The Zthat stands for

January 2006 $4.00 Zzzorro

"I tell ye true: Liberty is the best ofall things." - William Wallace He ------ati6n

Four times a year, REGULATION'S leading experts scrutinize the ins and outs ofregulation, where it works and where it doesn't, as .well as the ups and downs ofits social and economic effects www.regulationmagazine.com ...... __ _------_ - .. ~~We need YES! I want to subscribe to REGULATION! ReJjulation: o 1 year (4 issues) $30 0 2 years (8 issues) $50 o 3 years (12 issues) $70 I o Check enclosed (payable to Cato Institute) Charge nlY: 0 Visa o MasterCard 0 Amex solid analysis, Account No. Date current Signature relevance, Name and new Address knowledge. City State Zip Mail: Regulation, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20001 Fax: 202-842-3490 -James M. Buchanan January 2006 Inside Liberty Volume 20, Number 1

4 Letters Fair? Balanced? Democratic.

5 Reflections We frisk Santa, smoke in the street, set fire to France, chase cheetahs, hail the new king of the jungle, give God the hook, and inspect Chinese bras.

Features

13 I Vote Against Liberty Just what can one freedom-loving individual accomplish as a member of a small-town planning board? Jane S. Shaw finds out firsthand.

16 The Roots of Liberty Dave Kopel discovers the bright roots of liberty, in the Dark Ages.

19 Pearl Harbor: Japan's Gift to FDR What did the president know about the Pearl Harbor attack, and when did he know it? Bettina Bien Greaves assesses the evidence.

28 The Anti-Semitism of My Youth Colleges, golf courses, government agencies: it wasn't that long ago that their gates were open only to a select many. Richard Kostelanetz grows up in mid-century America.

Reviews

31 The Craft of Ayn Rand Stephen Cox guides readers around the great writer's workshop.

33 The Mighty Flynn Politics may be complicated, but at least the New Deal was easy: everyone for it was a liberal Democrat, and everyone against it a conservative Republican. Right? Not so fast, says Jeff Riggenbach.

41 America Contra Mundum There's not much use in mourning the Constitution we've lost, Bruce Ramsey laments. Especially when there are threats to the Constitution we still have.

45 Zzzorro Looking for a thrill-packed holiday blockbuster? Jo Ann Skousen wakes up just long enough to point elsewhere.

44 Notes on Contributors The monkeywrench gang.

46 Terra Incognita Outlook not so good. How to l~: ======Le======tt======:er======:.s ======:::J Subscribe Pedal Power Cox's statement about "the Incas, with Has Randal O'Toole ("Riding Out their hideous cults of human sacrifice to the Storm," November) ever heard of and their unrestrained delight in war Houston? Or Rita? Or the 100 mile traf­ and torture" is simply wrong. That char­ fic jam? Can the automobile really evac­ acterization is proper for the Aztecs but IlIJbertYJI uate a whole city? Sure, it might work not the Incas. Garcilasso de la Vega when only part of the population uses it. denies any such practice ("Commen­ But what if the stranded New tarios Reales," ca. 1610) and while abso­ Liberty takes individual Orleans masses had bicycles? lute denial is excessively reticent (both For some years now, group rides suttee and the sacrifice of personal atten­ freedom seriously ... and have regularly attracted dozens of dants at the funeral of nobility are the status quo with more Chicago bike riders who average 5 mph reported), Prescott notes "sacrifices than one grain of salt! near downtown neighborhoods. Ten were few, both in number and magni­ hours of riding, thus, should get one out tude" (op. cit., chapter III). Even Prescott's estimate may too modest (cf. Every issue of Liberty brings of a disaster zone. No gas is necessary. you news you can't miss, Bicycle campers generally carry 30 or Juan de Sarmiento, "Relacion de la suce­ opinions you won't find more pounds of gear. This is much more sion y govierno de las Yngas ... " ca. anywhere else, and the best efficient use of the roads than automo­ 1550) by modern Western standards, but libertarian writing in the world. biles. in any case the Peruvians neither prac­ There has been considerable hue and ticed a "cult" of human sacrifice nor cry about the neglect of poor blacks in delighted in war more than, say, You won't want to New Orleans, with speculation that the Europeans of the time. miss a single issue! powers-that-be would have been more Since I seem to be citing early concerned about whites. That specula­ Spanish authors, I append the observa­ tion, however, is speculation. tion that Jane Shaw's discussion of Betty Act Today! Ifyou want something done right, Meggers' views in "Europeans at the Liberty offers you the best in do it yourself. Gates" (December), and Meggers her­ individualist thinking and writ­ William F. Wendt, Jr. self, might have benefited from a famil­ ing. So don't hesitate. You have Chicago, Ill. iarity with fro Gaspar de Carbaxal nothing to lose, and the fruits [Carvajal], "Relacion del descubrimiento of Liberty to gain! Aztecs Only, Please del famoso rio grande ... " ca. 1560. In "Historians' Triumphs" Leon Elliott Use the coupon below or call: (December) Stephen Cox mentions spe­ Culpeper, Va. cialists apparently unacquainted with Stephen Cox responds: I appreciate Mr. 1-800-854-6991 fundamental works in their own field. It Elliott's concern with my own work, seems to me his discussion of and the Incas, who are a great deal more r------,Please enter my subscription Brundage's "Empire of the Inca" suffers interesting than people usually assume. I to Liberty immediately! I the same lacuna - failing to mention I do think that much has been learned what I understand to be the definitive 012 issues (One Full Year) $29.50 since Prescott's classic but hardly I English-language work in the field, "definitive" work of 1847(!), and I o 24 issues (Two Full Years) $56.00 I William Prescott's "History of the I Add $5 per year for foreign subscriptions. I Conquest of Peru" (1847). In addition, continued on page 15

I name I Letters to the Editor Liberty invites readers to comment on articles that have appeared in our pages. We address I reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. All letters are assumed to be intended for pub­ lication unless otherwise stated. Succinct letters are preferred. Please include your address city state zip I andphone number so that we can verify your identity. Mail to: Liberty Letters, P.O. Box 1181, Port Townsend, WA 98368. Or send email to: o I enclose my check (payable to Liberty) I [email protected] o Charge my 0 VISA 0 MasterCard I

signature I account # expires I Send to: Liberty, Dept. L, P.O. Box 1181, Port Townsend, WA 98368 I 1. ..1 The Madness of King Dubya - Sometime more profligate. The state governments themselves, including around the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th cen­ Louisiana, have their own insurance companies that insure tury, nations began to have identity crises, like the individu­ high-risk areas, including coastal barrier islands, at less than als who compose them. And in the spirit of democracy, whole actuarially sound costs. (These insurers are now adding sur­ countries went mad the way a few kings once did. The charges because the .hurricanes overwhelmed them.) United States is no doubt lucky that only our King George According to the Post, state-backed insurers have covered and his chief counselors, not the whole country, are at the over $400 billion worth of property through 1.9 million poli­ moment delusional. - Eric Kenning cies. (Federal flood insurance covers $764 billion, with 4.7 mil­ lion policies.) Texas covers single-family homes worth as Let's call the whole thing off - Judge much as $1.5 million. - making the federal government look Stephen Reinhardt writes in a letter to the editor in the like a piker with its $250,000 limit on structures. Oh, how did November Harper's: "There is indeed a constitutional philos­ these state-backed insurance companies get their start? With ophy that is preferable to mini- a federal law in 1968 that allowed states to create compa­ malism or fundamentalism: O~ MV G..QD! it's called liberalism." I'm sur­ nies to provide fire insurance in SHE.' S G-e:rrI1JG prised at this blatant admis­ inner cities. - Jane S. Shaw sion of an activist judicial DIRT AL.l. OVE.R. philosophy, even from a judge "THE:. 'TABLE. CLOTH .1 Live from the on the notorious 9th Circuit. f Improv, it's Jimmy Originalism has become a Carter Imagine an euphemism for crypto­ America in which prayer was fascism, and "living docu­ part of the daily ritual in public ment" liberalism for rejection schools. Imagine an America in of the most important consti­ which most of those schools cel­ tutional principles. I'm not ebrated Easter, and virtually all sure a real originalist and a of them celebrated Christmas, real liberal would judge cases with songs and pageants. differently, nor that we'd any Imagine an America in which longer recognize either, if one abortion and homosexual actually made it to the bench. behavior were illegal almost - Patrick Quealy everywhere, an America in iwhich even liberal politicians routinely invoked the Christian "We've got Noah Webster on line 1." lGod, and "Pray for Peace" was a common postal cancellation. On Nov. 12th, Maureen Dowd was interviewed by Larry ~magine an America in which divorce disqualified candidates King on CNN. Asked about Judith Miller of the Times, and tor high public office. her role in the lead-up to war in Iraq, Dowd said the problem That's the America in which I grew up, not many years was that "Miller was too credible." This struck me as an odd ago. In the Michigan grade school that I attended, teachers claim, as if the writings of one reporter should so overwhelm led their students in saying grace over lunch, and the day's the nation in their authenticity and authority as to make the activities often began with the Lord's Prayer. Students were push for war inevitable. Dowd went on to explain (and I par­ assembled two or three times a year to be instructed in aphrase), UMiller should know that for an investigative Christian doctrine by a minister from the Rural Bible Mission. reporter, getting the press quotes from the White House is the The great political issue was whether a Roman Catholic was beginning of the job, not the end." qualified to be president. Which raises a question: shouldn't a famous columnist for That's the America that was known to me, and millions, the New York Times know the difference between 11 credible" and"credulous"? - Ross Levatter but has been completely forgotten by modern liberals - at least on the evidence recently presented by their current ideo­ Fair-weather insurance - The moral hazards logical champion, former President Jimmy Carter. that contributed to the destruction of New Orleans and other Carter has been on TV a lot lately, plugging his new book, parts of the Southeast were even greater than we thought. We an opus breathlessly entitled "Our Endangered Values: all knew that the National Flood Insurance Program spurred America's Moral Crisis." The crisis, according to him, has unsafe development, especially in coastal areas, but the resulted from the attempt of fundamentalist Christians to Washington Post reported that the states were perhaps even destroy "our sacred value," the "wall of separation between Liberty 5 January 2006 church and stateN - such an attempt, he says, as was never engaged. I, for one, regard this as one of the funniest acts of before witnessed in our great nation. ourtime. - Stephen Cox The first question that occurred to me when I heard these extraordinary assertions was the one that occurs to me when­ I walk the line - To show my opposition to ever I run into somebody who actually takes the New York Washington's new smoking ban, I plan on doubling my Times seriously: "Hasn't this guy ever been on the west side tobacco consumption: now I will smoke two clove cigarettes each month instead of one. According to the public service of the Hudson?" But of course Carter has. He's from Georgia announcements running before the vote, this is the same as - and he's an evangelical Christian, to boot. And he's a great me spraying twice as many people in the face with pesticide, deal older than I am. He was actually born during or cornering twice as many Bambi-eyed waitresses and exhal­ Prohibition, a national experience that ought to provide some ing directly down their tracheas. inkling about what can happen when churches really interact Today I'm smoking while standing on the dashed yellow with the state. line in the middle of Water Street, in front of Liberty's stately So what can account for his seemingly hallucinatory state­ office building. The street is about 60 feet wide, so I can take ments about the old America? maybe two steps towards either sidewalk before I have to That's what I wondered, until it occurred to me that the extinguish my cigarette, lest some business owner risk a $250 former statesman must be indulging a rich, though hitherto fine on my behalf. See, Washington voters weren't content well concealed vein of humor. just to close loopholes for bars, restaurants, and bowling His claim is that fundamentalists are objectionable alleys left open by an earlier Clean Indoor Air bill; no, they because they are "always certain that they are right," and that dreaded the possibility of little groups of smokers congregat­ they therefore continually misinterpret reality. Now, what ing outside, socializing, making friends - groups that have could constitute a greater, more willful misinterpretation of become so chic in other smoking-ban jurisdictions (California, reality than the contention that America formerly had a wall New York City, even Ireland) that some take up smoking just of separation between religion and politics? Just consider the to gain admittance. Thus the referendum specified that no most faithful supporters of Carter's own political projects, one could smoke within 25 feet of a door, window, or vent ­ African-American fundamentalists and the white religious basically, within a 25-foot buffer zone around the entire left. Have they ever separated religion from politics? And is building. there any person in the country who is more habitually cer­ Supporters of the ban (and that's nearly everyone; there tain that he is right - no matter what - than Jimmy Carter? was no organized opposition) helpfully pointed out that busi­ My conclusion is that Carter is now atoning for his many nesses can petition city councils for an exemption - not from and grievous sins of self-righteousness with a gargantuan act the ban itself, but from the 25-foot zone. Some cities in eastern of self-parody, a show in which he pretends to blame other Washington may prove more lenient, but I have no doubts people for the stupidities in which he himself has inveterately that every town west of the Cascades will exact a high price from bars to let their patrons smoke outside: remodeling for disability compliance, or retrofitting for the historical council - or just old-fashioned palm-greasing. The sun is setting over the Olympic Mountains. A few Learn at Liberty! weeks ago, I would have headed straight for the deck at the local pub, to enjoy nature's beauty with Kentucky bourbon in one hand and Carolina tobacco in the other. Today, I grind Liberty offers full-time, paid internships my cigarette into the asphalt, and get out of the road. at all times of the year. Interns work - Andrew Ferguson closely with the editors. Responsibili­ Tooth, nail, and justice - At one end of ties generally include fact-checking, Terminal C in the Minneapolis airport there is a large mural research, circulation, advertising, and of the African veldt, with a running antelope and cheetah. After a moment's reflection, one notices an anomaly: the ante­ editing. lope is running behind the cheetah. And then one notices the statement at the bottom of the mural: "Under the Rule of Law Liberty interns have gone on to become All Are Equal." editors at Liberty, Reason, and I first noticed this mural when I saw a mother explaining Regulation, authors of articles in it to her young boy. "Before," she told him, "the wild cat would chase the antelope, but now the antelope is chasing the major magazines and newspapers, cat." researchers at important think tanks, I submit that this little tableau, this passing of information and to win major fellowships and from one generation to the next, catches much o~ what scholarships. Americans now believe about the law, and why libertarian thought has lost the battle of ideas. What does the rule of law provide? Equality? No, it pro­ For information, email: vides payback for past grievances. Once blacks were enslaved. Now they deserve affirmative action. Once women [email protected] could be violated by their husbands with impunity. Now January 2006 they can barely be cross-examined in court when they·· accuse could no longer compete, shoe production was outsourced to someone of rape. Once cheetahs chased antelopes. Now ante­ factories in cities, across the seas, or in Brazil or China. The lopes get to chase cheetahs. The idea they might be running production of many items - oil, rubber, coffee, bananas, tex­ together as equals never even occurred to the woman, who tiles, shoes, cameras, furniture, brassieres, automobiles, com­ no doubt wants the best for her child, while providing him puters, steel - is now outsourced. Outsourcing is constantly with an understanding of the rule of law more suitable to shifting with demand and with fluctuations in domestic pro­ Hobbes' state of nature, where life is nasty, brutish, and short. duction costs as compared to production costs overseas. U.s. - Ross Levatter government taxes, regulations, restrictions, and tariffs have played a major role in increasing U.S. production costs, which Padding the numbers - The u.s. government leads to increased outsourcing - to the point that even the recently placed a new quota on imports of cheap hand-sewn research and production of high quality bras has been out­ brassieres from China. As a result, Chinese brassiere makers sourced, too. - Bettina Bien Greaves are trying to develop more expensive brassieres, since those are given preferential treatment under U.S. law. In Bagualing, Sticking with the status quo On China, there is a bra lab devoted to developing new tech­ November 8, California suffered a disaster worse than any niques. Hong Kong's Polytechnic University has started issu­ eight-point earthquake. Voters spurned Governor Schwarz­ ing degrees in bra studies. As seamless molded bras that can enegger's attempts to limit the power of the modern liberal be smoothly worn under T-shirts have soared in popularity, forces that are bankrupting the state. Chinese bra makers have begun experimenting with new One of Schwarzenegger's proposals attempted to restrict designs. They have developed new techniques for creating a public employee unions from using dues for political contri­ shape-retaining bra cup, and also for fusing together the butions; another attempted to keep teachers (hence, members many components needed to make a seamless bra by using of teachers' unions) from receiving the equivalent of tenure high temperatures to mold sheets of synthetic fibers into after only two years' work. Others tried to cap state spending wafer-thin shells. And they have even experimented with and fairly reapportion the hideously gerrymandered legisla­ ways to help make American women more seductive: by pro­ ture (virtually none of California's districts is competitive, viding more cleavage; or by adding sealed packets filled with and the legislature is controlled by Democrats). These meas­ air (which proved too prone to leaks and punctures), oil pads ures lost, respectively, by margins of 6%, 10%, 24%, and 18%. (too expensive and heavy), or a filling, as yet untested, made Why? Union advertising successfully portrayed them as from a kind of fiberfill such as is used to line winter parkas. measures designed to "hurt schools" and "children" and All this in the attempt to satisfy American women and hand over control of politics to the arbitrary power of judges offer them bras that they will like better than those now avail­ (the governor proposed that retired judges handle reappor­ able in the United States. In doing this, makers of brassieres tionment). The latter claim was a bizarre one to be made by are doing no more than producers have done for centuries in modern California liberals, than whom no one is more liti­ the attempt to provide domestic consumers with cheaper, bet­ gious or more supportive of judicial intervention; neverthe­ ter, or cheaper and better, products than could be made at less, it was made and it was taken seriously. home. In Adam Smith's time, British manufacturers of wool­ A more attractive reason for Schwarzenegger's defeat is ens outsourced the production of wool to Australia and people's distrust of activist government. I know it's stupid, British ship builders outsourced the construction of masts to but many voters seem to have viewed his efforts with the the American colonies. When cobblers around the world same suspicion with which they viewed other political

News You May Have Missed Santa Seeks WMDs

NORTH POLE - In response to The Danish foreign ministry said would mean heading due south, which Denmark's announcement in October that any invasion of the area by the could be interpreted as a retreat." 2004 that it was exploring the possibil­ Danish army would be a "a cakewalk However, he admitted that the Danes ity of claiming the North Pole as part or at least a Danish pastry walk," but have a major advantage in any confron­ of Greenland, which has been Danish Canada, which put in its own legal tation with Santa and his estimated 27 territory since 1814, Santa Claus claim for the North Pole in the late divisions of elves. "The Danes have the reportedly has spent the last year mobi­ 1950s, believes that it might not be so option of releasing canisters of paralyz­ lizing his elves and buying military simple. "We couldn't get around a baf­ ing Kierkegaardian angst behind equipment, including long-range rein­ fling strategic problem," said a Santa's lines, which will make short deer and armored sleighs, on the inter­ Canadian Ministry of Defence official work of his reserves of merriness, national black market. He may be in Ottawa, "which was that even if our while all we had to throw at him was trying to develop snowballs with rocks troops finally succeeded in reaching the temporarily incapacitating com­ in them and other weapons of mass and occupying the North Pole, further plete works of Robert W. Service." destruction. maneuvers or probes in any direction - Eric Kenning January 2006 attempts to change things. Every statewide proposition the economics of government intervention may be discred­ failed, including modern liberal proposals to involve the state ited intellectually; the terrible effects of state schools and in the prescription drug business (No: 58% and 61%), a pro­ unionized teaching may be evident to all (though uninter­ posal to reregulate electric service providers (No: 66%), and a preted by some); but it now appears that California will need proposal to mandate parental notification before minors' another political spasm like the sudden shudder that cast out abortions (No: 53%). the last modern liberal governor and replaced him with the What happened in California may also be part of the same German gymnast before anything like sanity is restored to the wave of conservatism, in the sense of a desire to keep things land of nut-bearing trees. - Stephen Cox the same, no matter what, that was visible in Ohio's simulta­ neous defeat of radical Democrats' attempts to create a more Bonfire vivants - My local paper tells me in glar­ Democrat-friendly electoral system, and in Washington's fail­ ing black headlines that "Violence in France is slowing." ure to roll back a 91/2 cent gas tax increase. Good news -I read on. I find that this is not the opinion of In polities like California, which are dominated by mod­ some crepes suzette loving Francophile. There's real data ­ ern liberal interests and institutions, conservatism of this kind minus the slant - as one expects in the pages of a decent is almost as disastrous as radical attacks on individual rights. paper. Only 374 cars were torched last night compared to 502 It means that expropriation of taxpayers' property and its the night before. Furthermore, last week 1,400 cars were cre­ diversion from useful to useless (indeed, destructive) pur­ mated! A cheery graph of descending violence. Happy days poses will continue on a massive scale, and as the normal are here again! Soon Gallic skies will be blue and smoke free. way of doing business. The power of unions may be fading; Then I read that not a Saturday night goes by in this per- Word Watch by Stephen Cox

