In which Mitt Romney proves he hasn't read Adam Smith (and that he is also an idiot)

Yesterday Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney took the incredibly bizarre position that his Democratic rival Senator Hillary Clinton is a closet communist. He clearly has read neither Smith nor Marx, or at least didn't understand them, nor listened to Ms. Clinton, the most right wing of the Democrats. Of Ms. Clinton he said:

"Hillary Clinton just gave a speech the other day about her view on the economy. She said we have been an on-your-own society. She said it’s time to get rid of that and replace that with shared responsibility and we’re-in-it-together society...That’s out with Adam Smith and in with Karl Marx."

I think it is time that you brushed up on your reading Mitt. A few Adam Smith starters for you.

As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.

Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

So go ahead and read (or re-read) The Wealth of Nations; I am sure you know someone who could lend you a copy. But don't forget, and so many do, to read The Theory of Moral Sentiments as well.