Left and Right
17 January 2008
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
To the Editor:
Arthur Brooks reports on research showing that "political intolerance in America ... is to be found more on the left than it is on the right" ("Liberal Hatemongers," January 17). I'm not surprised. "The right," after all, includes many persons who are liberal in the original sense. These persons distrust centralized power and celebrate markets and free trade as liberating humankind from poverty, tyranny, and superstition. True liberals do not fancy themselves fit to tell others what to ingest, what not to smoke, what merchants to patronize, what insurance to buy, or otherwise how to live.
True liberals understand that society is indescribably complex and that our knowledge is always tentative. In contrast, too many of today's "liberals" - overestimating their own intelligence and underestimating both the intelligence of others and the dangers of government power - egotistically yearn to remake society according to their own images.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
To the Editor:
Arthur Brooks reports on research showing that "political intolerance in America ... is to be found more on the left than it is on the right" ("Liberal Hatemongers," January 17). I'm not surprised. "The right," after all, includes many persons who are liberal in the original sense. These persons distrust centralized power and celebrate markets and free trade as liberating humankind from poverty, tyranny, and superstition. True liberals do not fancy themselves fit to tell others what to ingest, what not to smoke, what merchants to patronize, what insurance to buy, or otherwise how to live.
True liberals understand that society is indescribably complex and that our knowledge is always tentative. In contrast, too many of today's "liberals" - overestimating their own intelligence and underestimating both the intelligence of others and the dangers of government power - egotistically yearn to remake society according to their own images.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Friday June 13, 2008 at 10:05am