Every year I train ten or fifteen teaching assistants, and I were. It's been bad since President Jackson's day, and now it's enjoy doing it. One ofthe things I especially enjoy is taking getting worse. them through the logic ofgrading papers. But there are some I think about this when the phone rings, because it's usually things that they have a really hard time believing about my a person who says something like, "Hi, is this Steve? Hi, this is advice. Cheryl! How you doin' today Steve? Listen, Steve, I'm calling One ofthem is the idea that good writers don't need to from down here at the Acme Roofand Tile Company. Steve, sound like the "Encyclopedia Britannica." Ifyour high school did you know we got a real great special goin' on down here ..." teacher told you never to use the first-person pronoun, or never Naturally, that's where I hang up. There's something galling to start a sentence with "And" or "But," or never to shorten about the pretense that somebody who's never met you and "cannot" to ('can't," that teacher was just purveying superstition. wouldn't care to do so, even on a bet, is actually an intimate "I," "and," and "but" are words like other words, and like other friend ofyours. It's especially galling when he or she is doing a words, they can be overused. But there's no reason to avoid sell job. them, or to avoid putting them at the start ofsentences. And if It reminds me ofWoody Guthrie. you allow yourself to use contractions, you have one more way I'm not a big fan of"Woody's" music. Part ofthe reason is ofgiving interesting changes to your tone. I say all that to my that he was a communist. I know that his political affiliation teaching assistants. Then I look at their work on student papers, should have nothing to do with an aesthetic judgment ofhis and I see that they're still telling people to "avoid the use of '1'1," work, but communism does make me want to find something "avoid 'and' and 'but' at start ofsentences!", and above all, pretty big and pretty good to compensate for it in a feller's "avoid contractions!!!" No reason - just avoid 'em. The result work. In Guthrie's case, there isn't much. His tunes are good, is that a student who would otherwise say, simply and naturally, but sometimes they're not his own tunes. His lyrics vary a lot in "It's clear that Aeneas isn't responsible for all ofDido's prob­ quality. In "Pretty Boy Floyd," he's a master ofthe aphoristic lems," ends up saying, as ifhe were an Oxford professor shout­ style: "Some will rob you with a six-gun, / Some with a fountain ing down an opponent, "It is clear that Aeneas is not responsible pen." But '(This Land Is Your Land" is just a mess. "From " California to the New York Island" is about as slipshod as you This is false formality, something so rife in our society that can get. And what do you think ofthe original verses: "Was a cops describe their prisoners as "the gentlemen who are alleged high wall there that tried to stop me; /A sign was painted said: to have been ancillary to this crime." Private Property"? That's as bad as had can be. One way to narrow your tonal options is to aim at the maxi­ But the thing that always comes to mind when I consider mum degree offormality, whether the situation demands it or the problem offalse informality is the song he wrote commemo­ not. The other way, ofcourse, is to cultivate a false informality. rating the Reuben]ames, a U.S. ship sunk by the Germans just This is something that Americans have been having trouble with after Hitler went to war with Stalin and made it all right for ever since they started telling themselves how democratic they Guthrie to become a patriotic, pro-war guy. The song asks the January 2006 fectly well-balanced society without frolicking fire bugs burn­ disease. Brought on by stress, they attacked hard-driving ing up 100 cars. Really? Who knew that? My paper never told middle-aged business executives (mostly men, it seemed) me that before. Evidently this is a society where block parties who resembled today's "Type A" personality. Unlike the are warm even in November - where Luddites expedi­ Type A personality, however, which wins some respect for its tiously communicate via computer about their next target. dedication to power and control, this kind of executive was Who knew, before this recent mania for bonfires, about this considered a bit of a failure. The disease revealed he had a quaint French habit: every normal Saturday night in the tense life and probably an unhappy marriage. 'burbs is illuminated by lit-up rioters and lit-up Peugots? Doctors thought that stress led to an overproduction of And I thought they sat at sidewalk cafes, sipped 12-proof gastric acid, which destroyed the lining of the stomach or white wine, read Balzac, and prayerfully thanked the U.S. for intestine, creating a hole or ulcer. Initially, treatment con­ twice saving them from Teutonic expansionism. sisted of bland, non-acidic diets, perhaps some psychological - Ted Roberts therapy. When drugs such as Tagamet, which reduced the stomach's acid production, came on the market, they racked The first stage ofdiscovery - It's been a grim up billions of dollars in sales. They healed the ulcer - but the fall, with floods, earthquakes, war, and scandal. But there ulcer often returned. was one satisfying moment: the 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine. An Australian pathologist, J. Robin Warren, began to The story behind it is a scintillating reminder of the need for notice that the ulcer biopsies he examined often had some humility about knowledge. unfamiliar bacteria. In 1982, he brought in a medical intern, Not too long ago, ulcers were considered a psychosomatic Barry Marshall, to identify and culture these bacteria, and

urgent question, "What were their names? / Tell me, What were ish story and sort ofget it right. But when Bush tries to follow their names? / Did you have a friend on the good Reuben his lead, even the Texas accent can't pull it off. James?" You remember the inane little story that President Clinton Well, no; I don't know their names. Like Guthrie's original popularized and President Bush couldn't quite manage to tell. audience, I never heard ofthem before. They weren't my You know, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame "friends," and I won't pretend that they were. They weren't the on me." Bush got through the first sentence, then collapsed into song writer's friends, either. This is nothing but smarm. "You fool me, you cain't git fooled agin." Whatever that means. It's the kind ofthing that American communists have More recently, the New Orleans disaster has given us many always emitted. I remember when Gus Hall and Angela Davis examples ofwhat happens when the wealthy and powerful try to were running on the Communist Party ticket, and they were sell themselves in a folkish way. I didn't know there was so planning some dismal little get-out-the-vote rally in a midwest­ much smarm in the world until I sawall those $300,000 a year ern city. Their followers plastered the slums with signs reading, reporters waltzing around the French Quarter with their sleeves "Gus and Angela Are Coming to Town!" It was an attempt to rolled up and "How you all doin'?" on their lips. But the epi­ assume their way into a welcome - the assumption being that sode I particularly enjoyed was the send-offthat the mayor of everyone "remembered" good 01' Gus and Angela and would New Orleans gave for his chiefofpolice. On September 28, the therefore feel obliged to greet them with ecstasy. chief resigned because ofhis abject incompetence in handling In the old days, the copyright on folksy smarm was held by the disaster; and Mayor Ray Nagin, who had appointed him, Will Rogers and all those people that Sinclair Lewis used to sat­ bade him a public farewell. Nagin's first instinct, which was the irize. But their rights must have expired, because now the con­ right one, was to ladle out the sarcasm: "He leaves the depart- servatives are into it too. Rush Limbaugh never honeys up to his audience in that way (in fact, he satirizes people who do). Neither does Michael Medved. But Sean Hannity is always addressing his callers as "darlin'" and whooping out the first That was a masterpiece of damning with name ofevery intellectual derelict who dials in, as ifhe'd spent faint praise, and the mayor should have left it the past two weeks camping out in the guy's backyard. at that. Meanwhile, Bill O'Reilly has adopted folksiness, and the word "folks," as his personal trademarks. He's on the air five days a week demanding, "Who's lookin' out for the folks? That's all I care about. What's gonna happen to the folks? Who's lookin' ment in pretty good shape and with a significant amount of out for the folks? I'm lookin' out for the folks - are you lookin' leadership." That was a masterpiece ofdamning with faint out for the folks?" Ifany ofthe people he interviews brings up a praise, and the mayor should have left it at that. But he couldn't topic that O'Reilly doesn't feel like talking about, his response is resist the lure offolksiness. Putting on his happy face, he said an abrupt, "The folks don't care about thad" As ifany guy in that he didn't know what the chiefwould do in retirement, but pancake makeup can be regarded as "folks." he hoped that he would make a lot ofmoney. Then there's President Bush - who is, perhaps, the worst Well, ain't that folksy? And ain't that nice? Too bad about example of this phenomenon, because he can't even get the the people in New Orleans who are not in a position to make a smarm right. President Clinton, who was always far too much of lot ofmoney, the folks whom the powers that be have been a simpering little mama's boy ever to be (intellectually) tongue helping to make a whole lot folksier - ifby "folksy" you mean in groove with "folk" ofany kind, could nevertheless tell a folk- weak and poor. January 2006 they discovered a new bacterium (Helicobacter pylori). They behalf of several civil-rights organizations, claiming that a postulated that this was the cause of the ulcers. Florida law which denies ex-felons the right to vote was They were right, but it took years to convince the medical intended to discriminate against blacks. The Supreme Court establishment, as the media reports about their Nobel Prize refused to hear the case. emphasize. The New York Times is particularly harsh toward The state provided evidence that 70% of Florida's 872,000 the drug companies (which financed much of the research on ex-felons are white, suggesting that the justice system in ulcers), but physicians, surgeons, and researchers were all Florida is color-blind. Civil rights groups had apparently just skeptical. Most pathologists thought that the acidity of the assumed that the Florida law is racist. By jumping to that con­ stomach prevented bacteria from growing. When they saw clusion, they identified the true racists in the debate. Strange them through a microscope, they interpreted them as "oppor­ that a class action suit could get all the way to the Supreme tunistic" bacteria, not the cause of the ulcer. Court before somebody realized they never did a demo­ Frustrated at the rejection, Barry Marshall took the dra­ graphic breakdown of the class they were representing. matic step of drinking a solution made up of H. pylori. He I find it equally amusing that Florida Democrats widely then suffered gastritis (a precursor to ulcers) and cured it support repeal of the law denying felons the right to vote. It is with antibiotics. But it was not until 1991 that the connection almost an admission that they believe most criminals vote between H. pylori and gastritis was made official by the Democratic. - Tim Slagle Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, a two-week course of antibiotics usually wipes out The cruel oppression ofprosperity - Like the disease - permanently. (The reason that middle-aged many, I've been intrigued by the proliferation of quality executives get ulcers has more to do with the nature of the wines from the newer growing areas of the world. So when I bacterium than with their lifestyle. The bacterium infects saw an interesting Shiraz/ Pinotage blend from South Africa them as children but doesn't show up until years later.) at the local store, I decided to try it out. The wine, a 2004 bot­ Scientific discoveries often take longer than nine years to tling by Goiya, was pleasant - but the label! Goiya, I was be accepted, so in the annals of history this chronicle is a told, "means wine in the language of the San people of the short one. Even so, millions of people suffered for years Kalahari Desert. The unique subsistence lifestyle of these because of the intransigence of the medical establishment. It's nomadic bushmen, now under threat from the modern world, is a lesson we shouldn't forget. - Jane S. Shaw the inspiration behind this wine." (Italics added.) One would certainly hope that the "subsistence lifestyle" Cell bloc - The Brennan Center for Justice at New of the San (and everyone else, for that matter) would be York University's School of Law recently filed a lawsuit on threatened by modernity. Hunter-gatherer may be a romantic

News You May Have Missed Search for Missing Veep Continues

WASHINGTON -A "worried" of them turned out to be cases of mis­ ing into the leak of CIA agent Valerie President Bush has filed a missing per­ taken identity, according to the FBI, Plame's name to Robert Novak and sons report with police after Dick which, along with Geraldo Rivera, has other journalists, has admitted leaking Cheney failed to show up for work for been called in on the investigation. Cheney's name to New York Times the 183rd consecutive day. Cheney has Meanwhile, Virginia and North reporter Judith Miller shortly before he not been seen in public since last May, Carolina state police have been comb­ went missing, which has raised suspi­ when he told Larry King on CNN that ing the outskirts of the Great Dismal cions of foul play in the case. During the Iraq insurgency was "in the last Swamp, which is believed to be the the run-up to the Iraq invasion Miller throes." There were reports in late "undisclosed location" where Cheney filed a series of sensational stories, August that he was vacationing at his has spent most of the past four years most of them secretly sourced by ranch in Wyoming while Bush was at and where he "fit right in," according Libby, raising alarms about Saddam his ranch in Texas, and that it was to neighbors, many of them large pre­ Hussein's possession of large stock­ Cheney, .not Bush, who had issued the historic reptiles, but so far no clues piles of weapons of mass destruction, official statement reassuring New have been found, although the police Orleans residents fleeing for their lives did discover what appeared to be some­ but shortly afterward the weapons van­ that Hurricane Katrina was "in its last one's throes, but whether they were the ished without a trace, and police fear throes." But a search of Wyoming vice president's last throes, the Bush the same thing may have happened to turned up nothing, and although a administration's last throes, or possibly Cheney, especially after Miller admit­ nationwide alert in September resulted somebody else's merely intermediate ted that she got the whole story wrong in 784,659 sightings at golf courses throes could not be determined. and that the actual weapons of mass across the country of persons fitting the Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice destruction all along were "Cheney, description of "a fat, bald, morose, 60­ president's chief of staff, who is under Libby, and Judy Miller." something white guy with glasses," all indictment by federal prosecutors look- - Eric Kenning January 2006 lifestyle, but it's a harsh and unpleasant life. And that point patrician upper class in dress and demeanor, today they're has been made even by such liberal voices as the BBC, whose more likely to be trying to give the impression that they are Brian Leith noted on Radio 4 that "the traditional San life of some sort of artist. This is why Picasso, a consummate bohe­ [his] grandparents was a matter of harsh reality and a strug­ mian, a prolific, experimental, Mediterranean, life-loving gle to survive." Zorba the Spaniard, is the chief saint in the upper-middle.;, Does Goiya (a label of Texas-based importer Hemingdale class religion of art, venerated in our museum-temples and in and Hale, which partners with a large South African wine the holy writ of the New York Times Arts and Leisure sec­ outfit, Westcorp International) seek to perpetuate this heri­ tion. Dead bohemian artists are sanctified, the most foul­ tage of poverty? One hopes not, but in today's "dancing with smelling bohemian poets are taught to clean-cut suburban wolves" culture, it's possible. Too many Americans seem to kids in university classes, but bohemias and bohemians them­ believe that providing any opportunity for these people to selves have essentially disappeared. The cheap fringe cold­ join the modern world, live normallifespans, and participate water-flat neighborhoods, the little mom-and-pop Italian res­ in a global economy is cultural imperialism. taurants with checkered tablecloths and flickering candles, Cross-cultural marketing does not always go smoothly the seedy bars where struggling young artists and writers and the wording of this label may simply reflect an American gathered to argue and get drunk and fight over women and marketer seeking to add glamor to a new wine-growing aesthetics, are no more. Now, in the Village and the other region. Moreover, there are many who believe that the poor once-bohemian New York neighborhoods that have fallen in of the world are a "unique" resource to be "protected" from succession to the gentrifying onslaught, like SoHo, Tribeca, the contamination of our modern materialistic world. Still, I the East Village, or Williamsburg, a struggling young some­ hope that the company does redesign its label - or perhaps thing-or-other would have to cough up a vast security funds a few scholarships for San students. Some of them, I deposit and prove that he or she is plugged into the corpo­ suspect, would like to be able to afford to drink such wines in rate-bureaucratic system with income-tax forms and credit the future - and live long enough to do so. - Fred Smith checks to get an apartment and work in an office to pay for it, and as a result there are virtually no struggling young artists Bohemian rhapsody - The battle between bour­ and writers anymore. Instead we have artists who can't draw geois and bohemian was probably the longest-running but are skilled in public relations and gallery-museum poli­ vaudeville comedy act in Western history, each thwacking tics, and writers who graduate from writing seminars and the other with rolled-up newspapers for about 150 years, so workshops, use the connections they have acquired in them maybe it's just as well that it's been given the hook. Too to publish something somewhere, and then start teaching many priggish, bloated blowhards denouncing perfectly their own writing seminars and workshops. They live among good artworks and sexual pleasures, and too many bad art­ other, nearly identical young professionals, computer pro­ ists and crackpot theorists denouncing perfectly good mid­ grammers, pharmaceutical reps, and sports therapists, in dIe-class customs like baths and private property, for too neighborhoods where Dylan Thomas once drank and Joe long. Still, the vanishing of a bohemian option in life, nicely Gould once ranted, unmindful of the raffish ghosts. symbolized by the thousands of identical, franchised - Eric Kenning Starbucks stores selling overpriced sugar-and-cream confec­ tions in the guise of being coffeehouses selling coffee, is It's only lying if you get caught - Republicans probably realize by now that complaining so worth regretting. Yes, many bohemians were pretentious, dis­ long and loud about Bill Clinton's fibbing under oath about solute fools and fakes, as were many of their respectable his relationship with Monica Lewinsky opened a can of vora- bourgeois counterparts, but if you walk around Greenwich Village in Manhattan, an upscale, casual professional-class neighborhood like all the other upscale, casual professional­ class neighborhoods in New York or Boston or Burlington, Vt., or Santa Barbara, Calif., or anywhere, you can't help being haunted by the ghosts of Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Sloan, e.e. cummings, and other free spirits who inhabited it before it became a preserve of investment bankers and corpo­ rate lawyers and media celebrities, and you would be simi­ larly haunted in San Francisco's North Beach, London's Soho, the Latin Quarter and Montmartre in Paris, and wherever else rebels and eccentrics used to congregate. At their best, bohemians formed a kind of aristocracy without the manors and manners, an impoverished subterranean elite with some­ thing of the same aristocratic frankness of speech, boldness, playfulness, drunkenness, artifice, love of art, and penchant for ceremonial, symbolic dress (as in "the red vest of Gautier" or bohemian black). Bohemias provided an experimental space for art, literature, sexuality, clothes, and food, and some of the successful experiments made their way into con­ ventional society, which became a little less conventional'. "No offense, but how can you bring us all this stuff without In fact, whereas upper-middle-class people once aped the a tax hike?" Liberty 11 January 2006 cious worms that eat at them now that they are stuck with try­ started his account of it, printed in the Wall Street Journal of ing to defend Scooter Libby's apparent lying. Oct. 28, 1977, by asserting dogmatically that the market is Only those of us who are neither Republican nor fully priced at all times, because it reflects everyone's expecta­ Democrat can say that one lie is ultimately as trivial as the tions of the future. When markets collapse, he asserted, some­ other and that those publicizing politicians' lying should be thing has changed these expectations - something like dismissed as strictly partisan. Everyone in authority lies political news. under oath; it only begins with politicians. Lawyers have told I think the market is "fully priced" only in a tautological me how their colleagues have lied and sometimes how sense. But Wanniski thought otherwise and therefore went they've lied as well. The assumption that everyone must nec­ looking for an outside cause. In a 1988 interview he said he essarily tell the whole truth under oath is a lie about lying. had gotten an idea from Gottfried Haberler that it might have Politicians, as well as political critics, have more important been the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Wanniski rushed off to the problems to confront now. library and cranked in the page for the New York Times, Oct. My expectation is that Libby will cop a plea, if only to 24, 1929, which chronicles the events of October 23. disappear from the front pages, and then get a pardon from He notes two stories: one about the market and another Dubya in January 2009. By then he will have paid the price for about the tariff negotiations in the Senate, where an anti-tariff Republican foolishness during the Clinton years. coalition was struggling to hold off the demands for sharply - Richard Kostelanetz higher import duties. "On October 23, an hour before the market closes, disaster Exit, frothing - The reports of God's death, written strikes: The market declines a stunning 21 points after news is by Nietzsche, Darwin, Marx, and others in the 19th century, out that the anti-tariff coalition has broken apart on the ques­ were, in Mark Twain's immortal phrase, greatly exaggerated. tion of carbide rates." The carbide rates themselves are rela­ God may well be done for in the longrun - science probably tively unimportant; the vulnerability of the anti-tariff forces is slipped poison into his ambrosia - but it's a slow poison, and the key. Yet the remarkable coincidence again goes unre­ he's like one of those ham actors who spend all of Act V stag­ marked in the next day's newspapers. gering, twitching, and convulsing while orating his last lines. On Oct. 24, "the anti-tariff forces suffer another setback; The macabre twitching and convulsing, the scenery-chewing casein tariffs are raised 87%." Again, casein is not the issue; it apocalyptic melodrama, are technically known as fundamen­ is the political strength of the pro-tariff forces. talism, and there seems to be a pretty good chance that this This is Black Thursday. noisily expiring scene-hogging ham deity will bring the whole On Friday the market stabilizes, but over the weekend Sen. damn theater crashing down on our heads. Between the Smoot predicts the bill will survive, and Sen. Borah, a tariff Muslim fundamentalists addicted to absolutist violence and opponent, says he thinks so too. On Monday the Dow Jones the Jewish and Christian fundamentalists addicted to goading Industrials drop 38 points, and on Black Tuesday, 30 more them on, civilization and its pleasures are now in a state of points, on the highest volume in history. The Crash is on. siege. The ancient philosophical sect known as the Epicureans Fast-forward to mid-1930. "On June 13, the Senate believed that the gods existed, but they were serenely una­ approves by two votes the measure to increase tariffs on more ware of us, so we weren't obliged to worship them or worry than 1,000 items and sends the bill to Hoover. On this news, about them, just to seek our own serene happiness. Instead of the stock market breaks 14 points to 230, precisely where it abolishing the position, let's advertise an opening for that was on the bottom on Black Tuesday, October 29." kind of god. - Eric Kenning What is remarkable about Wanniski's account is that he Smoot point - Jude Wanniski, who recently died, says the cause and effect were not associated at the time. will be remembered as the trumpet of supply-side economics Nobody wrote in the newspaper that the market had crashed on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal in the late because of the success of the pro-tariff forces in the Senate. 1970s and as the author of "The Way the World Works" Wanniski did not develop his theory by interviewing old (1978). What I remember most was an intriguing theory of speculators, or digging through old letters and diaries, but by what caused the Crash of '29. looking at the New York Times. That is, by simply reading the The standard theory is that it was an unsustainable boom newspapers, he saw a causal effect that no one at the time that ran out of gas. Wanniski didn't think so. Indeed, he reported. It could not have been something that nobody noticed. For an event in the Senate to cause the Dow Jones Industrial Average to collapse, a whole bunch of people would have had to act, and some other people would have noticed them act­ ing. People would have talked about it. Indeed, thousands did act, people did talk about it, and the episode wentdown in history - and until Wanniski's book 49 years later, appar­ ently nobody made the connection he did. All this seems improbable to me. Wanniski's account might be presented in at least two ways. One is his way, which is that the entire fall was due to these political events, and that the market was as rationally priced at the bottom of the fall as at the top. That is, the reason "You want a second opinion? ...-..:... What are you, some kind ofparanoid?" continued on page 30

12 Liberty Regulation

I Vote Against Liberty

by Jane S. Shaw

Can you accomplish anything in politics - even on the planning board of a small town - without checking your ideals at the door?

