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PJ Mediahttps://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2008/05/06/libertarin-paternalism-or-socialism-by-any-other-name-smells-as-bad/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usWed, 10 Jun 2026 09:07:59 -0400"Libertarian paternalism," or Socialism by any other name smells as bad<![CDATA[How do you spell “oxymoron”? My current favorite candidate is “libertarian paternalism.” That’s the phrase that Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein promulgate as an alternative to socialism in their new book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Of course, they don’t say their form of paternalism is a synonym for “socialism.” And they naturally rebel at the idea that the phrase “libertarian paternalism” is a contradiction in terms. As an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the book puts it, they view libertarian paternalism as “a corrective to the longstanding assumption of policy makers that the average person is capable of thinking like Albert Einstein, storing as much memory as IBM’s Big Blue, and exercising the willpower of Mahatma Gandhi.”]]>Tue, 06 May 2008 05:44:59 -0400<![CDATA[Roger Kimball]]>https://pjmedia.com/roger-kimball/2008/05/06/libertarin-paternalism-or-socialism-by-any-other-name-smells-as-bad-n114786