Caroline Breashears
Contributor/Visiting Scholar – May-July 2021
Dr. Caroline Breashears is a Professor of English at St. Lawrence University. Caroline received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and specializes in eighteenth-century British literature. Recent publications include Eighteenth-Century Women’s Writing and the “Scandalous Memoir” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and articles in Aphra Behn Online and the International Journal of Pluralistic and Economics Education.
She was recently an Adam Smith Scholar at Liberty Fund, and her current research focuses on Adam Smith and literature. She teaches courses on fairy tales, eighteenth-century British Literature, and Jane Austen.
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Davos and the Holy Grail of Equity
“At what point will their good intentions lead to tyranny? Did we learn nothing from the pandemic, when government overreach led to economic, health, and educational disasters?” ~ Caroline Breashears
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An Omni-Wreck Waiting to Happen
“It’s time for us to acknowledge the society they are creating and to hold them accountable. If our current legislators won’t apply the brakes on this train, we need to do so in the next election.” ~ Caroline Breashears
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Gulliver’s Travels in Washington, D.C.
“Perhaps, like the King on the Island of Laputa, our elite need a reminder of the danger of wielding such power. Unlike Swift’s protagonist, we are not gullible.” ~ Caroline Breashears
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A Reader’s Guide to Newspeak 2022
“To master the Newspeak of 2022, you must subsume yourself within the collective. You must reject ‘oldthink’ and the ‘kind of trash’ that advocates individual rights.” ~ Caroline Breashears
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We at 100: The Case for Liberty
“Yet Zamyatin leaves readers with hope, as valuable now as it was in 1921. As I-330 says, there is no final number, so ‘how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one. The number of revolutions is infinite.’ Even when liberty seems most at risk, it is never truly lost.” ~ Caroline…
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Leveling Down to Utopia
“In such a ‘Utopia’ without love or art or individuality, what is left? Certainly not choice. The State manages all activities, from the propagation of the species (every spring, like cattle) to bathing, since unequal habits led to ‘two distinct classes, the Clean and the Dirty.'” ~ Caroline Breashears
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The Politics of “Resilience”
“The ethics of prioritizing some groups over others clearly do not concern her any more than the shift away from individual concerns. Ms. Walton is clearly unaware that she is taking her city down the well-trodden road to serfdom.” ~ Caroline Breashears
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Adam Smith Takes Cancel Culture in Hand
“By rejecting the controlling fist, we can accept the prosperity enabled by the invisible hand—Smith’s metaphor for the way in which individuals pursuing their own interests through ethical, mutual exchange leads to the prosperity that was not consciously designed by any intellectual. No person has that much knowledge. In short, it’s time for cancel culture…
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The “Loud Words” that Ruled the Lockdowns in 2020
“As Trenchard urged Britons in 1720, ‘Let mankind therefore learn experience from so many misfortunes, and bear no longer to hear the worst things called by the best names.’ Trenchard and Gordon’s Cato’s Letters provided ideals for the American Founders in claiming liberty. Three hundred years later, their wisdom can help us reclaim our own.”…
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Frankenstein 2020: An Economic Horror Story
“It is time to heed the warning of Frankenstein, time to acknowledge the Monster at our national door and the hubris that led intellectuals to create it. For make no mistake, it seeks not only ‘treats’ but the thrill of perpetuating nasty ‘tricks’—to ‘blow up’ or ‘burn down’ our country to achieve the false promise…
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•
Davos and the Holy Grail of Equity
“At what point will their good intentions lead to tyranny? Did we learn nothing from the pandemic, when government overreach led to economic, health, and educational disasters?” ~ Caroline Breashears
-
•
An Omni-Wreck Waiting to Happen
“It’s time for us to acknowledge the society they are creating and to hold them accountable. If our current legislators won’t apply the brakes on this train, we need to do so in the next election.” ~ Caroline Breashears
-
•
Gulliver’s Travels in Washington, D.C.
“Perhaps, like the King on the Island of Laputa, our elite need a reminder of the danger of wielding such power. Unlike Swift’s protagonist, we are not gullible.” ~ Caroline Breashears
-
•
A Reader’s Guide to Newspeak 2022
“To master the Newspeak of 2022, you must subsume yourself within the collective. You must reject ‘oldthink’ and the ‘kind of trash’ that advocates individual rights.” ~ Caroline Breashears
-
•
We at 100: The Case for Liberty
“Yet Zamyatin leaves readers with hope, as valuable now as it was in 1921. As I-330 says, there is no final number, so ‘how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one. The number of revolutions is infinite.’ Even when liberty seems most at risk, it is never truly lost.” ~ Caroline…
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•
Leveling Down to Utopia
“In such a ‘Utopia’ without love or art or individuality, what is left? Certainly not choice. The State manages all activities, from the propagation of the species (every spring, like cattle) to bathing, since unequal habits led to ‘two distinct classes, the Clean and the Dirty.'” ~ Caroline Breashears
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•
The Politics of “Resilience”
“The ethics of prioritizing some groups over others clearly do not concern her any more than the shift away from individual concerns. Ms. Walton is clearly unaware that she is taking her city down the well-trodden road to serfdom.” ~ Caroline Breashears
-
•
Adam Smith Takes Cancel Culture in Hand
“By rejecting the controlling fist, we can accept the prosperity enabled by the invisible hand—Smith’s metaphor for the way in which individuals pursuing their own interests through ethical, mutual exchange leads to the prosperity that was not consciously designed by any intellectual. No person has that much knowledge. In short, it’s time for cancel culture…
-
•
The “Loud Words” that Ruled the Lockdowns in 2020
“As Trenchard urged Britons in 1720, ‘Let mankind therefore learn experience from so many misfortunes, and bear no longer to hear the worst things called by the best names.’ Trenchard and Gordon’s Cato’s Letters provided ideals for the American Founders in claiming liberty. Three hundred years later, their wisdom can help us reclaim our own.”…
-
•
Frankenstein 2020: An Economic Horror Story
“It is time to heed the warning of Frankenstein, time to acknowledge the Monster at our national door and the hubris that led intellectuals to create it. For make no mistake, it seeks not only ‘treats’ but the thrill of perpetuating nasty ‘tricks’—to ‘blow up’ or ‘burn down’ our country to achieve the false promise…