Fifteen years ago, Klein Gilhousen, a founder of Qualcoffiffi, was looking fo~ a t~wn that h~ and his family could live in while he continued to work in San Diego. He sought a unIversIty town WIth an electrical engineering college that was not close to a big city, but had adequate air transportation, and was near good skiing. Bozeman, Mont., was the only place in the country that fit, he says, and he and his family have been here since 1991. pIe romantically involved with the outdoors, suspicious of The town may not be famous, but with its proximity to capitalism in general and of old Montana businesses such as mining and logging in particular. Since I moved here in 1984, Yellowstone Park, blue-ribbon trout streams, and ski resort, new "granolas" have appeared, setting up branch offices for Bozeman has cachet. It is a western "latte town/, to use the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, and other environ­ David Brooks' label -- a small university town in a beautiful mental groups, and even the home office of American setting that attracts affluent urban refugees. (Burlington, Vt., Wildlands. is Brooks' prototype, but latte towns are scattered across the On the other side of the political fence are developers, West.) Bozeman has a population of 30,000 plus about 10,000 old-fashioned conservatives, working people, and entrepren­ students at Montana State University. eurs (though plenty of Chamber of Commerce types are on Situated on a broad plain and surrounded by mountains, the left).* Business booms here, as it does in most latte towns, Bozeman appeals to outsiders weary of noise, traffic, crime, and many of the businesses are small firms nobody has and bustle. But Bozeman is no Aspen, partly because billion­ heard of. Until a decade or so ago, most children of Bozeman aires prefer Big Sky, the ski resort about 50 miles south. And families had to search for jobs elsewhere after college, but because Montana State University is grounded in agriculture that seems to have changed. and technology (unlike the "dancing school over the hill" ­ About nine months ago, I became a member of Bozeman's the University of Montana in Missoula), it is slightly more planning board, which, typical of small-town planning conservative than many college campuses. Although hous­ boards, writes and updates the 20-year plan that is supposed ing prices are rising fast (the median price of a house in 2004 to guide its growth and advises the city commission on was $245,000), Bozeman still has some small-town feeling, a whether proposed subdivisions are consistent with the exist­ family atmosphere, and working-class families. The average ing plan. Zoning is the province of another commission. per-capita income is $16,104, compared to $21,587 nationally. We meet twice a month, usually to go over plans for sub- But Bozeman's attractiveness means growth, and growth is a political hot potato. Bozeman seesaws from left to right *Bozeman also has two libertarian environmental organizations: PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center, which I work for, and and back. University-affiliated people are mostly on the Left, FREE, the Foundation for Research in Economics and the and many are what we used to call the"granola" Left - peo- Environment. Liberty 13 January 2006 dividing property. So far, we have mostly rubber-stamped "restricted size lots" have to be smaller, too. That's it. That's what the city's planning department (the professionals) have the plan. (Of course, there are some specifications to the already decided. Then we send on our recommendations to plan: the maximum size lot is 5,000 square feet .for a the zoning commission, which sometimes overturns them; detached home and 3,000 square feet for a townhome. And I'm not exactly sure why. the house can't take up more than about a third of the lot.) I've learned a few things from my experience on the You don't have to be an economist to realize that small board. lots in a fast-growing city are likely to be purchased at just First, development in Bozeman is micromanaged to the slightly lower prices than large lots. Indeed, with many nth degree. Developers run what seems like an interminable "snowbirds" inhabiting Bozeman, such a lot could easily gauntlet of pre-applications and actual applications, provide a pied aterre for well-off part-time residents. On a reviewed by both us and the City Commission, and they are per-square-foot basis, these lots may well end up being more allowed to do this only after many hours of dealing with the expensive than the normal lots. Given the low per-capita city's planning department. income in Bozeman, there is no way these homes are going They must meet an impressive array of "exactions." A to be "affordable." typical development will have very specific requirements for Nevertheless, on the one chance I had to vote on this pol­ open space, dedicated parkland, trails, and bicycle paths, not icy, I supported it. "Guilt relief" has its place if it holds to mention setbacks from watercourses and mitigation of worse options at bay, such as requiring buyers to meet "jurisdictional" wetlands. And the developer almost always has to build a road, or at least half a road: the city counts on the property owner on the other side of the road to pay for half, too. This doesn't always work out, especially if the The downtowners quickly asked the city to other owner is the county. Bozeman's Unified Development Ordinance, which cod­ adopt an ordinance that excludes any first-floor ifies its comprehensive plan, is all about smart growth. business other than retail. And I voted for it. I Written at a time when the"granolas" held sway, the plan restricted freedom. promotes high-density housing, urban infill, narrow streets, garages at the back (accessible by alleyways), and front porches. We don't have "mass transit" here, but it's on its way. The plan also specifies future nodes of commercial activity. income limitations, or putting ceilings on house prices, or Requirements are both comprehensive and detailed. A putting in place other bureaucratic requirements similar to few years ago a developer of low-cost housing said that he the rules that emerged from rent control in New York City. started preparing two housing developments at the same All in all, inflicting a blow against freedom, but taking a time. The one in Bozeman's suburb, Belgrade, was com­ big step toward "reasonableness," I voted to keep the plan. pleted before the foundations were poured for the Bozeman By the time I voted on affordable housing, I was already project. Not too long ago, the planning board had to vote on an old hand at compromising my principles. I had started hiding mechanical equipment with vegetation. Doing so was with Bozeman's downtown. This area, a small section of already required; the vote was to decide if the vegetation had Main Street and a few cross streets, contains boutiques, res­ to be evergreen or if it c

Letters, from page 4 suggest that Mr. Elliott acquaint himself democratic Germany. judicial system. Instilling acceptance of with the richness of Brundage's research A democracy that results in "one these principles among Iraqis is what is on the subjects at issue. man, one vote," undermines the objec­ crucial. We should remember that our Brundage is hard not to enjoy, or to tive of freedom. America's Founders goal for the people of Iraq is not so respect. recognized that pure democracy was much to let them vote as to let them be not the best route to liberty. They advo­ free. Democracy vs. Liberty cated a constitutional republic with Roy Miller Re: "Wish in one hand, Shiite in the checks and balances between branches Phoenix, Ariz. other" (December): As the prospects for of the national government, and a distri­ democracy in Iraq remain in doubt, we bution of power between national and Categorical Correction should remember that freedom is the state governments. The idea was to pro­ I read Mr. Bradford's article on real goal. Democracy is only a means to tect liberty by fragmenting power ­ Hurricane Katrina while Hurricane that goal, and it isn't necessarily the best even at the cost of impeding democracy. Wilma was smashing my (Fort means for attaining it. Democracy didn't What makes a great country are Lauderdale) garden. I have one prevent slavery in America, and the things like the rule of law, private prop­ Nazis were the most popular party in erty, enforcement of contracts, and a fair continued on page 27 Liberty 15 Heritage The Roots of Liberty

by Dave Kopel

Libertarians often The period from the fall of the· Western Roman Empire, until approximately the middle of the 11th century, is often known believe that liberty as the Dark Ages. For human liberty, the period was indeed dark. Two changes in political consciousness helped bring an end to the Dark Ages: the is a creation ofthe growth of feudalism, and the Papal Revolution initiated by Pope Gregory VII. modern world - at Submission to Tyranny The fatalistic tendency of political theorists in the Dark Ages was to view all political power as granted by God and rulers as unaccountable to any human least the IImodern II being (although they were accountable to God): rulers were above the law, and everyone else was obliged to obey them. Proper temporal rule seemed of little world that began in importance, since the world was going to end in the year 1000, or perhaps in 1033, a thousand years after the death of Jesus. 1776. In fact, The king was sacred, and most political theorists in the Dark Ages believed in unlimited submission to government. For example, Archbishop Hincmar of liberty's origins Rheims (approx. 805-881), an important adviser to King Charles the Bald of France, wrote a pair of treatises, De Divortio and De Regis Persona, distinguish­ arefar older. Many ing a king (who assumed power legitimately and who promoted justice) from a tyrant (who did the opposite). Yet even Hincmar argued that tyrants must be obeyed unquestioningly. When Louis the German invaded France in 858, ofthem lie in a his­ Hincmar remonstrated him with words from the Psalms: "Thou shalt not touch the Lord's anointed." torical period that Kings were considered Christ on earth, and during a coronation, the bishop would gird on the king's sword, a symbol of the king's role in fighting the most libertarians Church's enemies. heartily despise: Feudalism The feeble Western Roman Empire had been conquered by barbarians in the the Middle Ages. 5th century. After the fall of the Roman Empire, some relatively potent states 16 Liberty January 2006 had arisen, such as Spain under the Visigoths and France which held ultimate power in the church. Kings were often under the Carolingian kings. But by the end of the first mil­ the head of the national church, and they appointed the bish­ lennium, Gothic Spain and Charlemagne's France were dis­ ops. Many bishops controlled vast feudal domains. The tantmemories. The essential function of government, church bureaucracy, with a near-monopoly on literacy, providing security against attack, was no longer provided by formed the backbone of local government in much of the the employees of a king in a distant capitaL West; so the power to appoint bishops amounted to the Instead, the lord of the nearest castle and a few knights in power to control the government. his service provided security. That castle was the fortress Some bishops married, and their marital alliances solidi­ into which th~ loca.l communiiy could reheat in case of fied their ties to the royal regim.es. Kings and their courts attack. "All politics is local," U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neill often made the final decision on disputes over church law would observe a millennium later, and politics was espe­ and governance. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, cially local during the feudal age. Because churches, monasteries, and convents were fre­ quent targets of barbarian attack, they relied heavily on the local lord and his knights for protection. As a result, the Kings were considered Christ on earth, and church increasingly came under control of the micro-states. during a coronation, the bishop would gird on Under feudalism, all ownership of land was based on reciprocal obligation. The farmer received protection from the king's sword, a symbol of the king's role in the lord of the castle, and was.obliged to give the lord a fighting the Church's enemies. share of the farm's produce. The lord in turn held his land in obligation to some. greater lord. The lesser lord would pay his "rent" by providing military service (a certain number of knights and other fighters for a certain number of days) the papacy frequently had to contend, not always success­ when the greater lord mustered his forces. These land-based, fully, for independence from the Byzantine Emperor, or from reciprocal obligations were passed down from one genera­ closer rulers. By the end of the first millennium, the Holy tion to the next. Eventually, the obligations of "vassalage" Roman Empire ran the papacy. The emperor appointed the ran up to the greatest landholders, who owned their land by pope, and deposed him if he stepped out of line. feudal grant from the king. The Holy Roman Empire was comprised of most of Feudal obligations were created by mutual oaths sworn Germany, much of Italy, and a part of France; the Empire before God. When kings ascended to the throne, they too took claimed to be the successor state to the Western Roman feudal oaths, setting forth their obligations to the governed. Empire. The name "Holy Roman Empire" was not used until Reciprocal obligation was the foundation of civil society. 1254, but a Germanic state ruling much of Italy was far older, As Glanvill's famous 1187 treatise on English law and many historians refer to this German-Italian empire as explained, when a lord broke his obligations, the vassal was the "Holy Roman Empire," even when discussing events released from feudal service. If a party violated his duties before 1254. under an oath, and the other party suffered serious harm as a Beginning in the 11th century, the church began to reas­ result, the feudal relationship could be dissolved difftdatio sert its independence. In 1059, a papal council declared that (withdrawal of faith). the Roman cardinals, not the Holy Roman Emperor, would In "The Medieval World," historian Friedrich Heer appoint the pope. "Freedom of the Church" was the slogan. In 1075, Pope St. Gregory VII declared papal supremacy over argues that the diffidatio "marked a cardinal point in the the church, and further declared the church's independence political, social, and legal development of Europe. The whole from secular control. In a series of Dictatus Papea (Dictates of idea of a right of resistance is inherent in this notion of a con­ the Pope), Pope Gregory went even further, asserting the tract between the governor and the governed, between pope's powers to depose emperors, and to absolve subjects higher and lower." of unjust rulers from their oaths of fealty to the ruler. Thus, historian R. Van Ceanegm observes in "The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought," that modern society is founded on "one element ... that can be directly traced to feudal origins: the notion that the relation between rulers and citizens is based on a mutual contract, which means that governments have duties as well as rights and that resistance to unlawful rulers who break their con­ tract is legitimate." Reciprocal feudal obligations "were the historic starting point of the limitation of the monarchy and the constitutional form of government, whose fundamental idea is that governments as well as individuals ought to act under the law."

The Gregorian Reformation In the Dark Ages, there was no separation of church and state, and it was the political class, not the priestly class, "Abdicate? But I still have sick days to use up!" Liberty 17 January 2006

Gregory VII started the Investiture Controversy when he liberties against ruling bishops who were subservient to declared that no layman (not even the emperor) could invest monarchs; the municipal revolts were typically supported by - that is, provide the vestments and the authority of office groups loyal to the papacy. Other towns in Western Europe - a bishop. Unsurprisingly, the monarchs refused to surren- also demanded their rights, and were given charters, grants, der their power·of lay investiture. The result was a series of or other recognitions of rights from monarchs. Such rights wars pitting the Holy Roman Empire against the papacy and might include limits on taxation, freedom for serfs who escaped to the town and lived there for a year, freedom of trade, the authority for a town to maintain its own courts and for townspeople not to be tried elsewhere, and freedom The Papal Revolution changed the world, from feudal dues. Many of the towns were governed by pop­ ular assemblies or by elected councils. promoting an intellectual shift that eventually Towns bore responsibility for their own defense, which made possible the American Revolution. meant that townsmen had the right to bear arms, and the duty to serve in the town's militia. The Assize of Arms stat­ ute enacted by England's Henry II in 1181 required all townsmen to bear arms. its allies. Pope Gregory VII announced the deposition of In northern Italy, cities such as Genoa and Venice began Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, although he did not suc­ seeking autonomy or independence from the Holy Roman ceed in forcing Henry off the throne. Empire. Their most important ally was the papacy, which In 1122, the Vatican and the Holy Roman Empire reached was seeking to establish its own independence from the a compromise at the. Concordat of Worms: the Pope would Holy Roman Emperor, and to expand its influence in Italy. appoint the Italian bishops, and the Holy Roman Emperor Papal armies often fought in support of the cities. By the end would appoint the German ones. of the 13th century, much of Italy had shaken off the Holy Today in China and Vietnam, a new Investiture Roman Empire. Many cities, though, objected when the pope Controversy is underway. The Communist governments imposed his own temporal rule on them, and urban revolts insist that all Catholic bishops must be approved by the gov­ against papal rule became common. ernment. The Vatican adamantly refuses. At issue is whether the Catholic Church in China and Vietnam will be a church A New View of Legitimate Government in service of worldwide Catholic belief, or a church whose In the conflicts between popes and monarchs, the intellec­ primary mission is to support a totalitarian government. tuals who took the popes' side argued that a king's obliga­ tion is to see that justice is done; if a king fails to do justice, Consequences of the Papal Revolution then he is not a legitimate king. Advocates of this view Pope Gregory VII's "Papal Revolution" failed in its grand objective of uniting all Christian rulers under the Pope's leadership and control. Yet the Papal Revolution would change the world, helping to promote an intellectual shift By the end of the first millennium, the Holy that would eventually make possible the American Roman Empire ran the papacy. The emperor Revolution. In his wonderful book "Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition," legal histo­ appointed the pope, and deposed him if he rianHarold Berman summarizes: stepped out ofline. The most important consequence of the Papal Revolution was that it introduced into Western history the experience of revolution itself. In contrast to the older view of secular his­ tory as a process of decay, there was introduced a dynamic included Peter Damian (1007-1072, a church reformer), quality, a sense of progress in time, a belief in the reforma­ Anselm of Lucca (1036-1086, a bishop allied with Gregory tion of the world. No longer was it assumed that "temporal VII), Cardinal Humbert (1000-1061, an adviser to the reform­ life" must inevitably deteriorate until the Last Judgment. On ing popes), Bernold of Constance (1050-1100, a monk and the contrary, it was now assumed - for the first time - that progress could be made in this world toward achieving some historian), Cardinal Deusdedit (1040-1100), Bonizo of Sutri of the preconditions for salvation in the next. (1045-1090, a bishop and noted polemicist), and Honorius Augustodunensis (1080-1156, a prolific and popular author). In addition, the Papal Revolution set off two centuries of Manegold of Lautenbach, a scholar at a monastery conflicts between emperors and popes. The papal propa­ destroyed by the German emperor Henry IV, wrote the ganda produced what Heer calls "a revolutionary breach of treatise Liber Ad Gebehardum arguing that the Pope had the the continuity of European history; the transformation of the authority to release subjects from their obedience to a ruler, popular image of the Christian monarch from a sacred and as Pope Gregory VII had done. Manegold analogized a sacrosanct figure into a diabolical object of execration." cruel tyrant to a disobedient swineherd who stole his mas­ ter's pigs, and who could be removed from his job by the The Rise of Free Cities master: During the wars sparked by the Papal Revolution, vari­ ous cities revolted against the rule of one party or the other. In France and the Netherlands, towns forcibly asserted their continued on page 30 18 Liberty Etiology

Japan's Gift to FDR

by Bettina Bien Greaves

Pearl Harbor meant that FDR could send American boys to their graves with a clear conscience.

It was about 9:30 p.m. on the evening of Dec. 6, 1941. 1 Navy Lieutenant Lester R. Schulz, special deputy Communication Watch Officer, assigned that evening to the White House "to receive [a] special message for the President," proceeded to President Roosevelt's study with a locked pouch containing important doc­ uments. The president had been entertaining, but as soon as he learned that the courier had arrived, he left his guests to convenience of the Japanese, it was too bad that we could not go to his White House study to await this delivery. strike the first blow and prevent any sort of surprise." As Schulz would later testify, when he entered, the presi­ The president nodded. "No, we can't do that. We are a dent was sitting at his desk, his friend and close associate, democracy and a peaceful people." Then he raised his voice: Harry Hopkins, standing nearby. Schulz opened the pouch "But we have a good record." FDR implied we would have and handed the President a sheaf of "perhaps 15 typewritten to stand on that record, that "we could not make the first pages" clipped together. overt move. We would have to wait until it came." Schulz waited while "[t]he President read the papers." The president went on to tell Hopkins that he had pre­ This took "perhaps 10 minutes" during which Hopkins pared a message for the Japanese Emperor "concerning the paced slowly back and forth. "Then he [FDR] handed them presence of Japanese troops in Indochina, in effect requesting [the papers] to Mr. Hopkins," who read them and handed their withdrawal." FDR had not followed the usual proce­ them back to the President. dure in sending this cable, he said. Rather than addressing it "The President then turned toward Mr. Hopkins and said in substance ... 'this means war.' Mr. Hopkins agreed, and to Tojo as premier, FDR "made a point of the fact that he had they discussed then, for perhaps 5 minutes, the situation of sent it to the Emperor as Chief of State." the Japanese forces, that is, their deployment." The Japanese The President then tried to phone Admiral Stark, Chief of had landed in Indochina. Roosevelt and Hopkins speculated Naval Operations. Apparently, "the White House operator as to where the Japanese would move next. Neither men­ told the President that Admiral Stark could be reached at the tioned Pearl Harbor. Nor did they give any "indication that National Theater." FDR feared that if Stark were to be sud­ tomorrow was necessarily the day." Also, "[t]here was no denly called out of his box at the theater "he would surely mention made of sending any further warning or alert." have been seen because of the position which he held and "[S]ince war was imminent," Hopkins ventured, "... the undue alarm might be caused." Besides, he expected he Japanese intended to strike when they were ready, at a would be able to reach Stark "within perhaps another half an moment when all was most opportune for them ... when hour." So he let the matter drop. FDR did not then mention their forces were most properly deployed for their advan­ "telephoning anybody else." He simply returned the papers tage.... [S]ince war was undoubtedly going to come at the to Schulz and Schulz left. Liberty 19 January 2006

