Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish writer and thinker during the 19th century. He was clearly a brilliant and insightful man. But he was stuck in his Romantic thinking. It is not at all surprising that the Nazis found him most compelling. In On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, he argued that history is just the story of what great men did. I’ve always found this a particularly simplistic take on the world. Did Carlyle really not see in his own time what is clear enough today — that powerful people are usually straightjacketed by their power? That power itself is mostly a illusion that quickly dissipates if it is exercised?

But what’s most interesting about Carlyle is that he coined the phrase “dismal science” to describe economics, “Not a ‘gay science’ [eg, verse writing], I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.” The man could write, there is no doubt about that. But that sentence comes from a curious essay that he wrote in 1849, “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question.” In it, he argued in favor of slavery. And like a good conservatives — always roughly a generation behind his times — this came 16 years after Parliament outlawed slavery.

Now, there is something to what Carlyle had to say. He was highlighting the fact that there was a certain hypocrisy about the end of slavery. For one thing, most people living in England at that time were not doing well. People lived horrible lives despite the fact that they were nominally free. Child mortality at that time in Manchester was 50% for working families. What’s more, the people so interested in freeing the slaves didn’t seem too concerned that former slave areas were (just like in the American south later) recreating a kind of slavery by another name.

None of this means that Carlyle was a good guy. He believed in slavery. He was a total racist who thought that blacks would not work unless they were forced to. And going right along with his theory of history, he thought that they could do no better than be working under the “care” of rich white men. All of this brought about what seems to have been an inevitable break in Carlyle’s friendship with John Stuart Mill, who was rather famous for his abolitionist (as well as many other liberal) beliefs. Mill soon after published his own essay in response, “The Negro Question.”

There was certainly a big difference between them in terms of philosophy. But I think their disagreement speaks to the fundamental difference between a liberal and a conservative worldview. Carlyle was right that it is hypocritical to care about slavery but not the conditions of the poor generally. But that was only an issue for someone like Carlyle himself who didn’t care about the poor. Mill certainly did care about the poor and did various things to try to improve their lot. So ultimately, Carlyle’s argument is only that conservatives shouldn’t care about slavery because they don’t care about people generally.

I don’t find economics to be a dismal science. (In fact, I don’t find it to be a science at all, but that’s a different matter.) What I do find dismal about it is the fact that people use it as an excuse to push policy that they want for different reasons. And as a result, we end up with a lot of economics that might be very interesting and insightful, but which is absolutely wrong in the real world. If Carlyle were around today, I’m sure he could find lots of economists who would provide him with lots of theories to explain why his antidemocratic and classist theories weren’t just the result of his own bigotry and selfishness, but rather necessary due to the laws of economics. And that is indeed dismal.

I am not one of these guys who thinks that if I survived childhood then kids today don’t need bicycle helmets. Just the same, it does seem to me that we have become over-protective. That’s especially true when it comes to nebulous threats. Do people really think that huge numbers of strangers are lurking in the shadows just waiting to abduct their children? The vast majority of the cases are child custody battles. So the over-concern of people about their children’s safety in this regard indicates that as a society, we are highly narcissistic. And often, this is used to abuse children and parents alike.

Take, for example, the case of Laura Browder. She is a Houston single mother and college student. She got a suddenly announced job interview. So she wasn’t able to get a babysitter for her two children — 6 year old daughter and 2 year old son. So she took them to the food court at the mall, where her interview was. She got them some food from McDonald’s, and proceeded with her interview — where she was 30 feet away. Well, someone apparently thought the children were crying, and so called the police. The children were taken into protective custody and Browder was arrested.

It all worked out in the end. Browder got out of jail and quickly got her kids back. I don’t know at this time whether the charges are dropped or whether they will be. Browder did get the job, but after all that, who knows? Job offers are rescinded all the time. But what does this say about our society that this is the way we “help” young single mothers who are trying to make something of their lives? We don’t go and check on the children and help out as we may. You know: it doesn’t take a village; it takes a police department.

At the age of six, I used to walk a mile home from school with my friend George. So there were two (working) mothers who would now no doubt get arrested. Both of us could have had the excellent experience of being raised by literally dozens of foster parents. We seem to now live in a society that cares enough about the safety of children to punish both the children and their parents. But it doesn’t care enough to make their lives better. We can’t spend money on things like universal daycare. But we certainly have unlimited funds for policing and jailcare!

I see this all as the Ann Romney syndrome. Rich mothers are to be applauded for the “tough” choice of staying home and being intimately involved with their children’s lives. But poor mothers must be made to work — and in Laura Browder’s case, also go to college because she doesn’t want to be stuck in her current situation for the rest of her life. It would somehow be wrong to provide poor mothers with the same resources as rich mothers, even though the ultimate result is that rich children have far better lives than poor children.

Meritocracy, my ass!