Political Man is rewarded for high timenpreference. Examples range from thengovernment bureaucrat to the commonnthief.nSmith’s greatest achievement is tonshow how government intervention innthe economy lowers the social rate ofntime preference and thus leads to bothnincreased poverty and cultural breakdown.nThe more Political Man growsnin social significance relative to EconomicnMan (as happens with governmentninterventions), the higher thensocial rate of time preference.nSmith’s formulation of Political andnEconomic Man are the precise oppositenof the way the two are described innacademia — where Economic Man isngreedy and short-run oriented, andnPolitical Man is long-run oriented andnpromotes the good of the public.nInflation is the most obvious governmentnintrusion that lowers the socialnrate of time preference. One can applynthe same analysis to the welfare state,nredistributive taxation, and even rentncontrol. All interfere with the ability tonthink and plan long term; they incul­nLIBERAL ARTSnSOOT AND INK: FEMINISTnPREROGATIVES?nThere are numbers of excellent peoplenwho do not think votes unfeminine; andnthere may be enthusiasts for our beautifulnmodern industry who do not thinknfactories unfeminine. But if these thingsnare unfeminine it is no answer to say thatnthey fit into each other. I am not satisfiednwith the statement that my daughternmust have unwomanly powers becausenshe has unwomanly wrongs. Industrialnsoot and political printer’s ink are twonblacks which do not make a white. Mostnof the Feminists would probably agreenwith me that womanhood is undernshameful tyranny in the shops and mills.nBut I want to destroy the tyranny. Theynwant to destroy womanhood. That is thenonly difference.n—from What’s Wrong with the Worldnby G.K. Chestertonncate values that reward immediate gratificationnat others’ expense.nWhat Smith wants is the depoliticizationnof society, with fewer andnfewer social decisions taking placenthrough political means. He wants, innshort, the Rule of Law, “a mode ofnmoral association” in which “noninstrumental”nlaws are “known in advance.”nThere’s no room here fornsocial planners. The system is mostnconducive to low rates of time preferencesnand therefore to what we associatenwith civilized prosperity.nSmith has embarked on a radicallynnew research program, one that leadsnus to discover that economics andnculture have more links than economistsnlike to admit. If his thought isn’tnfully formed, and if the argument stillnneeds formalization, with the applicationnof time preference to public policy,nSmith has nonetheless tilled fertilenground.nMr. Tucker is a fellow of the Ludwignvon Mises Institute.nnnWhat Makes anNation?nby Thomas MolnarnThe Identity of France, Vol. Inby Fernand BraudelnNew York: Harper & Row;n432 pp., $25.00nWhen Fernand Braudel died inn1985, The Times of Londonncalled him “the greatest of Europe’snhistorians.” In spite of Braudel’s greatnmerits, many would question this accolade.nIndeed, he may be assigned anplace among those contemporary historiansnwho justify, by their oeuvre, thensociological school, and who thereforenhave “betrayed” the historian’s truenvocation. If, in many of our universities,nhistory has become a subclass ofnthe social sciences, men like Braudelnare to some extent responsible.nNot that the writing of history mustnforever remain on the tracks built bynHerodotus and Thucydides; history,nlike other disciplines, does changencourse according to cultural fashion.nLeopold von Ranke and his schoolninsisted on “factual statements,” andnrevisionists in this half-century took upnhermeneutics in order to analyze then”real” motives of groups and classes.nThen there is, of course, Marxist historiographynwith its appdictic class-bias.nThe Annales school of whichnBraudel was for a long time the uncrownednhead has respectablenancestors — Lucien Febre, for example,nand Marc Bloch before the SecondnWorld War. But these men werenstill convinced that history should notnbreak its association with literature — innother words, that history is a story, onlyna true one. Its style used to be literary.nThe second recipient of the NobelnPrize for literature (1902) was TheodornMommsen, imperial Germany’snmost acclaimed historian of Rome.nBraudel was by no means a litterateur;nhis virtues as a historian werenelsewhere, something he demonstratesnin the present volume (first of a projectednseries of four, of which he onlynmanaged to finish the second). Henbegins the volume with the endearingnstatement: “Let me start by sayingnonce and for all that I love France withnthe same demanding and complicatednOCTOBER 1989/37n