The next morning, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Comintern Pact, making an alliance with Germ'any against launching the United States into a war that would cost hun.:. their common enemy, Soviet Russia. dreds of thousands of lives. Throughout this period, Japan was at war with China. What information did those papers contain which led Japan's bombings and atrocities in China were widely Roosevelt to say, "This means war"? And what did reported and criticized. On July 26, 1939, the U.S. announced Indochina (now Vietnam) have to do with the United States? to Japan that she was terminating her 1911 trade treaty in six The United States had been very much concerned ever since months; after Jan. 26, 1940, Japan would have to request spe­ September 1939, when Hitler's Germany had invaded cial permission to purchase anything from the United States. Poland, leading England and France to declare war on This was a severe blow, as Japan depended heavily on for­ Germany. Itlooked to some like a repeat of the 1914-1918 eign sources for many products, especially oil. Then on Sept. 17, 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, providing that if anyone of the three parties was attacked by a power not then involved in the European war Roosevelt had promised the American people or the Sino-Japanese Conflict, the other two would come to the victim's assistance. Thus, sides were drawn - the Axis he would not send soldiers into war unless (Germany, Italy, and Japan) against the Allies (the United America was attacked first - and he was mere States, Russia, and Great Britain). On July 25, 1941, all hours away from breaking that promise. Japanese assets in the United States were frozen, bringing to a halt all financial and import or export trade transactions in which Japanese interests were involved. With practically the entire world at war, the United States expanded its production of ships, planes, tanks, and arma­ World War and many thought that the United States should ments, and enacted controls and regulations in an attempt to join the fight right away. Although most Americans were put the country on a war footing. In October 1940, Congress anti-Nazi and anti-Hitler, they were reluctant to go to war. passed the Selective Service'Act, subjecting all men aged 20 Besides, a "Neutrality Pact" was in effect. 2 Even as Roosevelt to 44 to military conscription. was signing the "Neutrality Pact," he said, "This nation will Although most Americans opposed the United States remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every entering the war, President Roosevelt was personally and American remain neutral in thought as well." Roosevelt, emotionally British. He was influential in arranging for the himself, was unneutral in thought and anxious to help the United States to supply them with money, ships, planes, British in whatever way he could. Generally speaking, the tanks, and guns; to establish an Atlantic patrol of U.S. Navy American public supported him when he proposed supply­ ships to warn the British of German ships and submarines; ing England with whatever she needed - money, planes, and to escort British ships to Iceland. U.S. ships fired on tanks, ships, armaments - in order to keep the war from some German ships. Yet the Germans refused to respond. reaching our shores. Hitler was not looking for a fight with the United States. He As for Japan, she had resigned from the League of told Admiral Erich Raeder, then commander in chief of the Nations in 1935 because of charges against her over the German navy: "Weapons are not to be used. Even if "Manchurian Incident," a suspicious explosion on a American vessels conduct themselves in a definitely unneu.. Japanese-controlled rail line which the Japanese used as an tral manner.... Weapons are to be used only if U.S. ships excuse to extend their occupation of Manchuria. Then on fire the first shot."3 Nov. IS, 1936, Japan had signed the German-Japanese Anti- In April 1941, the Americans, Dutch, and British held secret meetings in Singapore to explore how to respond to Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia. The outcome was an agreement on the part of all three powers that the Japanese should not be allowed to advance west of 100 degrees east longitude or south of 10 degrees north latitude lest it "create a position in which our failure to take active military coun­ ter-action would place us at such a disadvantage, that should Japan subsequently attack, that we should then advise our respective Governments to authorize such action." 4 War plans were developed based on this agreement. This U.S. plan was distributed to American field commanders on July 25, 1941. The war was not going well for the British; many ships with supplies of munitions and food were being sunk in the Atlantic; and London was being attacked almost nightly by German bombers. In August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Argentia off the coast of Newfoundland. Churchill "This is interesting - 'Warning: The Surgeon-General is 'was anxious for the United States to enter the war against a partisan political appointee.'" Hitler. However, Roosevelt resisted Churchill's pleas. Under 20 Liberty January 2006 the u.s. Constitution, he said, only Congress could declare primarily over trade and Japan's occupation of Indochina ­ war. If he were to propose going to war, Congress would the United States began diplomatic negotiations with argue for weeks. Therefore, although "I may not declare war, Japanese Ambassadors Kichisaburo Nomura and Saburo I may make war." And he proceeded to do just that. Kurusu. Roosevelt and Churchill were pressing Japan to end By mid-1941, the area of the U.S. naval patrol in the her war with China and stop expanding in the southwestern Atlantic had been extended as far east as the Azores. On May Pacific. 21, a U.S. freighter, the Robin Moor, was sunk in the south On November 7 - a full month before the Pearl Harbor Atlantic. Axis funds in the United States were frozen and attack - Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson reported that German, Italian, and Danish (the Germans had occupied FDR took "the first general poll of his Cabinet ... on the Denmark since April 9, 1940) ships in U.S. harbors were taken into "protective custody." Roosevelt knew that some of his actions in assisting the British openly and courting war against the Nazis were not constitutional. One of his writers, Robert Sherwood, wrote: "Roosevelt never overlooked the u.s. ships fired on some German ships. Yet fact that his actions might lead to his immediate or eventual the Germans refused to respond. Hitler was not impeachment."5 looking for afight with the United States. Shortly after Denmark was occupied by the Germans, Greenland asked the United States for protection. In July 1941, the U.S. occupied formerly Danish Iceland, and in August, the United States began escorting merchant ships to Iceland. On September 4, a German submarine released a question of the Far East - whether the people would back torpedo near the destroyer U.S.S. Greer on her way to us up in case we struck at Japan down there [in southeast Iceland; the Greer dropped a depth charge; the sub released Asia].... It was a very interesting talk.... He went around a second torpedo; neither sub nor destroyer was hit. But the the table - first [Secretary of State Cordell] Hull and then president was mad! On September 11, he went on radio and myself, and then around the whole number and it was unan­ issued a "shoot on sight order" to U.S. Navy ships in the imous in feeling the country would support us. [FDR] said Atlantic. "[W]hen you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, that ... the vote is unanimous, he feeling the same way. The you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him. vote would have been much stronger, if the Cabinet had TheseNazi submarines and raiders are the rattlesnakes of known - and they did not know except in the case of Hull the Atlantic..." and the President - what the Army was doing with the big On Sept. 16, the U.S.S. Kearny, another U.S. ship en route bombers [Le., reinforcing the Philippines] and how ready we to Iceland, was hit by a German torpedo; 11 men were killed, [the Army] are to pitch in" in case of an attack on the British 22 wounded; but the Kearny managed to limp into or Dutch in southeastern Asia. Reykjavik. On October 31, the Reuben James, also accompany­ At a White House meeting on November 25, FDR raised ing a convoy, was torpedoed; it split in half and 100 men the subject of Japanese relations. He "brought up the event died; only 45 were saved. that we were likely to be attacked [by Japan] perhaps (as Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll, Assistant Chief of Naval soon as) next Monday [December 1], for the Japanese are Operations, described the de facto war the United States was notorious for making an attack without warning, and the conducting in the Atlantic as "not a legal war." But then he question was what we should do." Secretary of War Stimson half-apologized: "It was more in the nature of irregular. ... stated the dilemma succinctly: "The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." On November 27, Stimson warned the Philippines to expect Japanese aggression in a few days. The war plans If FDR were to propose going to war, issued to Admiral Kimmel in Pearl Harbor advised him to Congress would argue for weeks. Therefore, prepare to take the offensive by getting his men and ships since he could not declare war, he made war ready to launch an attack on the Japanese establishments in the mid-Pacific Marshall Islands. instead. The next day, November 28, Stimson learned from Army intelligence of a "formidable" expedition of Japanese forces sailing south along the Asiatic coast. Various alternatives were discussed that day at a War Cabinet meeting. All the In the Atlantic we were doing some things which only a bel­ participants agreed that if the Japanese were permitted to ligerent does. There had been no declaration. We had done a land in the Gulf of Siam, it would place them in a strategic great many things that under international law, as it was position to strike a severe blow against all three other pow­ understood before the last war, were unneutral. ... It was ers in southeast Asia - the British atSingapore, the Dutch in apparently to her [Germany's] advantage to have us as a the Indies, and the Americans in the Philippines. The mem­ nonbelligerent rather than as a full belligerent." 6 bers of the War Cabinet all agreed that the landing must not By the fall of 1941, the situation in the Far East had begun be allowed. If the Japanese got into the Kra Isthmus, the to assume added importance in the eyes of top Washington British would fight; and if the British fought, we would have officials. In an attempt to settle U.S.-Japanese differences - to fight. The cabinet realized that if this expedition was Liberty 21 January 2006

allowed to round the southern point of Indochina, this whole infiltration, we would respect and guarantee for the future chain of disastrous events would be set in motion. their full sovereignty and independence. The president said "We decided, therefore, that we could not just sit still and that the United States Constitution did not allow him to give do nothing." Stimson reported, "After some discussion it such a guarantee, but we could·be sure that our guarantee was decided that he [FDR] would send such a letter to the would have full American support." Roosevelt's remarks Emperor, which would not be made public, and that at the same time he would deliver a special message to Congress reporting on the danger." FDR "asked Hull and Knox and myself [Stimson] to draft such papers. The consensus was "that rather than strike at the Force as it went by without Roosevelt knew that some of his actions in warning on the one hand, which we didn't think we could assisting .the British openly and courting war do, or sitting still and allowing it to go on, on the other, against the Nazis were not constitutional. which we didn't think we could do - that the only thing for us to do was to address it a warning thatif it reached a cer­ tain place, or a certain line, or a certain point, we should have to fight." Secretary of State Hull sent the president a draft of a pro­ were "sufficiently encouraging ·to enable Halifax to report posed message to Congress. After rehashing the history of that in his opinion the United· States would support what­ U.S.-Japanese. relations, Hull presented in strong terms the ever action we [the British] might take in any of the contin­ president's view of Japanese aggression: "The supreme ques­ gencies .outlined by the President. We could, in any· case, tion presented to this country along with many other coun­ count on American support of any operations. in the Kra tries by the Hitler-dominated movement of world conquest Isthmus."7 is that of self-defense.... We do not want war with Japan, Also on December 1, Roosevelt instructed Admiral Hart and.Japan does not want war with this country. If, however, in Manila to equip three small ships commanded by a U.S. war should. come, the fault and· the responsibility will be naval officer with sufficient armaments - one small gun and those of Japan. The primary cause will have been pursuit by a machine gun - to be classified as "U.S. men of war." The Japan of a policy of aggression." crews could be Filipino. These small ships were to take up On December 1, Roosevelt had a long conversation with specific positions in the path of the Japanese convoy then British Ambassador Lord Halifax, during which he con­ heading south along .the.Asiatic coast; their purpose, to firmed the U.S. commitment to its agreement with the British report the movements of the·Japanese.. Admiral Hart was and Dutch. In the case of a direct attack on the British or the puzzled; .. the· Japanese movements .were· already known in Dutch, Roosevelt-said "we should obviously all be together." Manila from aerial reconnaissance. Perhaps the three". small But he "wanted to be clear about 'matters that were less ships were intended as bait, as·· Stimson had suggested on plain'....(i) if the Japanese reply to these questions [about September 25, to induce the Japanese into "firing the first where the Japanese troops were going, and if to Indochina, shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." As it for what purpose] were unsatisfactory, but the reinforce­ happened, only one of the three ships got into the Japanese ments had not reached Indo-China, (ii) if the reply were convoy's way before December 7; it was spotted, and unsatisfactory, and the troops had reached Indo-China,·(iii) if returned to base. the Japanese moved against Thailand without attacking the On the evening of.December 3, the President again dis­ Kra Isthmus [on Thai territory] or if they did no more than cussed with Lord Halifax the British plan to resist a Japanese enforce concessions from Thailand of a kind 'dangerously attack on the Kra Isthmus and Thailand, again confirming, and even strengthening, his December 1 pledge. He told Lord Halifax that, "when talking of. support, he meant 'armed support,' and that he agreed with the British plan for operations in the Kra Isthmus if the Japanese attacked A decrypted Japanese message, promISIng Thailand." Halifax then wired· his government in London peace with Russia but war with the U.S., van­ thathe "was sure that we [the British] could count on 'armed support' if we undertook the [Kra Isthmus] operation."8 ished into the naval hierarchy, its significance The situation was heating up. Not only were reports of apparently not recognized. Japanese activity in the Far East more frequent, but more Japanese messages concerning diplomatic relations and Japanese affairs worldwide were·being picked up, decoded, and translated in Washington. And their messages .were increasingly urgent. Top Washington officials privy to detrimental to. the general position.'" According to ·Lord MAGIC, the intelligence obtained by intercepting Japanese Halifax, the president. said that the British "could count on "Purple" coded messages, continued to read and scrutinize American support if we [the British] carried out our move to them carefully for hints as to what the Japanese were defend the Kra Isthmus [on Thai territory] in the event of a planning. Japanese attack, though this support might not be forthcom­ Among the Japanese intercepts sent from Tokyo in their ing for a few days. He suggested that we should promise the J-19 code, decoded and translated by our Navy cryptoana­ Thai Government that, if they resisted Japanese attack or lysts in Washington on December 3, was a"ships in harbor" 22 Liberty January 2006 message to the Japanese consul in Hawaii. Tokyo asked that Japanese were told by their government to keep up the pre­ Hawaii report twice a week, instead·of irregularly, the loca­ tense of negotiating. By this time, top Washington officials tions of U.S. "ships in harbor" at Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor were alert for any clues as to what the Japanese were plan­ officials had never been advised that "ships in harbor" ning. But their attention was not on Pearl Harbor; rather, it reports were being compiled by the Japanese consul in was riveted on the massive Japanese convoys in the south­ Hawaii and sent to Tokyo. Nor were they told of this "ships western Pacific, and the u.s. obligations to the British and in harbor" intercept. Dutch. 3, On December "highly reliable information" was ~:~ received in Washington that the Japanese diplomatic and consular posts in Hong Kong, Singapore, Batavia, Manila, FDR had been following U.S. relations with Japan very Washington, and London - all in American, British, or closely through MAGIC. He realized war was close. He had Dutch territory - had been ordered to destroy most of their been particularly impressed by a December 1 Tokyo to codes and ciphers and burn all other important confidential Berlin intercept: "[W]ar may suddenly break out between and secret documents. the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan through some clash of Top Washington officials were increasingly on the alert arms ... quicker than anyone dreams." Another Tokyo to as conflict with Japan was becoming imminent. They sent Berlin message intercepted the same day·advised Berlin instructions to U.S. Naval Attaches in Tokyo, Bangkok, that the United States had "conferred with England, Peiping, and Shanghai, to destroy their codes. And General Australia, the Netherlands and China - they did so repeat­ Sherman Miles, head of the Army's Military Intelligence edly. Therefore, it is clear that the United States is now in Division, ordered the U.S. Military Attache at the U.S. collusion with those nations and has decided to regard embassy in Tokyo to destroy his codes. Japan, along with Germany and Italy, as an enemy." When the Japanese could no longer transmit via code The papers Lieutenant Schulz delivered to FDR on the over their cryptographic channels, they communicated with evening of December 6, consisted of 13 parts of a 14-part their diplomatic offices worldwide by inserting messages, message: Japan's answer to the United States' rejection of each with a hidden meaning, in ordinary weather reports. On December 4, radioman Ralph T. Briggs at Cheltenham, Md., intercepted a message.containing the phrase Higashi no kaze arne - "East Wind Rain" in English. The hidden mean­ ing of "East Wind Rain" was: "War with England (including American codebreakers were often able to Netherlands East Indies, etc.); war with the U.S.; peace with place the translation of a Japanese intercept on Russia." Thus Russia was not to be a target of Japanese Secretary of State Hull's desk before the aggression, but England (Singapore), the Dutch East Indies, and the United States (possibly Manila, Pearl Harbor, or the Japanese ambassadors, to whom it had been Canal Zone) would be involved at the start in whatever addressed, arrived to discuss it. aggression Japan was planning. This message, with its hid­ den meaning - "War with the U.S." - written in bold, was hand-delivered to the Director of Naval Communications in Washington. There it vanished, its significance apparently the latest Japanese attempt at a compromise. It announced not recognized. At least no hint of this crucial intercept, or its that the Japanese were breaking off negotiations and that interpretation that an attack on U.S. territory was coming, U.S.-Japanese relations were de facto ruptured. was ever relayed to any responsible official who would Roosevelt appeared confident when he told Hopkins admit receiving it. All trace of its receipt was lost and none that the United States couldn't "strike the first blow .... was ever found in spite of a thorough search during the [W]e could not make the first overt move. We would have many post-Pearl Harbor investigations. to wait until it came." After all, under the U.S. Constitution, Throughout the weeks and months that U.S. and only Congress could declare war. And, moreover, Japanese diplomats negotiated in Washington, the United Roosevelt had pledged to the American people more than States had the advantage of being able to read Japan's very once during his 1940 campaign that "We are arming our­ secret "unbreakable" diplomatic code. After first deciphering selves not for any foreign war. We are arming ourselves not it in August 1940, American codebreakers and translators for any purpose of conquest or intervention in foreign dis­ eventually became so adept that they often were able to putes. ... It is for peace that I have labored: and it is for place the translation of a Japanese intercept on Secretary of peace that I shall labor all the days of my life" (Oct. 23, State Hull's desk before the Japanese ambassadors, to whom 1940); and again, "We will not participate in foreign wars it had been addressed, arrived to discuss it. Thus, U.S. offi­ and we will not send our army, naval or air forces to fight cials were able to learn many, though not all, Japanese in foreign lands outside of the Americas except in case of secrets concerning U.S trade relations, Japan's obligations to attack" And yet again, he had stated: "And while I am talk­ Germany and Italy under the Trilateral Agreement, and ing to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assu­ Japan's incursion in China and occupation of French rance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and Indochina. again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into Negotiations with the Japanese finally reached an any foreign wars. They are going into training to form a impasse toward the end of November 1941. However, the force so strong that, by its very existence, it will keep the Liberty 23 January 2006 threat of war from our shores. The purpose of our defense been directed to wait - for the Japanese to commit the first is defense." overt act. Hull's statement began: "The Japanese Govern­ In this way, Roosevelt had assured the voters many ment, dominated by the military fireeaters, is deliberately times that America had provided aid to the British, French, proceeding on an increasingly broad front to carry out its and Chinese purely to help those countries defend them­ long proclaimed purposes to acquire military control over selves against foreign aggression. The grants of money, one-half of the world with nearly one-half of its population. planes, and weapons; the expansion of the area patrolled by This inevitably means Japanese control of islands, continents, U.S. ships in the Atlantic to keep German and Italian ships and seas from the Indies back near Hawaii, and that all of the away from our shores; the Lend-Lease program; the conquered people would be governed militarily, politically, exchange of old U.S. destroyers to the British for military economically, socially, and morally by the worst possible military despotism with barbaric, inhuman, and semi­ slavery methods such as Japan has notoriously been inflict­ ing on the people of China and Hitler on the peoples of some Roosevelt never overlooked the fact that his 15 conquered nations of Europe.... [I]t is manifest that con­ actions might lead to his immediate or eventual trol of the South Sea area by Japan is the key to the control of the entire Pacific area, and therefore defense of life and com­ impeachment. merce and other invaluable rights and interests in the Pacific area must be commenced with the South Sea area.... This at once places at stake everything that is precious and worth while. Self-defense, therefore, is the key point for the preser­ bases in this hemisphere; the conscription of young men; the vation of each and all of our civilized institutions." 9 build-up of U.S. plants producing planes, ships, and arma­ Knox wrote: "I. We are tied up inextricably with the ments; the convoying of British ships to Iceland: all were British in the present world situation. 2. The fall of Singapore intended to keep America out of the war by strengthening and the loss to England of Malaya will automatically not Britain. But Roosevelt must have had some misgivings even only wreck her far eastern position but jeopardize her entire as he spoke to Hopkins. He was well aware that the U.S. was effort. 3. If the British lose their position the Dutch are almost committed to help the British and the Dutch by the agree~ certain to lose theirs. 4. If both the British and the Dutch lose ment signed in April 1941. And he knew that five divisions their position we are almost certain to be next,.being then of Japanese troops were heading south in convoys of 30, 40, practically Japanese surrounded. 5. If the above be accepted, or 50 ships, and were probably even then rounding the then any serious threat to the British or the Dutch is a serious southern tip of Indochina and sailing toward the Kra threat to the United States; or it might be stated any threat to Isthmus and the Malayan peninsula. Moreover, he had just anyone of the three of us is a threat to all of us. We should reassured Lord Halifax that the U.S. would lend the British therefore be ready jointly to act together and if such under­ military support if the Japanese proceeded thus. To keep that standing has not already been reached, it should be reached promise, he must deploy American forces. But how? The immediately. Otherwise we may fall individually one at a Constitution provided that the Congress, not the.president, time (or somebody may be left out on a limb). 6. I think the must declare war. Japanese should be told that a movement in a direction that When Stark got home from the theater later that evening, he found a message instructing him to call the president. FDR must already have arranged for the other members of his "inner circle" to come to the White House that night. In any event, the president's closest advisers gathered together The three small ships may have been late that night, and into the wee hours of the morning, to dis­ intended as bait, to induce the Japanese into cuss the crisis. In attendance were Secretary of State Cordell 'firing the first shot without allowing' too much Hull, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, danger to ourselves. /I Navy Chief of Staff Harold L. Stark, and Harry Hopkins. They read the 13 parts of Japan's 14-part response to FDR's note of November 26 - which the Japanese considered "an ultimatum" - and were expecting the Japanese to announce threatens the United States will be met by force. The presi­ a final break-off of all relations with the United States. They dent will want to reserve to himself just how to define thought the Japanese would strike Malaya, the Kra Isthmus, this." 10 or Thailand, and possibly the Dutch East Indies. The presi­ ~:~ dent's men must have discussed how the United States should respond to Japanese aggression thousands of miles On the morning of December 7, President Roosevelt from American shores in view of the commitment the U.S. received part 14 of Japan's reply to the U.S. "ultimatum," as had made to the British. This was the dilemma over which well as the "One P.M. Message," intercepted early that morn­ they had agonized for weeks. ing, advising her ambassadors to deliver to Hull the 14-part At Stimson's request, Hull and Knox worked on state­ reply to the U.S. "ultimatum" at precisely 1 p.m. Washington ments presenting the rationale for going to war against Japan time. According to FDR's personal physician, Dr. Ross T. without waiting - as the U.S. commanders in the field had McIntire, who was with FDR from 10 a.m. to noon that day, 24 Liberty January 2006

