Deirdre's Test By Alberto Mingardi

There is much in Deirdre McCloskey’s new book, How Liberalism Works.* As I’ve written in a previous post, this work is more about _politics_ and liberalism than McCloskey’s previous works. While McCloskey talks with her distinctive “Aunt Deirdre” voice, aiming at articulating a liberalism which is different than the “childish” libertarianism’s, or the anarchist’s, or the small government kind’s, she is not mincing words.

Consider, this, which is her challenge to all those who, perhaps because they live under relatively decent governments (say in Sweden or Minnesota), tend to assume that government is nothing but a benevolent servant of the People. I suggest we call it, now on, “Deirdre’s test”: