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David Mitch asked about the "relevance issue": 
 
If Smithian economics is to be put under immediate scrutiny for the crime 
of its author being "a white male who died over two hundred years ago", 
then little can be gained in having lower divisional students attempt to 
study the Wealth of Nations, or almost any other classical work, for that 
matter. 
 
Furthermore, I doubt that most modern day academics can grasp the classical 
paradigm to any such degree necessary for conveying the nature of classical 
economic concepts to 1st or second year college students. There are certain 
intellectual barriers to entry, if you will, to the classic works, 
including Marx, which really condemns college courses purporting to teach 
these schisms to ending up as nothing more than quasi-religious events. Ask 
yourself, for example, how many professors of any stripe understand the 
classical concept of capital sufficiently to teach a scientifically 
grounded course on classical economic thought? 
 
Chas Anderson 
 
 
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