FDR did not think that, even given "the madness of Japan's In the speech the President would remind Congress that military masters," they would risk war with the United the United States and Japan had been negotiating in States. McIntire wrote later that FDR thought "that they [the Washington for eight months in the hope of reaching some Japanese] would take advantage of Great Britain's extremity peaceful solution. "In our negotiations, we have kept in close and strike at Singapore or some other point in the Far East, contact with the Governments of Great Britain, Australia, the but an attack on any American possession did not enter his Netherlands Indies, and China.... [W]e have had the moral [FDR's] thought." support of these nations. We also have been given assurance State Department writer Stanley K. Hornbeck had just of their material and military support if there comes resort to finished a new draft of a speech, drawing on the suggestions force.... made by Hull, Stimson, and Knox, which FDR planned to "We have recognized, and have offered to defend, deliver to Congress on December 8 or 9 if he did not receive Japan's legitimate desire to provide her country with the a satisfactory reply to his letter of last appeal to Emperor means of peaceful and prosperous life. In return for this we Hirohito. On the morning of December 7, FDR continued have asked that Japan abandon the practice of aggression work on that speech." He would review the historical back­ and conquest which sets up a continuing and growing mili­ ground of U.S.-Japanese relations; remind Congress of the tary threat to the United States, and continuing and growing United States' respect for basic principles, and for "the sove­ disturbance of those world conditions which alone make reign rights of the countries of the Far East"; point out that in possible the peaceful life of the United States. This Japan has 1908, 1921, and 1929, Japan and the United States had exchanged notes and signed treaties, and declared support for "the independence and integrity of China," for maintain­ ing "the existing status quo in that region," and for lithe prin­ FDR thought that the Japanese would strike ciple of equal opportunity for the commerce and industry of at some point in the Far East, but an attack on all nations throughout China." But he would remind his lis­ teners that the U.S.-Japanese relationship had deteriorated any American possession did not enter his after 1931. In that year, the Japanese army had begun a pol­ mind. icy of aggression by seizing Manchuria. In July 1937 she had "embarked upon large-scale military operations against China," killing many American citizens; sinking American vessels; bombing American hospitals, churches, and schools; declined to do.... Though professing a desire merely to destroying American property and businesses; and interfer­ establish access to economic resources permitting her to live, ing with American trade. she has in fact seized territory for the purpose of ruling it ­ The proposed speech then went on to detail Japan's a rule of merciless sorrow matched only by that of Hitlerized transgressions. "In flat defiance of its covenants Japan has Germany.... invaded and sought to overthrow the Government of "The fundamental issue between this country and Japan China. Step by step its armed forces ... have invaded and is not materially different from the issue prevailing between taken possession of Indochina. Today they are openly this country and Nazi Germany. The issue is drawn between threatening an extension of this conquest into the territory peoples demanding to be masters over slave peoples, and of Thailand ... where they would directly menace, to the to maintain and expand that system indefinitely by force, as North, the Burma Road, China's lifeline, and to the South, against those countries who desire the independence of the port and Straits of Singapore.... While all this is nations, the freedom of peoples, and the working out of going on, Japan has bound herself to Germany and Italy by a treaty.... Simply stated, what we are confronted with in the Far East is a repetition of the strategy pursued by Hitler in Europe ... a steady expansion of power and control over neighboring peoples by a carefully planned and executed progressive infiltration, penetration and encirclement." The United States recognized Japan's legitimate interest in seeking access to resourCeS and to trade for the sake of her large population, but objected to Japanese aggression and conquest in southeastern Asia. "The southwestern Pacific and the Asiatic mainland are important to our econ­ omy; but they may be even more important to our military position.... [T]he United States is necessarily linked with Great Britain and with the vital units of the British Commonwealth, as well as with China, and a number of other countries. Were Japan established in Singapore or the Netherlands Indies, or were she to dominate China, the lines of communication between the United States, China and "Take one of these diet pills every time you regain other peace-loving nations would be cut." consciousness."

Liberty 25 January 2006 cooperation in economic arrangements by which all can destroyed property and lives of our nationals, inflicted horri­ live.... ble sufferings upon people who are our friends, interfered "Within the past few days large additional contingents of with our trade, ruined the legitimate business of many of our troops have been moved into Indo-China and preparations nationals, compelled us to make huge expenditures for have been made for further conquest. The question is thus defensive armament, made threats against us, put and kept immediately presented whether the United States is to stand many of our people in a constant state of anxiety, and, in by while Japan goes forward with this program of lawless general, made Japan a menace to our security and to the conquest - a conquest which disregards law, treaties, the cause of peace, of freedom and of justice." rights and interests of others, and which brushes aside all FDR's proposed address to Congress concluded: "As considerations of humanity and morality.... The whole commander in chief, I have given appropriate orders to our world is presented with the issue whether Germany, Italy forces in the Far East." and Japan are to conquer and rule the earth or are to be dis­ suaded or prevented, by whatever processes may be neces­ sary, from pursuit of policies of conquest. ... "Japan's policy of conquest and exploitation which is On Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked Pearl now being carried out in China has already utterly destroyed Harbor. Administration officials found it difficult to believe ... the peaceful arid profitable commercial relations which the news of the Japanese attack when it first reached the United Sates had previously enjoyed there.... This Washington. Hull thought it must have meant Manila. But Japanese procedure of conquest and exploitation is encircling Stark knew it meant Pearl Harbor; he knew the phrase "This the Philippine Islands. It threatens the commerce of those is not a drill" heralded a real attack, not a practice. Islands and endangers their physical safety. ... If the When Roosevelt heard of the attack, he was surprised, Japanese should carry out their now threatened attacks upon but several witnesses reported that he actually seemed relieved at the news - at least until he learned the extent of the disaster. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins said "that night ... in spite of the terrible blow ... he had neverthe­ less a much.calmer air. As we went out [of that evening's When Roosevelt heard of the Japanese attack White House meeting, Postmaster General] Frank Walker on Pearl Harbor, he was surprised. But he was said to me, 'I think the boss really feels more relief than he also relieved - at least until he learned the has had for weeks.'" In Perkins' oral history: "His surprise was not as great as the surprise of the rest of us." And extent ofthe disaster. Eleanor. Roosevelt wrote: "In spite of his anxiety Franklin was in a way more serene than he had appeared in a long time. I think it was steadying to know finally that the die was cast. ... [Pearl Harbor] was far from the shock it and were to succeed in conquering the regions which they proved to the country in general. We had been expecting are menacing in the southwestern Pacific, our commerce something of the sort for a long time." with the Netherlands East Indies and Malaya would be at If the President had delivered the speech he intended to their mercy and probably be cut off.... Further extension of give Congress on December 8 or 9, he would have been vio­ Japanese aggression in the Pacific area menaces seriously the lating his pledge to the American people; he would have effort which free countries in Europe and in Asia are making been sending U.S. boys to fight in a foreign war even though to defend themselves against Hitlerism. We are pledged to the United States had not been attacked; he would have been aid those countries. Trade routes important to Great Britain sending them to defend territory thousands of miles from and to China and to Russia would be threatened, as would our shores - the Isthmus of Kra and Singapore in Malay, the obtaining by those countries of articles essential to con­ and the Dutch East Indies in the Indian Ocean. tinued resistance.... Germany's declaration of war on the United States on "We cannot permit, and still less can we support, the ful­ December II, and the blitz-warfare by the Japanese during fillment by Japan of the aims of a militant leadership which the first few weeks, ensured that the American people would has disregarded law, violated treaties, impaired rights, support the war. And so it happened that hundreds of thou­ sands of Americans died thousands of miles from their homes, in a war the president had secretly pursued, while publicly promising to avoid. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor made war inevita­ ble. But the attack was not Roosevelt's reason for going to II LibertXJI i war. It was his excuse. 0 ... makes a great holiday NOTES A 1. The dates mentioned in this article are all a matter of ~ gift! See our offer on page public record. Unless otherwise indicated, the direct quota­ 43 for special gift rates.~ tions are all taken from the hearings and reports of the several January 2006 investigations into the Pearl Harbor attack, as·published by The Private War of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1939-1942." (Naval the U.S. Congress (1946, 39 vol.). Institute Press, 1975), p. 176. 2. In 1935, Congress had passed the "Neutrality Act of 4. Quoted from the ADB report, reprinted in the Joint 1935," instigated largely out of U.s. sympathy for China in her Congressional Committee hearings, part 15, p. 1564~. struggle with Japan. As Roosevelt signed it on Aug. 31, 1935, 5. Robert Sherwood. "Roosevelt and Hopkins," (Harper he explained it was intended as an expression of "the fixed and Brothers Publishers, 1948), p. 274. desire of the Government and the people of the United States 6. Joint Congressional Committee hearings, part 9, pp. to avoid any action which might involve us in war." This 1935 4246,4249. Act prohibited the trade in arms or implements of war with 7. Llewellyn Woodward, "British Foreign Policy in the any country involved in a war. Then in 1939, Congress Second World War." Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1962, pp. repealed the 1935 Neutrality Act and replaced it with the 186-187. "Neutrality Act of 1939." This new Neutrality Act permitted 8. Ibid., p. 187. military supplies to be sold to belligerent nations, if they were 9. Hull's "proposed statement" reprinted in Joint Con­ paid for in.cash and. if they were not transported in U.S. ves­ gressionalCommittee hearings, part 11, pp. 5439-5440. sels..This ./1cash· and carry"· provision enabled the United 10. Knox's "suggestion" reprinted in Joint Congressional States to sell weapons to good nations and refuse. to sell them Committee hearings, part 11, pp. 5440-5441. to bad nations. The 1939 Neutrality Act was further revised in 11. Mimeographed, drafted, signed, and pencil-dated Dec. November 1941, to permit armed U.S. merchant ships to enter 5, 1941, by Special Assistant to the Secretary of State and war zones. Advisor on Political Relations, Stanley K. Hornbeck. National 3. Remarks delivered at the Fuehrer Conference, May 22, Archives, Civilian Records Branch, Record Group 59, Entry 1941. As quoted in Patrick Abbazia, "Mr. Roosevelt's Navy: 398, Box 3, Location 250/46/04/01.

Letters, from page 15 correction: .Category (not Class) Four the test? Let's review some topics he Section 1 reads (in part): "All legislative hurricanes (Saffir-Simpson Scale) are addressed in Word Watch (November). Powers herein granted shall be vested fortunately rare. 1) "Say what you mean, for God's in a Congress of the United States." The A storm is named when it becomes sake." Here Cox references a divinity, to clear meaning here seems to have been a tropical storm, one step below. a Cat aggrandize his trivial goals. Or is he lost. One hurricane. So far this year,we've using a common expression that doesn't As I see it, when the country was had 22 named storms. Wilma was the mean what it says? formed, the citizens ceded all legislative 21st named storm - they skip several 2) "Pre-order" is obviously short for power to their representatives in the letters of the alphabet, so after Wilma "prerelease order." Why the confusion? various levels of government. The peo­ they named the .next storm Alpha. 3) Cox observes that "legendary" ple only elect the representatives, demo­ (There's one trying to form as I write means "mythical," "unreal." So what? cratically. If an issue is more than a this; if it achieves tropical storm status, Many actual people are literally legends private matter it should be settled by it will be called Beta.) in their own time. Elvis' life has been the elected representatives of the peo­ According to the National mythologized in people's imaginations ple, not by popular vote. Hurricane Center, during the period - alongside Robin Hood, King Arthur, This is about insulation of the 1991-2004, a total of 21 hurricanes made and Bill Clinton, the most unreal presi­ minority from the whim of the majority, landfall in the U.S., and of those only dent in memory. an important theme in the' history of eight were Cat Three and above. Only Kevin Stems our country. The fact that a ballot initia­ one was Cat Four, and none were Cat San Jose, Calif. tive could be used to promote a "good Five. cause" is no kind of proof that it is The government - and the depen­ Unconstitutional Referenda dence fostered .over many years - is to proper for a rational society. The ballot Bruce Ramsey's essay "Referendum blame for much of the suffering in initiative turns the citizens into legisla­ Runaround," (November) gives me the Louisiana and elsewhere. And there tors when that is not their proper role. opportunity to make a point I have con­ was no doubt that a Cat Four or Five The ballot initiative serves as a distrac­ storm would eventually hit New sidered for some time now. tion from the corruption of government. or "ballot initia­ Orleans. While it should have been The "referendum" It gives a false hope to the people. How obvious that danger existed, it's not tive" is wrong, and could be interpreted can a court declare the results of a refe­ nearly as likely as Mr. Bradford asserts as unconstitutional. rendum "unconstitutional" ? There are - the big storms just aren't as frequent Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. many ways of looking at this issue as he describes. Constitution, reads (in part): "The which make ballot initiatives morally Lou Villadsen United States shall guarantee to every wrong. Fort Lauderdale, Fla. state in this Union a Republican Form When I witness references to our of Government." A "repUblic" is the "democracy" my heart saddens because Plank in Thine Eye? form of government where representa­ I know the intention behind that usage. Stephen Cox likes to nitpick others' tives administer the government on Rodney Choate speech. But can his own writing stand behalf of the people. Indeed, Article I, Alexandria, La. Liberty 27 The Anti-Semitism of My Youth

by Richard Kostelanetz

Colleges, golf courses, goyernment agencies: it wasn't thatlong ago that their gates were open only to a select 'many.

Born in 1940, I can remember only four episodes. The first occurred around 1956 when I was disinvited from some trivial affair at the Scarsdale Golf Club. My recollection is that my teenage girl­ friend, who was half-Jewish by ancestry, had gotten invited, and she in turn invited me. That prompted a cancella­ tion. Such disinvitations were not uncommon at the time. When I got married, a few years later, we had to do the reception at my wife's parents' house, rather than the local because they customarily "demonstrate" a truth they are Plainfield (NJ) country club, which didn't admit Jews. These designed to deny. restrictions ended, as the Scarsdale Golf Club, short of mem­ A third episode happened at the National Endowment bers a decade later, had to admit those previously pro­ for the Arts during the mid-1980s. I applied for support for scribed, while Plainfield is now, I'm told, mostly African­ two projects with Jewish content, both of which drew upon American. One result of this episode is that to this day I still art already completed with German funds - a book about prefer public recreation facilities to private, in addition to the greatest Jewish cemetery in Berlin, about which I'd previ­ finding any organizations restricting membership to be ously made several films, and a mechanical opera based unseemly. upon an electro-acoustic composition Kaddish that had been The second occurred when I applied to college. Some of commissioned and broadcast by Westdeutscher Rundfunk. the more distinguished universities had quotas that we!e Neither received support from the NEA, to my disappoint­ hidden, but still known, limiting the percentage of Jews, as ment. could best be determined in advance,to 10% of an incoming I became alarmed when I read the NEA's Annual Reports class. I have been told, reliably that such quotas disappeared for those years and discovered that though many recipients during the 1960s. One result of Ivy League anti-Semitism had all kinds of minority-monikers, very few had versions of was that the best students were disproportionately Jewish, "Jewish" in their name or their projects - as few as only one implicitly contributing to philo-Semitic mythology, while the a year. Jacob Neusner, at the time on the NEA's National universities in retrospect look modishly dumb. The effect on Council (a trustee), remembers, "I also cannot recall any my mind has been a continuing preference for absolutely advocacy or warm support for a project because it bore a dis­ level playing fields, not only in sports, which is to say a dis­ tinctively Jewish character, and there was plenty of ethnic taste for dis/ advantageous quotas of any kind in part and racial and gender advocacy in play. In other words, 28 Liberty January 2006 there was pressure to support a Hispanic or feminist or if anxious and insecure, can make up anything they want to African-American person or project by reason of the ethnic advance their vulgar interests. Indeed, precisely in hysterical or gender or racial origin or focus, and never, ever, a Jewish deceit do those Professionally Challenged mark themselves.) person or project." Proposals for Jewish projects, such as Contracts and contacts with publishers were cancelled, mine, must have been cut off at an earlier pass, so to speak, often at their expense, because of machinations occurring long before they were ever presented to the Council whose behind my back. In his sweeping complaint about younger writers in his much-reprinted 1967 essay on "The New York Intellectuals," a critic named Irving Howe, a generation older than 1, identified only one emerging writer by name, me, One result of Ivy League anti-Semitism was albeit only in a footnote typically misrepresenting me vul­ garly. Whereas my essay had no appreciable effect on the that the best students were disproportionately fortunes of the Jewish-American writers, most of whom were Jewish, implicitly contributing to philo-Semitic and are quite prosperous, the losses to me were probably mythology. greater than I knew then and either I or my biographer can know now (as some conspirators and co-conspirators have passed). The question to consider is whether I would have been treated differently had I not been Jewish - whether they members in that period included Harvey Lichtenstein of the jeopardized me because I was Jewish. If so, then these Jewish Brooklyn Academy of Music, Joseph Epstein of The literary operatives must be considered anti-Semitic. As a American Scholar, and New York state senator Roy result, my ability to survive professionally was impaired, not Goodman, all apparently asleep on their thrones. because of gentiles in the episodes mentioned before but Though I wrote an expose of this neglect at the time, anti­ because of disrespectful Jews. anti-Semitism in the 1980s focused more on blathering by In an elaboration of "Militant Minorities," which became black Muslims and similarly marginal people. My expose the opening chapters of my book "The End of Intelligent appeared in an obscure place, getting no further attention, Writing" (1974), I observed that some of these same writers and was then reprinted in a collection of my essays, "Crimes had conspired - yes, breathed together - to deprive of Culture" (1995). In an otherwise sympathetic review, one Communist Jewish writers, mostly older, of a livelihood, not writer identified it as the book's least persuasive piece, to my only because the oldsters were anti-Communists but because disappointment. they had to establish themselves as Kings of the Jewish Hill, When I mentioned this NEA scandal several years later to so to speak. Having vanquished those foes, they turned their someone operating a private foundation to support Jewish guns upon younger Jewish writers (apart from their direct culture, he recalled conversations at the time with NEA offi­ cials who said that they expected prominent Jewish founda­ tions to support Jewish art. (Little did these NEA wise guys know that much of the best Jewish art of the past decades was, like my own, funded entirely in Germany; but that's As a result ofthis episode, I ceased producing another story.) As a result of this episode, I ceased producing Jewish art, making me a victim not of censorship as such but, Jewish art, making me a victim not of censor­ in truth, the effects of anti-Semitic discrimination. ship as such but, in truth, the effects of anti­ In the fourth episode, I was a victim of Jewish anti­ Semitic discrimination. Semitism, which is always the most dangerous, because gen­ tiles don't find it objectionable. In 1965, I published in Hudson Review an essay about minority-monikers in American literature, explaining that .writers identifying themselves as Southerners had lost the center literary stage proteges), likewise to buttress professional success and to a new group identifying themselves as Jews. Obvious in accompanying privileges. I was just another bunny in a con­ retrospect, my analysis was perceived as controversial at the tinuing hunt whose earlier non-Communist targets included time. My bias .then, elaborated since, was that artistic catego­ Allen Ginsberg and other Jewish independent radicals ­ ries based on anything other than formal characteristics ­ note Ginsberg, rather than Kerouac, whose love for Jews was that includes geography as well as ethnicity - had no valid­ limited. Picking on me, rather than a gentile, implicitly flat­ ity in serious criticism. tered me, as well as allowing me to flatter myself, as I am What I didn't know at the time was that some Jewish doing here. writers had dubbed my piece anti-Semitic, which was an Tactically, this opportunistic Jewish anti-Semitism was opportunism typical at the time, and characterized me as a ultimately a mistake, as the movement represented by its self-hating Jew, which would have come as a surprise to any­ publicists terminated with writers born around 1933 (Susan one who actually knew me. My writing had already Sontag, Philip Roth). The truth then, as in decades before, is appeared in patently Jewish magazines which continued to that history always buries short-sightedly anti-Semitic Jews. publish me; I attended synagogue and later produced the Fortunately, unlike too many earlier victims of Jewish Jewish art mentioned· above. (The lesson here is that those anti-Semitism, I survived long enough to write about igno­ considering themselves Professionally Challenged, especially miny. 0 Liberty 29 January 2006

The Roots of Liberty, from page 18

[I]f the king ceases to govern· the kingdom, and begins to king. The Americans also knew the great debt they owed to act as a tyrant, to destroy justice, to overthrow peace, and to the religious philosophies of 16th and 17th century Western break his faith, the man who has taken the oath is free from European Protestant dissidents. it, and the people are entitled to depose the king and to set The Founders may not have known - but we should up another, inasmuch as he has broken the principle upon always remember - that those great Protestant writers, such whichtheir mutual obligation depended. as John Locke and Algernon Sidney, were building on a Compare Manegold's views with the American foundation of Catholic theology constructed during the Declaration of Independence: Papal Revolution. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted Not long after winning independence, the United States among Men ... That whenever any Form of Government of America revamped the British favorite "God Save the becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the King." The new words reflected the triumph of freedom­ People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new lo~ing Christian writers and fighters from Manegold Government ... onward: Manegold and Thomas Jefferson both claimed that rulers Our fathers' God, to thee are contractually bound to protect the public good. Rulers Author of liberty, who violate their duty thereby ceased to function as rulers; To thee we sing. they might be removed, and replaced with others. Long may our land be bright Monarchy had been desacralized. A tyrannical king was With freedom's holy light; no longer "the Lord's anointed." Rather, he was nothing Protect us by thy might, more than an employee who could be fired by his employers, Great God our king. the people. As we fight for liberty at the beginning of the third mil­ It would take centuries for the feudal and papal principle lennium, we should acknowledge our own debts to the great of contractual government to achieve its greatest fruition in men of the early second millennium - the men who over­ the American Revolution. The Founders knew that their new turned the false teaching that evil governments exercise nation's religious philosophy had historical roots that were authority from God, and who began recovering the princi­ three millennia old - when in the Exodus, the false god­ ples of liberty and self-government which had been lost since king Pharaoh was defeated by the true God, who is the only the destruction of the Roman Republic. 0

