Remember those silly days in the 1990s, when Clinton, Gore, and their friends cobbled together our money to put computers in every classroom and community center? The hope was that the computer would at last do what the government has so far been unable to do after a century of work: make every child literate and high-minded. It turned out that most of the new computers gathered dust and became obsolete.

Before he became Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke became infamous as a crazy inflationist willing to go as far as dropping dollar bills from a helicopter if necessary to safeguard the existence of price inflation, earning him nick names like Ben “Printing Press” Bernanke, Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke and Ben “Black Hawk” Bernanke. This was troublesome for Bernanke, because a reputation as a inflationist is -whether fair or not- not good for any central banker.

Medical News Today reports that

James Buchan’s new book provides further evidence to support Murray Rothbard’s thesis that Adam Smith was a somewhat brilliant man without direction and significant insight. And yet, Smith’s views were embraced by many, including both Margaret Thatcher and Karl Marx.

He was the supposed “champion of laissez-faire” economics without ever using the phrase. The supposed “free-thinker” who argued that people should “respect the established powers and privileges.”

Paul Krugman is at it again. In today’s New York Times, in his official capacity as a professional bleeding heart “liberal,” he once again revels in his role of flagellating the pursuit of happiness with the whip of human misery.

A philosophical divide between classic liberalism and the political forms now in vogue is manifest in the phrase, “Let’s agree to disagree.” To the classic liberal, this means we agree to end our discussion, debate, or argument and go about our separate ways. The phrase is the end as such. Certainly the classic liberal may engage the next person in a similar discourse and attempt to sway a new opinion, whether in person or by letter, handbill, pamphlet, etc., or through the more current versions of email, blog, or website.

Adam Smith is history’s most famous economist, yet people know precious little about what he wrote. Perhaps that is because the natural time to reflect on his contributions — the anniversary of his birth — is unknown. However, we do know that he was baptized on June 5, 1723, making the 5th an appropriate time hook to consider his work and insights.