Shikha Dalmia corrals neocon attempts to enlist the philosopher's analysis of British foreign policy in their cause:
Nowhere does [Smith] suggest that maintaining absolute defense supremacy in the world, as neocons who question any shrinkage of America’s global military footprint want, is a remotely worthy goal. To the contrary, there are plenty of other passages in which Smith discusses the futility—both moral and practical—of keeping colonized people pliant to maintain an empire. Indeed, Smith was part of the Enlightenment’s anti-imperialistic intellectual tradition whose other major protagonists were Jeremy Bentham and James Mill.
The Dish 