Reflections, from page 12 for the entire move in the market was missed by everyone at Joan was probably best known as an advocate of individu­ the time. Another way to present it is to assume that the mar­ alist feminism. Her book "Reclaiming the Mainstream: ket was already overbought, that it was ready to fall, and that Individualist Feminism Rediscovered" remains, twelve years the Senate action triggered something that was going to hap­ after its publication, the best book available on feminism and pen anyway. That is a more modest claim, and more plausible. freedom. She also wrote "What to Do When You Don't Want The Wanniski theory has other problems. Foreign trade to Call the Cops: A Non-Adversarial Approach to Sexual was a relatively small part of the U.S. economy then: 4-5% of Harassment," a great example of her long interest in solving output, something like that. It was smaller than today. If it social problems without resort to the force of government. fell in half, the GDP would drop maybe 2-3%. That's too From organizing a women's group in Stockbridge, small to be the entire explanation for the Great Crash. Also, in Massachusetts, in 1970 to her long service as a volunteer offi­ hindsight (and all this is in hindsight) the event that deep­ cer with the Association of Libertarian· Feminists and ened the Great Depression was. the financial crisis in Europe Feminists for Free Expression, she spent much of her efforts in mid-1931. This had to do with debts and war reparations, on legal equality for women. and the links of currencies to gold. Trade was peripheral to it. . Her most important contribution may have stayed behind If you ask people today the cause of the Great Depression, the scenes. In 1982 she saw a short report by Charles Murray many will point to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, not to foreign on the failure of welfare programs. She asked him to expand debt, reparations and gold payments. The modern explana­ it into a book, found a publisher, and edited the manuscript. tion emerges from a modern political point of view about It was Joan's entrepreneurial insight and editorial feedback trade. I share that point of view, and so the explanation is that helped produce "Losing Ground: American Social Policy, politically friendly. But that does not mean it is true. 1950-1980," which transformed the debate over welfare, I'll believe Wanniski's theory - the modest version ­ helped lead to welfare reform in 1996, and launched the when the historians verify it. Until then, put me down as career of one of the most important public intellectuals of the intrigued, and agnostic. - Bruce Ramsey past two decades. Joan Kennedy Taylor was born in 1926 to the actress Mary Joan Kennedy Taylor, R.I.P. - Joan Kennedy Kennedy and the noted composer Deems Taylor. As a young Taylor devoted 50 years to the cause of freedom and constitu­ editorial assistant at Knopf, she read an advance copy of tional government, a devotion that ended only with her death from cancer on October 29. She was 78. continued on page 45 30 Liberty Reviews

11Ayn Rand: My Fiction-Writing Teacher," by Erika Holzer. Madison Press, 2005, 300 pages. The era AynRand

posed no competitive threat. They implication that there's nothing to be Stephen Cox could be used as examples for almost learned by studying how an art object Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was her gen­ any precept. is created. That's just silly. If you fol­ eration's largest influence on libertar­ As for writers' explaining· their low "America the Beautiful" through ian thought. She was also a powerful methods, forget it. Most prefer not to its various revisions, you will see how novelist and a king-sized American dispel the authorial mystique. Some, of much better it is to conclude the personality. During this, Rand's cen­ course, are simply incapable of "Pilgrims" stanza in this way - tennial year, many of her friends and explaining what they do. A person America, America! acquaintances have been communicat­ who is good at creating plot and evok­ God mend thine every flaw. ing their memories of her. I think it's ing character isn't necessarily any good Confirm thy soul in self-control, especially fitting that Erika Holzer, at writing expository prose. But a peru­ Thy liberty in law sal of authors' private correspondence herself a novelist ("Double Crossing," than in this way ­ 1983, and "Eye for an Eye," 1994), has will show you how good they can be at America, America! contributed a memoir of Rand as a explaining how other authors went God shed his grace on thee, writing teacher. To tell the truth, I am wrong, even while disclaiming, in pub­ on record as one of the many people lic, any interest in literary analysis. Till paths be wrought through who urged Holzer. to do it. "Let the work speak for itself," they wilds of thought It is very rare for an author to write say, cloaking with a half-truth their By pilgrim foot and knee. at length about her literary methods, refusal to reveal trade secrets. Studying the revisions, you may and rarer still for an author to write at The half of the idea that's true is the also see the reason why version A is length about what she learned from a notion that a work of art can hardly be superior to version B. A literary image contemporary. Someone once pointed improved by someone's explanation of needs to be visualizable. It's a lot easier out that writers tend to rebel against how it was created. Either Monticello to imagine the Deity mending flaws their "parents," while revering their is a successful adaptation of Roman and confirming souls than it is to ima­ "grandparents." Thus, modernist writ­ monumental architecture to American gine feet and knees working their way ers scorned the Victorians and did domestic use, or it isn't. No disserta­ through thickets of thoughts. Even their best to resurrect the poets of the tion about what Jefferson thought he when one accepts "knee" as a probable Enlightenment and the baroque was doing when he decided to make a symbol for prayer, it's still hard to see period. The Victorians were still three-story plantation house look like a what's going on with these symbols. around when the modernists were one-story temple will change the aes­ The verbal bolts don't fit the verbal growing up, and they were tired of lis­ thetic effect of his decision. nuts. tening to those overbearing parents; The half of the "let-the-work-speak­ The job of a literary craftsman is to but writers from earlier generations for-itself" idea that isn't true is the find problems like this, and fix them. Liberty 31 January 2006

Every good writer is such a craftsman; Room," written at the age of 12, did with a psychiatrist, or for a voyage to and occasionally - very occasionally not seem to presage a literary career. Tahiti. "More than likely," she said, - a craftsman will let you visit her But an interest in Rand's ideas led to you can't write because "you don't workshop. an invitation to meet with her, and know all you need to know about a . That's what Holzer lets you do, and given character or a piece of the that's what Rand let her do. Rand was action" (72). Find out more - but an eccentric writer in many ways, but "don't overdo it. It's a common mis­ she was always a very thoughtful one. take by the neophyte ... to read every­ She could account for every word she Rand could account for thing ever written on whatever relates used, and explain with great lucidity every word she used, and to his subject" (77). What she advo­ why she wanted to use it. When she explain with great lucidity cated wasn't "research" but imagina­ went wrong, she went wrong for a rea­ why she wanted to use it. tive meditations on the meanings, son. I like the epigraph that Holzer motivations, settings, and implications takes from Sophocles: "The reasonable When she went wrong, she of one's plot and characters. Writers' thing is to learn from those who can went wrongfor a reason. problems can be fixed by writers' work teach." It mirrors the common sense - not by a research library, a psychia­ that lies - often unnoticed by readers trist's couch, or a moralist's lectures. and followers - at the basis of most of It's a remarkable fact that the mod;,. Rand's literary ideas and practices. ern libertarian movement was largely Always a lively writer, Rand was Holzer took along the tell-tale evidence initiated by creative writers, literary also an exceedingly lively advice giver. of her interest in a new career - her critics, and essayists, by such people as Taking a look at Holzer's fledgling fic­ early, practice works in fiction writing. Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, tion, Rand saw a reference to faces Rand at the time was an enormous John Chamberlain, Albert Jay Nock, "explod[ing] in panic." Well,what best-seller and the demanding leader and Rand herself. If you told any of would you say about that? Many peo­ of an intellectual coterie. One would those people that literature is interest­ ple would sense that there was some­ have expected her to turn Holzer away ing principally because of its "ideas," thing wrong but not be able to explain with some remark about coming back particularly its "political ideas," .you what it was. Perhaps they would make when you've finished a book. Instead, would soon be having a very bad day. a vague reference to "melodrama" or she took the time to teach her. The best word you'd hear would be tell the aspiring writer to "tone it down Much of her advice was about the "philistine." But that's exactly what a a little." Rand took a more instructive psychological processes that are most lot of libertarians are. They are people approach: "Make your metaphors real, closely related to writing. She didn't whose moral concern with political Erika.... A good way to put your met­ make vague remarks about authors' ideas reduces their literary responses aphors to the test is to try them out in "inspiration"; she gave specific to merely political ones. That's why front of a mirror." Holzer took her insights into processes that people can they read so little real literature. mentor's advice, went to a mirror, and actually control. You've been told that Conrad? Yeats? Eliot (either of the made her face look like it was"explod­ you should "write what you know." two)? Not interested. But the latest ing." Then she "exploded in laughter" You should write stories about your work of pUlp fiction, with some liber­ (27). Now, that's good teaching. profession, for example. Well, that tarian ideas thrown in? Hey, this is a Holzer came from a family of law­ might result in a lot of accurate surface classic! yers, and became one herself. A story detail, she said, but there's something Rand - often unfairly accused of provocatively entitled "The Secret more important than surface detail. Why don't you stop writing propaganda novels - shud­ dered at the thought that any of her worrying about ideological friends would write such what you "know" , stuff. Propaganda fiction, she said, was and identify. what "all facade and no structure," by which makes your "blood she meant, no aesthetic structure, noth­ boil" (31)? Discover ing to which one can respond on a and exploit your deeper level than, "I agree with this" r real motivation. (39-40). Holzer, taking up Rand's Rand showed theme, sensibly suggests that aspiring the same common writers ask themselves, "Am I really sense in comment­ impassioned about my story or am I ing on the famous just hung up on spreading the Word "writer's block," and enlightening the masses" (40). from which, as we That's good advice. Rand went even know, she herself farther. Referring to her own philoso­ sometimes suffered phy, Objectivism, she told her follow­ "In a five-to-fouf decision today, the Supreme Court went severely. She didn't ers, "Don't censor yourself by on vacation." call for 20 sessions Objectivist morality" (40). Her advice 32 Liberty January 2006 was seldom heeded, though it "Right Turn: John T_ Flynn and the Transformation of deserved to be. But Holzer got the point. She got it A-merlcan L-b1 eraI-Ism," by John E. Moser. New York University so well that she became a fine Randian Press, 2005, 277 pages. teacher herself, as this book shows. It's all summed up in one of her com­ ments: "I have always believed that writers are made, not born. That fiction writing, in particular, starts out as a craft. That if you work at it hard The Mighty enough and long enough, you can turn it into an art" (51). Holzer isn't saying that anybody can be a good novelist. She is drawing attention to an idea that goes back to Flynn Aristotle's theories, and beyond them, to Homer's Odyssey: the idea that art is craftsmanship, or it is nothing. Her much of his career a daily newspaper Jeff Riggenbach book shows the joy that both she and column, one that eventually appeared Rand found in thinking through the John T. Flynn (1882-1964) was a in all the papers of the Scripps­ problems of craft - a rare pleasure, pugnacious little man (John Moser Howard chain. On top of that, on and reports that he stood well under six off during the 1930s and early 1940s feet and that "his adult weight was and consistently in the late 1940s and around 140 pounds"), a stereotypical 1950s, he had a weekly radio program" Referring to her own philos­ feisty Irishman, with the Irishman's (5). proverbial gift of gab and blarney (9). That weekly 15-minute program, ophy, Objectivism, she told her He "had a hot temper," Moser tells us, "Behind the Headlines," was a big suc­ followers, "Don't censor your­ and was both "quick to take umbrage cess. In the end, it "brought Flynn'S self by Objectivist morality." at personal slights and seldom pre­ words to a much larger audience than pared to submit to authority;" ever before." By "the end of 1949," Her advice was seldom heeded, Moreover, "[h]e could hold a grudge Moser tells us, "the program was being though it deserved to be. for years" (5). It was not infrequent for carried on fifty-six stations, including those observing him in argument to all forty-five affiliates of the Mutual become "alarmed by the sight of his Network" (174). "By the autumn of red face and bulging veins." But any 1952, Flynn was being heard on 362 stations," and "[h]e gleefully reported both in regard to its intensity and in observer who expressed concern for that it took I a corps of clerks' just to go regard to most people's ignorance of Flynn's health at such times would quickly discover that remarks about through his fan mail, one hundred to the fact that it can ever be a pleasure at five hundred pieces of which arrived all. The good thing is that you don't high blood pressure "served only to each day" (189). need to be a writer to feel that pleas­ make him angrier" (6). And what sort of message was it ure. All you need is some aesthetic and Still, there was that undeniable gift that Flynn delivered with such passion intellectual curiosity. of gab and blarney. Moser acknowl­ to his vast audience? Opposition to the Holzer rounds out her book with edges that "[t]he name of John T. Flynn New Deal was a big part of it, cer­ text and discussion of two fine short might be unfamiliar today, but it tainly, followed by opposition to U.S. stories of her own, "Eyewitness," first would have been readily recognizable involvement in World War II and published in this journal in 1988, and to any American who followed public opposition to U.S. participation in the "The House on Hester Street." The lat­ affairs from the late 1920s through the Cold War - these were Flynn'S major ter story, which illustrates the transfor­ 1950s. As a newspaper columnist, free­ themes for 30 years. And the New Deal mation of real situations into imagina­ lance magazine writer, best-selling was a liberal program, right? And it tive art, enables Holzer, explaining author, and widely recognized expert was liberal Democrats under the lead­ how it came to be, to evoke a salient on economics, finance, politics, and ership of Franklin Roosevelt and, later, picture of her mother, whose life "may foreign affairs, his words were read by Harry Truman, that involved the have been conventionally small-town, millions" (1). Indeed, as Moser says, but who played the role of co­ "Flynn was an extremely prolific conspirator to her daughter's romantic author, having to his credit no fewer LEGAL SERVICES notion that life was - could always be than nineteen books and thousands of Attorney Mark K. Funke articles. In addition to his weekly col­ - a grand adventure" (235). Holzer's Emphasizing Probate, Estate Planning book shows that an appreciation for umn in the New Republic [Other & Real Estate Law. Licensed in WA. artistic craft can be a tremendously People's Money], which he had for www.funkelaw.com. P. 206-632-1535 important part of that adventure. 0 nearly ten years, he also wrote for Liberty 33 January 2006

United States in both World War II and For now, though, consider. another almost unknown among the larger the Cold War, right? And the opposi­ datum - the striking number of paral­ body of American intellectuals: Albert tion to all this came from conservatives, lel cases it is possible to find in the· cul­ Jay Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel conservative Republicans, right? So tural and intellectual world of the '30s, Paterson, Frank Chodorov, Garet Flynn must have been a conservative, ,40s, and '50s. For Flynn was far from Garrett." 1 Eight years later,. Rothbard right? the only journalist with a national audi­ supplied a somewhat longer list: Nock, Not so fast, there. "To the end of his ence who began as a "liberal" and H.L. Mencken, Oswald Garrison life," Moser writes, Flynn "never ended as a "conservative" without the Villard of the Nation, Francis Neilson referred to himself as anything but a need of changing any opinions. There of The Freeman, historian and 5cripps­ were others. Howard newspaper columnist Harry There was H.L. Mencken, syndi­ Elmer Barnes, and John T. Flynn.2 cated newspaper columnist and editor "It· almost takes a great·· effort of the Flynn was a liberal - a of The Smart Set and The American will/" Rothbard wrote in 1964, "to Mercury. There was Albert· Jay Nock, recall the. principles and. Objectives of man of the Left - .and he editor of The Freeman and regular con­ the old Right, so different is the current remained one for his entire tributor to The American Mercury, the Right-wing today. The stress,·as we career. It was the American Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's. There have noted, was on· individual .liberty was Garet Garrett of the· Saturday in all its aspects as against state power: political climate that changed, Evening Post. There was Isabel on. freedom of speech and action, on not he. Paterson of the New York Herald economic liberty, on voluntary .rela­ Tribune..There was Henry. Hazlitt of tions as· opposed to coercion, on a The American Mercury, the New York peaceful foreign·· policy. The great Times, and Newsweek. There was Felix threat. to that liberty was state power, liberal - but in the words of Michele Morley of the Baltimore Sun and the in its invasion of personal freedom and Flynn Stenehjem, he was a 'liberal Washington Post. There was Rose private property and in its burgeoning betrayed.' Flynn claimed that it was the Wilder· Lane, a very prolific freelancer, military despotism. Philosophically, the American political climate that with articles in Harper's,the Ladies major emphasis wason the natural changed during his lifetime, not he. Home Journal, the Saturday Evening rights of man, arrived at by an investi­ Indeed, he believed that the very term Post, and Woman's Day, and a steady gation through reason of the laws of liberal had been hijacked;. as he wrote. to stream of books, including the individ­ New Deal lawyerJerome Frank in 1940, ualist classic "The Discovery of 'I see the standard of liberalism that I Freedom," in the nation's bookstores. have followed all my life flying over a All these writers were accepted mem­ At first, American liberals group of causes which, as a liberal bers of the "Left" before 1933. Yet, hewed closely enough to their along with all liberals, I have abhorred without changing any of their funda­ all my life'" (3). mental views, all of them, over the next individualist values to· shake In his view of this issue, Flynn was decade, came to be thought of as exem­ off any temptation they might entirely correct. He was a liberal - a plars of the political "Right." have felt to adopt the socialist man of the Left - and he remained one Today, in fact, for some of the intel­ for his entire career. It was "the lectual historians and journalists who line. American political climate that write about them, they are members of changed," not he. Specifically, what something called the "Old Right." "The changed was the way most people used Old Right," declares Internet pundit certain words to describe political posi­ Justin Raimondo in his 1993 book man's nature. Historically, the intellec­ tions and stances - words like liberal "Reclaiming the American Right," tual heroes of the old Right were such and .conservative and Left and. Right. "was that loose grouping of intellectu­ libertarians as John Locke, the And the result was that Flynn, who had als, writers, publicists, and politicians Levellers, Jefferson, Paine, Thoreau, been known far and wide as a liberal who vocally opposed the New Deal Cobden, Spencer, and Bastiat." In and a man of the Left in the '20s and and bitterly resisted U.S. entry into essence, "this libertarian Right based early '30s, ended his. career as an World War 11." Raimondo regards John itself on eighteenth and nineteenth cen­ important opinion leader onwhat most T. Flynn as the "master polemicist of tury liberalism, and began systemati­ contemporary observers of American the Old Right" and lists Garrett, cally to extend that doctrine even fur­ politics considered the far Right - and Mencken, Nock, Lane, Paterson, Frank ther.,,3 all without having changed any of his Chodorov, Louis Bromfield, Colonel But if the leaders of this "Old opinions. Robert McCormick of the Chicago Right" were extending the doctrine of Or, at least, so Flynn claimed. Tribune, and Senator Robert Taft liberalism even further, they must have Moser raises some legitimate objections among its other leading lights (52/ 98). been liberals, right? That's what Flynn to Flynn's contention that his political "The intellectual leaders of this old thought. Moser summarizes one of his opinions remained fully consistent Right of World War II and the immedi­ mid-1934 New Republic columns as throughout his career, and I intend to ate aftermath," Murray Rothbard wrote follows: "Liberals, he wrote, had to face return to these objections in due time. in 1964/ "were then and remain today facts - the president had posed as one 34 Liberty January 2006 of them, but all they could really expect duced a new wrinkle into liberalism, development of society for the benefit of from him were I sweet words with no one that had extraordinarily serious all"; as a result, "the ambition of the Left meaning behind them'" (47). Four implications some years down the line. came to be not just the complete equal­ years later, when the "United States The famous slogan of the French revo­ ity of rights, as important as that was had taken the first steps on the path to lution - Liberty! Equality! Fraternity! still thought to be, but the more grandi­ war," the thing that"amazed Flynn the - holds the key to this important new ose ideal of equality of wealth" (218). most," he acknowledged in another wrinkle. The idea of equality had fig­ The liberals who became ensnared piece for the New Republic, "was that ured in the earlier American by this vision of a totally egalitarian this was all taking place under I a Revolution as well, of course - didn't society did exactly as Mises predicted: Democratic administration supposedly Thomas Jefferson write in the they adopted socialism as their new in the possession of its liberal wing'" Declaration of Independence that "all ideal, and what Rothbard called "col­ (61). Two years after that, in the late lectivistic, conservative means" of summer of 1940, in a bewildered attaining it. 5 They proposed to create lament to Bruce Bliven, his editor at conditions of freedom by the use of the The New Republic, Flynn plaintively During the 1932 campaign, hierarchical and coercive state. characterized himself as "a liberal The socialist apostasy, however par­ writer who is saying now the same Franklin Roosevelt tried to tial, proved more popular in Europe thing he said five years ago and ten portray himself as a man who than in America - at first. At first, years ago, who is opposed to third stood for small government American liberals hewed closely terms for presidents, to war-mongering enough to their individualist values to and militarism and conscription and and fiscal responsibility. shake off any temptation they might corrupt political machines and vast have felt to adopt the socialist line. public debt. ...I held these views Even so, as the late Arthur Ekirch con­ before Roosevelt was president and I tends in his classic work "The Decline have now lost my liberal credentials men are created equal"? But to of American Liberalism," "[s]ince the because I do not agree with the New Jefferson and the other American liber­ time of the American Revolution, the York Times, the Herald-Tribune, als, "equality" meant equality of rights, major trend in our history has been in [Secretary of War] Mr. Harry Stimson, equality before the law. In France, by the direction of an ever-greater centrali­ Mr. Franklin Roosevelt and Wendell contrast, to more than a few of the rev­ zation and concentration of control ­ Willkie about the war" (107-108). olutionaries, it meant much, much politically, economically, and socially. Flynn'S dismay is easy to under­ more than that. In the eyes of these As a part of this drift toward I state cap­ stand. Opposition to state power had French liberals, it was, as Ludwig von italism' or I socialism,' the liberal values originally defined liberalism, while Mises summarized their view more associated with the eighteenth-century maintenance of established systems of than a hundred years later, in his book Enlightenment - and especially that of power had long been associated with "Liberalism," "not enough to make individual freedom - have slowly lost conservatism. men equal before the law. In order to their primary importance in American Eighteenth-century liberals, as make them really equal, one must also life and thought" (ix). Rothbard contended, managed to allot them the same income. It is not Alexander Hamilton's program achieve "at least partial victories for enough to abolish privileges of birth called for a national bank which, after individual liberty, laissez-faire, separa­ and of rank. One must finish the job having "received a monopoly of gov­ tion of church and state, and interna­ and do away with the greatest and ernment business," would "provide tional peace," through"a series of cata­ most important privilege of all, namely, new capital for the business expansion clysmic revolutions ... the English that which is accorded by private prop­ that Hamilton deemed vital to United Revolutions of the 17th century, the erty. Only then will American Revolution, and the French the liberal program be Revolution."4 It was, in fact, during the completely realized, French Revolution, in the Legislative and a consistent liber­ Assembly in the fall of 1791, that the alism thus leads ulti­ terms Right and Left were first used in a mately to socialism, to political sense. As Will and Ariel the abolition of private Durant tell the story in "The Age of ownership of the Napoleon," when the assembly con­ vened, the "substantial minority dedi­ means of production" cated to preserving the monarchy ... (29). occupied the right section of the hall, A good many liber­ and thereby gave a name to conserva­ als came to believe, as tives everywhere." The liberals "sat at Lavoie says, "that a the left on an elevated section called the planning bureau could Mountain; soon they were named rationally and demo­ Montagnards. cratically control the "I spend years inculcating a work ethic in you bums, and The French Revolution also intro- cultural and economic now you want me to let your people go?" Liberty 35 January 2006

