[A. Pole]

Buchanan is no Machiavelli,

Of course he is not. Still Machiavelli is being proven right again and again.

[LS]

and Pat has been proven wrong, again and again. He's a loser. I'm ashamed he was ever called a "conservative."

[LowCountryJoe]

I read your tag-line. Everyone is influenced by the invisible hand, including yourself. For the business that you pay that grants your Internet access is profiting from the arrangement and your satisfaction is being met at this same time, is it not? Although I must temper my enthusiasm in this particualr case: by reading your tag-line, anyone who is swayed by it is certainly not being the benafactor of any public good. In fact, reading that kind of garbage on a conservative web forum would make the invisible hand, if it were a being with feelings, angry enough to want to smack the dog piss out of the person with such sentiments.

Perhaps you should reread Smith's paragraphs regarding the the rationale behind the invisible hand and then tell me where your 'conservatism' disagrees with it:

Every individual...generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.

Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.