Smiley's Rousseauvian mistake

Until this week, I'd never heard of Jane Smiley. But in the aftermath of the election, her wailing voice of unreason crossed my desk, and her commentary may be read here.

Smiley says: "The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry ... They know who they are—they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence." (I can live with that.)

Smiley tells us her Blue State like-minded pals, they "[made] the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind."

Smiley invokes Rousseau's name, so Slate's readers might mistakenly believes she's an Intellectual. Indeed, Rousseau's essay (Discourse on Inequality) advanced the notion that "man is naturally good, and only by his institutions is he made bad."

Interestingly, Lord Bertrand Russell (History of Western Philosophy) devotes a whole chapter to Rousseau. Russell tells us, "Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of Locke." Russell quotes Voltaire, who replied to Rousseau, after receiving a copy of his essay, "Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours."

It's a funny passage, which I have only partially quoted. I'm quite convinced, Smiley has never read Russell's criticism of Rousseau. Much of Russell's criticism is directed at Rousseau's Social Contract. Russell states "It's first-fruits in practice was the reign of Robespierre; the dictatorships of Russia and Germany (especially the latter) are in part an outcome of Rousseau's teaching."

In Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution, he often refers to the followers of the "Gospel of Jean-Jacques."

Wisely, Russell was aware there would be "further triumphs" for Rousseau's "ghost," but he chose not speculate on what they might be.