States prosperity," that business expan­ sented a different party. By the time the Franklin Roosevelt tried, for purposes sion to be protected from foreign com­ Democrats finally fell from power in of public relations, to distance himself petition by a high tariff wall (46--47). the election of 1840, their opposition, from this approach to politics. He por­ Hamilton - need it be said? - was the the Federalists, had long since withered trayed himself as a man who stood for first great conservative in American away and died. small government and fiscal responsi­ politics. His party, the Federalist party, Nineteenth-century American poli­ bility. His platform called for "[a]n was the first conservative party, the tics was characterized by this conflict immediate and drastic reduction of first right-wing party, in American between liberal and conservative politi­ governmental expenditures by abolish­ political history. As Ekirch reminds us, cal principles, embodied ,in contests ing useless commissions and offices, "the Federalists ... pursued a con­ between Jeffersonian democrats, on the consolidating departments and bureaus stantly illiberal course during their one hand, and, on the other, and eliminating extravagance, to twelve years of power" (53). Hamiltonian federalists and their suc­ accomplish a saving of not less than 25 If the Federalists were the first cessors, the Whigs and Republicans. As percent in the cost of Federal govern­ American conservatives, the Jeffer­ historian Clyde Wilson puts it, ment." It called also for "[m]aintenance sonians were the first American liber- "Apparently millions continue to har­ of the national credit by a Federal bud­ bor the strange delusion that the get annually balanced" and for "[a] Republican party is the, party of free sound currency to be maintained at all enterprise. ... In fact, the party is and hazards." Since the time of Lincoln, always has been the party of state capi­ Nor was this platform meant to be the Republican party had talism. That, along with the powers and taken as empty rhetoric of the sort peo­ perks it provides its leaders, is the ple today tend to assume is characteris­ always stood for top-heavy whole reason for its creation and con­ tic of virtually all public statements by bureaucracy, strong central tinued existence. By state capitalism I politicians. No. As Garet Garrett of the government, and hefty hand­ mean a regime of highly concentrated Saturday Evening Post pointed out in private ownership, subsidized and pro­ 1938, "Mr. Roosevelt pledged himself outs to big business. tected by government. The Republican to be bound by this platform as no party has never, ever opposed any gov­ President had ever before been bound ernment interference in the free market by a party document. All during the or any government expenditure except campaign he supported it with words also In his first inaugural address, Gore those that might favour labour unions that could not possibly be misunder­ Vidal points out, Jefferson called for "a 7 stood. He said: 'I accuse the present wise and frugal government, which or threaten Big Business." shall restrain men from injuring one Rothbard agrees with Clyde another, which shall leave them other­ Wilson's contention that the GOP was never a liberal party. "The classical lib­ wise free to regulate their own pursuit of industry and improvement, and eral party throughout the nineteenth After the coming ofthe New shall not take from the mouth of labor century was not the Republican, but Deal, both major parties were the Democratic party," he wrote in the bread it has earned. This is the sum conservative parties. For the of good government ..." "In other 1980, "which fought for minimal gov­ words," as Vidal puts it, "no taxes ernment, free trade, and no special New Deal variety of "liberal­ beyond a minimal levy in order to pay privileges for business."S Steven R.. Weisman of The New York Times sees ism" was not liberalism at all, for a few judges, a postal service, small but conservatism. executive and legislative bodies." 6 In much the same thing when he exam.. other words, the policy prescription of ines the historical' record for the mid­ a c1assicalliberal. 19th century. In' his 2002 book "The The twelve years of Federalist rule Great Tax Wars: Lincoln to Wilson "'­ - the Washington and Adams admin­ The Fierce Battles over Money and Administration of being the greatest istrations - were followed by 40 years Power that Transformed the Nation," spending Administration in peace time of rule by Jefferson's party, the Weisman writes that under Lincoln and in. all American history - one which Democratic-Republicans, later the the Republican party "the North's piled bureau on bureau, commission on Democrats. Not a few were born, grew economy rested on a kind of state capi­ Commission, and has failed to antici­ to maturity, and produced children of talism of trade barriers, goverr'lmefit­ pate the dire needs or reduced earning their own without ever knowing of a sponsored railroads, coddling of trusts, power of the people. Bureaus and president or vice president who repre- suppression of labor and public invest­ bureaucrats have been retained at the ment in canals, roads and other ihfra­ expense of the taxpayer. ... We are structures." spending altogether too much money Even as late as the 1920s, the for government services which are nei­ Republican party remained the friend ther practical nor necessary. In addition of interventionist government, of to this, we are attempting too many which the much maligned Herbert functions and we need a simplification Hoover was known as a leading expo­ of what the Federal government is giv­ nent. During the 1932 campaign, ing to the people'" (27). 36 Liberty January 2006

Roosevelt was particularly adamant The New Deal was, as John T. Flynn the 1924 Democratic presidential candi­ on the subject of government borrow­ insisted while it was happening, "a date and a J.P. Morgan & Company ing. As Flynn recalled years later, in his form of conservatism dressed up as lib­ attorney, and Al Smith, former gov­ classic book "The Roosevelt Myth," eralism" (Moser 113). The "liberals" ernor of New York and 1928 "Toward the end of the campaign he who pushed it were actually conserva­ Democratic presidential candidate. [Roosevelt] cried: 'Stop the deficits! tives. And the members of the "Old There were serious opponents of Stop the deficits!' Then to impress his Right" who opposed it were actually the New Deal in the GOP, too. But, listeners with his inflexible purpose to liberals. In his brief history of "the 'Old despite Rothbard's preposterous claim deal with this prodigal monster, he Right' Jeffersonians," Sheldon Richman said: 'Before any man enters my cabinet acknowledges this. "That the ['Old he must give me a twofold pledge: Right'] movement was placed on the Absolute loyalty to the Democratic right or called 'c9nservative' has to be The /lOld Right" was a coa­ platform and especially to its economy regarded a qUjtk of political seman­ lition, in which the libertari­ plank. And complete cooperation with tics," he writes~.lJln a superficial sense ans and individualists - the me in looking to economy and reorgan­ it qualified as right-wing because it ization in his department.'" seemed to be defending the status quo true liberals - were not domi­ True, this new Roosevelt's political from the state-sponsored egalitarian nant. And many individual­ track record was somewhat worrisome, change of the New Deal. But in a ists or libertarians forgot their for, as Flynn noted, "as governor [of deeper sense, the New Deal actually New York] he took New York State was a defense of the corporativist link with liberalism. from the hands of Al Smith with a sur­ status quo threatened by the Great plus of $15,000,000 and left it with a Depression. Thus the Old Right was deficit of $90,000,000" (37). On. the not truly right-wing, and since that is other hand, Flynn argued, "[t]here was that they were "the soul of the so, it should not be bothersome that [Republican] party," and represented nothing revolutionary in" what FDR some palpable left-wingers, such as told the voters in the election of 1932. "majority sentiment in the party," the Norman Thomas and Robert La reality was far otherwise. Rothbard "It was," Flynn wrote, "actually an old­ Follette, Jr., seemed at home in the Old time Democratic platform based upon seems actually to have believed that the Right."g only reason the so-called "Old Right fairly well-accepted principles of the Nor was the political opposition to traditional Democratic party. That Republicans" perennially "managed to the New Deal primarily a Republican lose the presidential nomination," is party had always denounced the ten­ phenomenon. Many Democratic sena­ dency to strong central government, that said nomination was "perpetually tors and other luminaries were stolen from them by the Eastern Estab­ the creation of new bureaus. It had involved in it. lOIn fact, it was mem­ lishment-Big Banker-Rockefeller wing always denounced deficit financing. Its bers of the Democratic party, not the of the party," which relied on "media central principle of action was a mini­ Republican party, who mounted the clout, as well as hardball banker threats mum of government in business" (36). first organized offensive against the to call in the delegates' loans." He By contrast, since the time of New Deal. The first national organiza­ seems actually to have believed that Lincoln, the Republican party had tion opposed to the New Deal, the "Senator [Robert A.] Taft [of Ohio] was always stood for strong central govern­ American Liberty League, was founded robbed of the Republican nomination ment, top-heavy bureaucracy, and in 1934 by a group of prominent in 1952" in precisely this way - "by a hefty handouts to big business. The fact Democrats, including John W. Davis, Rockefeller-Morgan Eastern banker that the voters had evicted a Republican from the White House and elected a Democrat surely meant that American public opinion was leaning Calling All Economists! in a more liberal direction. Or so many, including John T. Flynn, believed at the There is a new idea according to which, taking from the time. Of course, Franklin Roosevelt rich to give to the poor does not reduce but increases dashed all such liberal hopes within the first hundred days of his administra­ inequality, and that would completely demolish the Left. tion. Once elected, he tossed the But is it right or wrong, a golden opportunity for Democratic platform of 1932 into the libertarianism, or a snare and a delusion? trash can and proceeded to show the electorate that he could play the conser­ vative game better than any A gold coin prize has been offered to anyone who Republican. First he took Herbert could show that it was wrong. For the chance, not just Hoover's Hamiltonian policies and to win the prize, but save us from economic error, enormously expanded them; then, if not actually demolish the Left, astonishingly, he had the effrontery to describe himself and his stolen pro­ gram as "liberal." see Intellectually Incorrect at intinc.org January 2006

cabal, using their control of respectable the most visible contingent of the "Old vism of his youth but with the very 'Republican' media." 11 But if the Right" were in no meaningful sense on laissez-faire doctrine that he had "Eastern Establishment-Big Banker­ the Right at all. They were on the Left, rejected sixteen years earlier. Rockefeller wing of the party" was so where they had always been. They Liberalism, he claimed, once had as its powerful, why was it never able to put were liberals. The term liberal had been primary purpose the reduction of the its own man, Nelson Rockefeller, in the hijacked. The problem was that a great power of the state, but in present times, White House - or even win him the many of the liberals who had been left he lamented, the word had been 'cap­ GOP nomination? The fact is that, as in the lurch by the Democratic party's tured by certain aggressor philoso­ Clyde Wilson puts it, the "Old Right" sudden more or less official adoption of phers, carried off as so much loot and conservatism in liberal clothing had offered for acceptance to a wholly dif­ made the mistake of joining (or, at any ferent clientele.' He praised capitalism rate, supporting) the RepUblican party for producing 'beyond a doubt the Life and the passage of time - presumably in the belief that the greatest freedom in the world and the opposition party, whatever its funda­ greatest abundance.' The 'planned taught Flynn that the use of mental character, was where they now economy,' he concluded, apparently such conservative means as belonged. forgetting that he had embraced eco­ planning, regulation, and wel- As even Rothbard acknowledges, nomic planning in the 1930s, 'has pro­ however, the "Old Right" was a coali­ duced before our eyes the most appall­ fare could not achieve the ends tion, in which the libertarians and indi­ ing consequences'" (204). he had always desired. vidualists - the true liberals - were Moser writes that "[i]t is clear that not dominant. And as he suggests, Flynn's views, both on liberalism in many individualists or libertarians for­ general and on specific issues, had got their link with liberalism. 13 changed," despite his claims to the con­ members of the Republican party sim­ Flynn never made this dubious trary. And this does, indeed seem to be ply "never had sufficient strength" journey. However, as Moser notes, the the case. Moser argues that one reason within the party "to nominate a presi­ nature of his liberalism did undergo for this change lay in the gradual death dential candidate or prevent very many some alteration over time, despite his of Flynn's faith in what today we evils." 12 claims that his views had never would call technocracy. The young The fact is that the coming of the changed in any significant way. In Flynn, Moser points out, considered New Deal ended a long era in 1932, according to Moser, Flynn wrote philosophy "empty and futile." More American political history - an era that "the doctrine of laissez-faire is now important, in his judgment, was social that had endured for more than a hun­ the gospel of the reactionary" (204). In science, for "experts trained in the dred years, an era in which every 1934, Flynn called for a national mini­ social sciences" could identify the national election was a contest between mum wage law, "a 'vast program' of "basic facts" of any troublesome social a liberal party and a conservative party, public spending - mainly on construc­ situation. After all, "[e]vils ... were as both substantial in size and influence. tion projects - to relieve unemploy­ easy to identify as any scientific phe­ After the coming of the New Deal, both ment," and "a government-run system nomenon," and, once having identified major parties were conservative par­ of unemployment and old-age insu­ them, experts trained in the social sci­ ties. For the New Deal variety of "liber­ rance" (46). In 1936, Flynn "called for ences would know precisely what alism" was not liberalism at all, but three constitutional amendments: one reforms to recommend to solve social conservatism. that would give to the government 'the problems in a scientific way. Flynn's analysis was correct. The police power over all economic matters As Flynn grew older, he came more writers and intellectuals who made up of national importance,' and two others and more to realize that the path to uto­ that would free pia was by no means as simple as he Congress and state had once believed. Collecting facts sci­ legislatures from entifically was not sufficient to guaran­ tee the good judgment of the experts 'the inhibitions of who collected them. Moreover, there the due process was the problem that "intellectuals ­ clause" (90). whom by this time [1954] he had taken Then, in 1948, to calling 'Eggheads' - were irresisti­ Flynn "wrote an bly drawn to power." In short, Flynn article in the con­ started his career as one of those mis­ servative American guided liberals (the socialists, the pro­ Mercury entitled gressives) who had come to believe 'What Liberalism that liberal ends could be achieved by Means to Me,' in conservative means. Gradually, life and which he seemed to the passage of time taught him that the associate himself, use of such conservative means as plan­ "Please, sir - just thirty-one cents more and I can get a not with the ning, regulation, and welfare could not lottery ticket!" reformist progressi- achieve the ends he had always 38 Liberty January 2006 desired. Over time, he therefore national organization's total member­ York City chapter of America First took evolved in a steadily more liberal, ship. The chapter eventually employed up a substantial fraction of Flynn's steadily more individualist, direction. sixty paid staff members and hundreds time. Indeed, "[f]rom June through Flynn's views on foreign policy of regular volunteers. It sponsored sub­ December 1941," Moser writes, "the never underwent the changes that sidiary chapters in each of the five bor­ committee's work absorbed, by his reshaped his views on domestic policy. oughs, with numerous subchapters [Flynn's] own admission, 'every min­ As a liberal, he had always favored free under each. There was a Women's ute of my time.' His output as a writer trade and peace. As a liberal, he had Division, a Wall Street Division, a dropped off to almost nothing, not always opposed war. For, as Arthur Veterans' Division, and a Labor counting AFC press releases." Ekirch reminds us, "any war, even one Division, each with its own office. The Moreover, "in the eyes of nearly every­ fought over some great moral principle, chapter also employed a team of writ­ one," the AFC "was a right-wing involves the use of methods essentially ers, directed and supervised personally organization." By maintaining such a illiberal; for the very substance of liber­ by Flynn, so that it published more high profile in the group, Flynn had alism - its emphasis on reason, on tol­ original literature than any other in the "finally destroyed whatever reputation eration and respect for individual and nation. It had its own weekly newspa­ he still had as a liberal" (149-150). minority rights, and on progress by per (the America First Bulletin) and a And that was precious little. Several evolution instead of revolution - is daily column (the 'Battle Page') that months before he decided to become bound to suffer in wartime" (116). appeared both in the Chicago Tribune active in the AFC, he had lost his Moser devotes three of his 14 chap­ and in the New York Daily News, weekly column, "Other People's ters to a detailed discussion of Flynn's reaching a readership of approximately Money," which had run for nearly role in the America First Committee 2 million" (121). eight years in The New Republic and (AFC), the largest and most powerful And all this frenetic activity took was the main venue in which he had antiwar organization in America in the place within a very, very narrow time originally become famous in the 1930s. 1930s and early ,40s. As chairman of frame. "The New York City chapter for­ His firing from The New Republic is an the New York City chapter of the AFC, mally opened for business," Moser especially interesting incident, both in Flynn oversaw the largest and most reports, "on January 25, 1941" (120). his life and in the life of American ideas powerful chapter of the organization. Within less than a year, its mission was and policies. Moser portrays Flynn's As Moser reminds us, the New York a dead letter. It formally dissolved on firing as "a turning point of sorts in the City chapter "would ultimately have July 2, 1942, less than 18 months after writer's career," and tells us that "the nearly two hundred thousand mem­ its formal opening (149). During the impetus" for it "likely came ... from bers, roughly one-quarter of the time it was open for business, the New the magazine's chief financial backer, Dorothy Straight. In 1925, Straight had the price of his reversing his position married a wealthy Englishman named and writing strongly interventionist About Leonard Elmhirst, and' while the leaders [editorials] instead of isolation­ couple had generally let the editors for­ ist ones. Our English patron-in-law mulate their own policy, by 1940 they took over the direction of the paper had begun to pressure [Bruce] Bliven and published anonymous leaders, Your [editor-in-chief of The New Republic entirely composed by himself, which from 1930 to 1953] about the maga­ would have been intensely comic if the zine's anti-interventionist slant. situation had not been humiliating ­ Subscription Thanks to this pressure Bliven also since they purported to express the hired Dorothy's son Willard as chief opinions of the well-known American Q: When does my subscription expire? Washington editor and fired film and editors but were actually exclusively A: Please look to the right ofyour music critic Otis Ferguson, 'TRB' col­ occupied with plugging, in British cli­ name on your mailing labeL There umnist Jonathan Mitchell (who, like ches, the official British point of view" you will find (except in some cases Flynn, was a critic of Roosevelt's for­ (41-42). when receiving your first issue) the number ofissues left in your sub­ eign policyt and even Edmund This is a policy of which Flynn scription, followed by the word Wilson, who had been literary editor would have very quickly run afoul. As "left," as in "3 LEFT." since the 1920s. In short, there is con­ Moser notes, "Flynn claimed that the siderable substance to Flynn'S claim British had a mysterious hold not on Q: I've moved. Where do I send my that it was the New Republic, and not the minds of ordinary Americans 'but change ofaddress information? he, that had changed" (110). over certain persons who have access A: Liberty, P.O. Box 1181, Port It is interesting to contrast this Townsend, WA 98368. Please to the press, the pulpit and other agen­ include your previous address (it's rather bloodless account with the one cies of propaganda.' He believed that best to send us your label from your written in the early 1950s by Edmund his 'pro-Anglican virus' was strongest magazine) and telephone number. Wilson and published in his book "A in the State Department, which was Allow us six weeks to receive and Piece of My Mind: Reflections at filled with men who were 'horrified at process your address notification. Sixty." "When our editor-in-chief the thought of America's not helping Q: I'm receiving duplicate copies; what , [Herbert Croly (1869-1930)] died," he England in a war.' This was a theme to should I do? wrote, "the paper [The New Republic] which Flynn would turn again and A: Take a look at both mailing labels, was run by a group composed of the again in the next few years, and indeed clip'em out and send'em to us. other editors. The weekly had been through the rest of his career" (59). We'll make sure that you receive all handsomely subsidized, first by an Little wonder, then, that as the issues you've paid for. idealistic millionaire, then, after his Edmund Wilson tells the story, the Q: I think you've charged my credit death, by his widow - both personal new "English patron-in-Iaw" put a card incorrectly; what can I do? friends of the editor [Croly]. But this stop "at once to our criticisms of the A: Call us at 800-854-6991 (during lady now married an Englishman, Roosevelt administration, and a regu­ normal business hours on the West went permanently to live in England lar political commentator who had fre­ Coast) or email us at and became a British subject. She had, quently disagreed with its policies [email protected] however, arranged, in New York, a [Flynn] was summarily dismissed. It We'll take down your information and foundation which was to function in was proposed, in an issue of then try to solve your problem as soon her absence, automatically supplying December, 1940, that 'the United States as possible. such money as was needed to make up and Great Britain assume responsibil­ Q: Can I change my address on your our deficits; and we were given to ity and leadership for the whole world, toll-free number, too? understand that we were just as free as except for that part of it at present A: No. We must get your address cor­ our late chief had been to publish under the heel of the totalitarians. Let rections in writing, either by U.S. whatever we pleased. This went well these two great repositories of democ­ mail or by email. until the second war with Germany, in racy pool their leadership in brains, Q: Can I communicate with your ful­ regard to which the paper's policy was vision and courage.... It is clear that fillment department by email? completely isolationist. In the autumn we should extend the utmost aid to A: Yes; send your communications and of 1940, the husband of our Anglicized Great Britain even if it involves a con­ queries to us at patroness suddenly descended on us, siderable danger of going to war'" (42­ [email protected] and indignantly denounced this pol­ 43). icy." The new English patron-in-Iaw We'll try to get back to you as soon as possible. In short order, "[h]e dissolved the made only one serious mistake in his old staff of the paper, though the mem­ takeover, according to Wilson. He did The editorial offices can be reached at 360-379-0242. bers - to diminish the scandal - were not "take account of the shock to the allowed still to haunt the office and to regular readers of the paper, who saw Our sales and subscription fulfillment office can be reached at 800-854-6991 continue in a small way to write till it turn its coat overnight and knew (foreign callers call 360-379-8421). they were able to find other work. The there was something wrong" (43). As managing editor [Bliven] was kept, at for Flynn, Moser notes, "[a]t the end of January 2006 1940 he still had a daily newspaper col­ "The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and umn and articles regularly appearing in Colliers and other national maga­ Foreign Affairs After 9/11," by John Yoo. University of Chicago, zines, in addition to frequent lecture 2005. 366 pages. and radio appearances" (110). Liberal or conservative, Flynn managed to keep busy, right up to two years before his death in 1964 at the age of 81. To the end, he called himself a liberal ­ and he was right. 0 America

