’s most beloved institutions.  

When I arrived at the Coolidge Corner Theater and paid my admission, I was instructed to go the theater situated on the upstairs level.  Upon entering this theater I thought I might need a coal miner’s helmet.  Not very well lit.  I mean even Isabella Stewart Gardner might utter, “More light please.”  I thought to myself that it was the sort of theater where one might discreetly see a dirty movie.  After thinking about that for a few moments I realized that I had seen a dirty movie inside this theater.  I suppose that if one wanted to hear politically incorrect thoughts in Brookline this would probably be the most discreet place to do it.

As it turned out, O’Rourke was quite well received.  In retrospect, this should not have come to me as a surprise.  While O’Rourke is decidedly a man of the Right, he is first and foremost a humorist, whether it be in his columns for Rolling Stone or Atlantic Monthly or in books like Give War a Chance and Peace Kills.  After observing O’Rourke in action I observed there are three ways a right-wing Republican can ingratiate himself in the Town of Brookline (or any other left-wing municipality):

1. Be the anti-Mitt Romney (Drink, Cuss and Talk About Sex)

During his talk, O’Rourke dropped a few “f bombs” though he wasn’t gratuitous about it.  If one is to read his writings one will know his love for the bottle.  And the glass.  And the mug.  And anything else that might contain an alcoholic beverage.  Of course, what is life without a passing reference to the pleasures of the flesh.

In other words, whatever Mitt Romney does, do the opposite.  We live in a imperfect world.  Those who come across as “perfect” are viewed (usually correctly) as being something that they are not.  You can disagree with someone so long as you don’t project an air of “I am better than the earth on which you walk.”

2. Profess Amorous Feelings for Hillary Rodham Clinton

O’Rourke confessed that he had just fallen in love with the frontrunner in the Democratic Presidential nomination race.

He had done so because of her appearance in Iowa earlier that day when she was asked, “what experience I have in dealing with evil and bad men?”  O’Rourke stated that he had been told that Hillary is often funny but had never believed it until he saw it.  O’Rourke strongly hinted if this is the Hillary Rodham Clinton we see over the next two years she might very well get his vote.  Republicans everywhere should sit up and take notice.  

3. Criticize the Bush Administration

Of course, the Right has been criticizing the Bush Administration on a whole host of issues for some time now.  But leftists love hearing a right-wing Republican criticize the Bush Administration.  When O’Rourke said he was angrier at the Bush Administration than at Hillary Clinton someone in the audience shouted, “Tell us more.”

O’Rourke specifically said he opposed the No Child Left Behind Act. “Some children deserve to be left behind or to get a whack in the behind.”  He also opposed any constitutional amendment that would outlaw gay marriage.  “A constitutional amendment to ban first marriages.  Now that I could get behind,” O’Rourke quipped.

It is interesting to note that O’Rourke was only critical of Bush on domestic, not foreign affairs, namely the War in Iraq.  

4. If all else fails describe oneself as a small l-libertarian

Leftists seem less threatened by libertarians.  Most likely because they are not a threat to sweep Congress anytime soon.  O’Rourke emphasizes, however, that he is a small l-libertarian.  He recounted attending a Libertarian Party meeting where he met a math teacher who wanted to privatize the sidewalks.  He said such functions made for “a boring evening.”

Writing a book on Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was a daunting task for O’Rourke.  To begin with, The Wealth of Nations is divided into five books totaling more than 900 pages excluding preface, editor’s introduction and appendix.  O’Rourke explains that the reason for this was that Smith was covering new ground.  In 1776, there were no terms like “GDP” or “supply-side economics.”  Nor were there graphs.  Smith had to explain every economic statistic in a narrative manner.  And if one is discussing the variations in the value of silver over the last four centuries this can take up many, many pages.

Smith’s best known quote reads, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Given O’Rourke’s love of drink it is fitting that we would hear more from the brewer:

When we give somebody a bottle of whiskey, we know we’ve benefited someone else.  When the family gets to be too much for us over the weekend and we drink the bottle of whiskey ourselves, we’ve also benefited someone else – the distiller, the bottler, the liquor store owner.

I could not resist asking O’Rourke — given the amount of research and writing he needed to undertake — how much whiskey he had consumed during the course of this project (to much appreciative laughter in the audience).  

O’Rourke replied that he spent a year-and-a-half alone just reading The Wealth of Nations.  He went to say that he went to the New Hampshire state liquor store every other week to get half a gallon of scotch and that he probably drank enough “to fill a jacuzzi pool.” With no state sales tax, the distiller, bottler and liquor store owner indeed benefited from O’Rourke’s project.

Of course, when one is condensing a great work and making it palatable to a broader audience many things will be left out.  So what did O’Rourke leave in?   

He emphasized that Smith had three main points in The Wealth of Nations.  First, self-interest.  Second, a division of labor and third, freedom of trade.  These serve as the foundation of the market economy that we live in today.  Smith lived during the 18th-Century Enlightenment where ordinary men were finally being viewed as masters of their own destiny through the ownership of the labor supplied by their hands.  Each could now act to their own strengths and freely trade those strengths in the marketplace without arbitrary intervention by government be it monarchial or feudal.  People could vote with their feet – and by the toil of their hands.  This is what gave money its value for money itself had no intrinsic value.   “Money doesn’t buy happiness,” O’Rourke remarked, “it rents it.”   

O’Rourke also wants the reader to understand that The Wealth of Nations was the second part of an uncompleted trilogy of works written by Smith.  He argues that The Wealth of Nations is not properly understood without examining Smith’s first work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  After covering philosophy and economics, Smith had intended to write a book on jurisprudence or more precisely law and politics.  However, Smith would burn all his notes just before his death and the book was never realized.

It is probably just as well because as O’Rourke argues, Smith was a moral philosopher not a political adviser a là James Carville or Karl Rove.  O’Rourke states that the fifth and final book of The Wealth of Nations was the worst because what he wrote was contradictory and of little value.  Smith was on the one hand for the separation of church and state.  On the other hand he favored government funding for the Church of England.  Smith argued against compulsory education.  Smith argued in favor of compulsory education.  Smith believed education should be funded by private hands.  Smith believed education should be paid for by the state.  “Politics can turn anyone into an idiot,” O’Rourke remarked.

On the whole, however, O’Rourke is an ardent admirer of Smith.  He concludes, The Wealth of Nations is “not the Bible of Capitalism but a moral testimony of human liberty and dignity.”  This, in his view, makes it a book that changed the world.  O’Rourke did confess that he would like write about a book that did not change the world – The Report of the Iraq Study Group.

On The Wealth of Nations is available on Amazon.com.