NOTES 1. Murray N. Rothbard, "The Trans­ formation of the American Right." 1964. Online at lewrockwell.com/ rothbard / Contra Mundum rothbard13.html 2. Murray N. Rothbard, "The Foreign to the past ten years, such as the wars Policy of the Old Right." Journal of Bruce Ramsey Libertarian Studies, Vol. 2. No.1, p. 2. in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq; the Online at mises.org / journals/ jls / 2_1/ John Yoo, professor of law at the Kyoto Treaty; the ABM Treaty; and so 2_1_7.pdf University of California, Berkeley, is a on. Unfortunately, there is not much 3. Rothbard, "The Transformation of pariah of the campus Left. His offense on the two centuries in between. the American Right," op. cit. is his support of the denial of P.O.W. In constitutional law circles, the 4. Murray N. Rothbard, "Left and status to al Qaeda prisoners. The presi­ Journal says, Yoo is considered a "sov­ Right: The Prospects for Liberty" (Cato dent, Yoo says, has the constitutional ereigntist." Really, he is a nationalist: Institute, 1979 [1965]), p. 7. he is interested in an interpretation of 5. Rothbard, "The Transformation of power to interpret treaties. George Washington did it and George W. Bush the Constitution that allows America the American Right." op. cit. to do what it wants in the world and to 6. Gore Vidal, "Homage to Daniel can do it. Not only did Yoo support remain independent of the United Shays." "Homage to Daniel Shays: Bush's authority to interpret the Collected Essays" (Random House, 1972), Geneva Conventions, but from 2001 to Nations, the World Court, et al. And while Yoo's theory would allow the p.436. 2003, Yoo worked in Bush's Justice 7. Clyde Wilson, "The Republican Department on the legal theory sup­ U.S. government to be more interven­ tionist and belligerent than most liber­ Charade: Lincoln and His Party." Sept. 7, porting Bush's assertion of war and tarians prefer, they should appreciate 2005. Online at lewrockwell.com/wilson/ treaty powers. wilson20.html the way it keeps America in control of On Sept. 12, 2005, the Wall Street 8. Murray N. Rothbard, "Requiem for American actions. Journal profiled the controversial the Old Right." Inquiry, Oct. 27, 1980: 24­ Yoo begins with the war power. young Korean-American. The lead par­ 27. Online at lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ The Constitution gives Congress the agraph has Yoo recommending the use rothbard46.html power "to declare war." An earlier of assassination. 9. Sheldon Richman, "New Deal draft of the document gave Congress "The Powers of War and Peace" Nemesis: The 'Old Right' Jeffersonians." the power "to make war." The Independent Review, Fall 1996, p. 203. has no cheerleading for regime change Constitution also says, in regard to the 10. Murray N. Rothbard, "Life in the by rifle. Nor is there any attempt to Old Right." August 1994. Online at lew­ states, that they cannot "engage in exonerate the guards at Abu Ghraib. war" unless under attack, or imminent rockwell.com / rothbard / rothbard45.html. Yoo is no longer acting as a lawyer tell­ See also Murray N. Rothbard, "The Life attack. To declare, to make, to engage ing his belligerent client what the and Death of the Old Right," Rothbard­ in: these are different. Y00 argues that options are; he is offering a serious, Rockwell Report, September 1990. Online the declaration of war is IIfundamen­ at lewrockwell.com / rothbard / rothbard25 detailed argument about the war and tally one of defining legal relation­ .html; Ronald Rcdosh, "The Myth of the treaty powers in the U.S. Constitution. ships." That is, if your government has New Deal," "A New History of Leviathan: It is not easy reading, but it is well declared war on a certain country, it Essays on the Rise of the American worth the effort. can confiscate that country's assets and Corporate State." Ed. Ronald Radosh and Yoo was once a clerk to Justice put that country's nationals into intern­ Murray N. Rothbard. (Dutton, 1972), p. Clarence Thomas, the court's premier ment camps. But the president, as 167; Richman, "New Deal Nemesis," op. originalist, and there is a similarity in Commander in Chief and possessor of cit., p. 211. how they think. There is much in the 11. Rothbard, "Life in the Old Right," book about the British and colonial op.cit. 12. Clyde Wilson, "Save America! Vote background to the Constitution, the PRAXEOLOGY.COM Republicanl" Sept. 30, 2003. Online at lew­ debates of the framers and ratifiers, rockwell.com / wilson/wilson14.html and the first questions of treaty rights An Austrian School analysis 13. Rothbard, "Life in the Old Right." and war faced by President Wash­ ofsocial interaction. op.cit., pp. 24-25. ington. There are also many references Liberty 41 January 2006 the foreign-affairs power, can make when a sale is made, and sends the sol­ Authority of the United States, shall be war - at least, some bombing and diers off to fill the contract, leaving the Supreme Law of the Land; and the shooting short of total war. Congress with the moral obligation to Judges in every State shall be bound I am uncomfortable with this; it is Hsupport our troops." With another thereby, any Thing in the Constitution more permissive than I like. But it is people and another way of thinking, or Laws of any State to the contrary one way to interpret the Constitution's the power of the purse might be notwithstanding." imprecise language, and in fact it is enough. With the American people, it It means, Yoo argues, that a state what has been done. Congress has isn't. cannot nullify any part of a treaty. That declared war only five times, though in I am uncomfortable with Yoo's is clear. It also means that federal law analysis of the war power; there is (or the lack of implementing legisla­ some gray area in it, and he allocates all tion) can effectively nullify a treaty, as If the choice is the federal the gray to the president. Then I think can the Constitution. That is not so of early 20th-century justice George clear. The text doesn't say that, but Yoo government versus world gov­ Sutherland, one of the most libertarian argues that it has to be interpreted that ernment/ libertarians have to of the time. In the 1930s he heroically way in order to maintain the balance of make common cause with the resisted the New Deal, but in the powers. Otherwise the treaty acceding famous Curtiss-Wright case he took the to the United Nations might mean that nationalists. same line as Y00 about the foreign­ the power to make a non-self-defensive affairs power. war, such as President Clinton's bomb­ Next, Yoo considers the treaty ing campaign against Serbia, had been ceded to the U.N. Security Council. the Vietnam, Gulf, and Iraq wars it power. The Constitution says in the Another treaty might mean that authorized war without declaring one. Supremacy Clause that treaties are "the Americans could be tried in the (Yoo thinks these authorizations were Supreme Law of the Land." To many at International Criminal Court for not necessary.) the time of the framing and ratification, offenses, and under procedures, not in Yoo argues' that Congress has con­ that was a troubling idea, because it American law. A treaty might mean trol over war in the power of the purse. seemed to allow domestic law to be that an international agency could If Congress opposes a war, it can sim­ created by the president in negotiation decide, without asking Congress and ply refuse to pay for it. This argument with a foreign power, subject only to an without U.S. warrants, to inspect U.S. was made by the Federalists in the rati­ after-the-fact approval of two-thirds of chemical plants for evidence of weap­ fication debates. The Anti-Federalists, the Senate. The Federalists and the ons of mass destruction, or that another he says, "doubted, however, whether Anti-Federalists did not argue much global bureaucracy could limit how Congress would put its funding power about the war power, but they fought much energy individual Americans to' good use." And the Anti-Federalists hard over this. The argument ended could use. were right. Y00 does admit that the with the Federalists assuring everyone Here is where Yoo's nationalism Federalists "never fully confronted the that treaties were not "self-executing." becomes interesting to libertarians. Anti-Federalist claim that Congress In order to take effect inside the United They have been arguing for decades would satisfy the president's military States, treaties would require Congress against the expansion of federal author­ requests as readily as Parliament had to implement them through legislation, ity, and for the power of the states and, cooperated with the king." and Congress could decide to ignore particularly, individuals. But if the That is the problem. The president them instead. choice is the federal government versus makes the sales pitch for war, decides Well, then, how could treaties still world government, the libertarians be the law of the have to make common cause with the land? Look at the nationalists. context, Y00 says. That is a new thing. Libertarians The Supremacy look back at the Constitution as it was Clause is in Article before the New Deal, as in Randy VI,which has to do Barnett's "Restoring the Lost with the relation of Constitution." But the biggest issue the national govern­ may not be restoring the Constitution ment to the states. that was, but keeping the one that's The full statement is left. Hollowed-out as it may seem, this: today's Constitution is a robust instru­ "This Constitu­ ment compared with an international­ tion, and the Laws of ized world. Look at what has happened the United States to Germany - no more deutschmark! which shall be made - and the pressures on Britain. in Pursuance there­ Non-self-execution was once a of, and all Treaties cause of the Old Right. In the decade made, or which shall after World War II, the United States "You're a great fighter, Joan, but can you type?" be made; under the joined the United Nations, the

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International Monetary Fund, the is okay that the NAFTA and WTO Franklin Roosevelt's threat to pack the World Bank, and the General agreements were approved by simple court. The "bloodless constitutional Agreement of Tariffs and Trade. majority votes, because they are com­ revolution" of 1937 was disruptive, and President Truman received permission mercial agreements. A treaty on pollu­ the extra-legal way it was done still from the United Nations, not Congress, tion might be approved that way, throws "the legitimacy of elements of to make war in Korea. The Left was because it can be argued that pollution the New Deal revolution" into doubt. pushing for the self-execution of trea­ is connected to commerce, but a con­ Something like that could happen ties, starting with the UN Convention vention on crime, or police procedures, again, Y00 says, regarding the push for on Human Rights. A Supreme Court or human rights, could not. It would international law. One side will argue case from 1920, Missouri v. Holland, also have to be done by treaty, and would that we take what international law we seemed to endorse self-execution. It be non-self-executing. was only about birds, but it was dis­ Yoo comes to an intriguing conclu­ want, and ignore the rest. The other turbing anyhow. And so Sen. John sion. At the end of his book, he com­ side will argue for sweeping accep­ Bricker (R-Ohio) responded with the pares the push for international law tance. The focus this time will not be Bricker Amendment, a proposed addi­ today with the push for federal law the Commerce Clause but the Treaty tion to the Constitution that explicitly during the 1930s. Then the Supreme Clause. In a larger sense the question said treaties were not self-executing. Court was sticking up for the states, will be the same: power, what it con­ President Eisenhower opposed it, and and buckled under a landslide national sists of, who wields it, and how it may in 1954 a version of the Bricker election endorsing the New Deal and be controlled. 0 Amendment failed, by one vote, to pass with a two-thirds vote of Congress. Y00 never mentions the Bricker Amendment. But he notes that in cur­ Notes on Contributors rent practice, treaties are judged to be [ ) non-self-executing. "Self-execution," he writes, "would vest in the executive Baloo is a nom de plume of Rex F. May. Ross Levatter is a physician practicing branch a legislative power broader in in Green Bay, Wis. scope than Congress's. Non-self­ execution, in contrast, harmonizes trea­ David Boaz is executive vice president ties with constitutional structure and of the Cato Institute and author of Patrick Quealy can be seen in his natu­ maintains the important distinction Libertarianism: A Primer. ral habitat, a Seattle coffee shop. between foreign relations and domestic lawmaking." R. W. Bradford is publisher of Liberty. Bruce Ramsey is a journalist in Seattle. The Bricker Amendment would also have limited the use of the con­ Scott Chambers is a cartoonist living in gressional-executive agreement, which California. Mark Rand is assistant editor of is what the NAFTA and WTO agree­ Liberty. ments are. The congressional-executive agreement is an ordinary law, passed Stephen Cox is a professor of literature Jeff Riggenbach is the author of In by a simple majority in both houses of at the University of California San Praise ofDecadence. Congress and signed by the president. Diego and the author of The Woman and A treaty is made by the president and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of ratified by a two-thirds vote of the America. Ted Roberts is a freelance humorist liv­ Senate. The modern congressional­ ing in Huntsville, Ala. executive agreement was invented dur­ Andrew Ferguson is managing editor of ing the New Deal to make it easier to Liberty. Jane S. Shaw is a Senior Fellowof PERC get certain agreements through - The Center for Free Market Congress. The New Dealers remem­ Bettina Bien Greaves is co-compiler of Environmentalism in Bozeman, bered the Treaty of Versailles, which Mises: An Annotated Bibliography. Montana. had been blocked in the Senate. The legal Left tends to argue that Eric Kenning is a freelance writer liv­ congressional-executive agreements are Ann Skousen is a writer and critic ing in New York. Jo interchangeable with treaties: any ques­ who lives in New York. tion can be handled under either form. Yoo disagrees. Treaties can be about Dave Kopel is research director at the Tim Slagle is a stand-up comedian liv­ pretty much anything, but congres­ Independence Institute and author of ing in Chicago. His website is sional-executive agreements, he argues, Antitrust After Microsoft. www.timslagle.com. have to be about something that lies within Congress' enumerated powers. Richard Kostelanetz has published The most obvious such power, regard­ books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and Fred L. Smith, Jr., is president of the ing international affairs, is commerce. It cultural history. Competitive Enterprise Institute. 44 Liberty January 2006

awful. The anachronisms alone are a directed by Martin Campbell. Amblin "The Legend of Zorro," hoot. Mom and Dad take turns walking Entertainment, 2005, 129 minutes. junior to school and picking him up afterwards. Elena asks for and receives a qUickie divorce - in Catholic California. Over dinner, Elena asks her date where she might find the bath­ room to powder her cheeks. A bath­ room? This is 1850. It's out back, over a hole in the ground, for heaven's sakes! The movie even presents a clean­ Zzzorro shaven Abraham Lincoln signing California's statehood papers - but Lincoln wouldn't become president till 1861; it was Millard Fillmore's pen that brought California into the Union. pushed by the producers to capitalize With movies costing many millions Jo Ann Skousen on the success of the original, but with­ of dollars to produce and many more Start with a legendary classic: out any enthusiasm from the original to promote, studios this year seem Zorro. Add an Oscar-winning actres·s crew. The actors seem to be thinking afraid to try anything new. This season (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and a Latin more about their next meal than their has been fraught with sequels, Romeo known for his wry humor next line. Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, remakes, and TV shows turned into (Antonio Banderas). Top with a legen­ who wrote the original "Mask of movies. Occasionally an outstanding dary executive producer (Steven Zorro," are credited with the story, but performance can save a remake ­ Spielberg). Mix with four scriptwriters. two newcomers, Roberto Orci and Alex Johnny Depp was brilliant as Willy And what do you get? A perfect exam­ Kurtzman, joined the committee to Wonka this summer - but great new ple of what has gone wrong with write the screenplay for this sequel. stories are the only sure way to bring movies this year. Z is for zzzzzzz. Their previous credits include such not­ Hollywood out of its malaise. I once With four writers, it's no wonder able projects as "Hercules: Legendary asked Ben Stein why Hollywood, one "The Legend of Zorro" is a mess. Journeys" and "Xena: Warrior Prin­ of the biggest business centers in the Stories - good stories at least - can­ cess." It shows. country, always makes business people not be written by committee. A story I don't mind suspending my disbe­ the bad guys in movies. He suggested needs a compelling conflict, and char­ lief in order to enjoy an action­ the reason is that screenwriters are the acters need believable motivations. adventure flick; in fact, I look forward poorest paid members of the industry, That can't happen when four people to heroes leaping across housetops, and their writing reflects their own are throwing their two cents into the somersaulting onto waiting horses, and bias. Perhaps when studios start paying pot and trying to compromise on the brandishing swords with lightning enough to lure great writers to the result. This movie feels like a sequel speed. But this movie is just shockingly screen, they will get decent movies. 0

Reflections, from page 30

"Atlas Shrugged" in 1955 and wrote a fan letter to Ayn tarian Review. I wish Roy were around to sing her praises Rand. They became friends, and Joan was part of Rand's today. He told me that she taught him to edit, another great New York circle until the 1968 Objectivist crackup. Years and unsung accomplishment. When that magazine failed, she later, after Rand's husband Frank O'Connor died, Joan worked as an editor at the Manhattan Institute - where she wrote her a sympathy note, noting that her own beloved discovered and edited Murray and other writers - and at the husband David Dawson had died recently. Rand responded Foundation for Economic Education. She was a radio com­ affectionately, bringing to mind Joan's better memories of mentator for CBS's Spectrum and for the Cato Institute's their relationship. Byline, and in the 1990s she wrote her two books on In 1964 she supported Barry Goldwater for president and feminism. helped form the Metropolitan Young Republican Club. The When I had to miss a testimonial dinner for her in 2004, I next year she turned its newsletter into the political magazine wrote this to her: "I've just been writing a speech about the Persuasion, which had a libertarian-Objectivist perspective. It problems facing the cause of liberty and limited government, became the first and only political magazine ever endorsed and what individuals can do about it. You are an exemplar of by Ayn Rand. She also tried her hand at writing Broadway the kind of citizen who is essential to the preservation of a musicals, including one titled "North Star," about the free society." From her days with Ayn Rand, to her efforts to Underground Railroad that led escaped slaves to freedom. get the Young Republicans to stand for principle, to her mid­ (Alas, none have been produced.) wifing of important books, to her own writing for newspa­ In 1977 she traveled west to San Francisco, where a pers, radio, and books, she devoted her life to the principles nucleus of libertarian organizations was forming. She joined of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. the brilliant young writer Roy Childs as an editor of Liber- Hers was a life well lived. - David Boaz Liberty 45 Frankfort, Ky. Rome Protecting the homeland from Bingo-playing ter­ Mandatory caring, from Il Messagero: rorists, from the Cincinnati Enquirer: Rome's town council has banned goldfish bowls and Kentucky has been awarded a $36,300 Homeland made regular dog walks mandatory. The classic spherical Security grant aimed at keeping terrorists from playing fish bowls are banned under a new by-law which also stops bingo to raise large amounts of cash, said John Holiday, fish or other animals being given away as fairground prizes. enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming. It comes after a national law was passed to allow jail sen­ Holiday, who applied for the grant, said that to the best of tences for people who abandon cats or dogs. his knowledge, terrorists do not currently profit from charita­ "It's good to do whatever we can for our animals, who in ble gaming in Kentucky. "But the potential there, to me, is exchange for a little love fill our existence with their atten­ just huge. You can earn a tion," said Monica Cirinna, the coun­ lot of money very fast and cilor behind the by-law. deal entirely in cash." Stockholm, Sweden Liverpool, England The electorate knows what it Mourning with doesn't want, given good and hard those who mourn, from by Swedish daily The Local: the Spectator: When Feminist Initiative was Well-wishers founded six months ago, polls had laid more than showed that a quarter of voters a dozen bunches of would consider supporting the flowers, along with party in elections next year cards and teddy because of rising domestic vio­ bears, in an alleyway lence against women and higher where the body of a salaries for men. mystery dead baby was Encouraged by early support, the found - before police real­ party, led by gender studies professor ised it was only a chicken fetus. Tiina Rosenberg, produced a platform calling Liverpool police told the community to "stop grieving, for the elimination of marriage and the institution of a "man it's only a chicken." tax" to cover the costs of domestic violence. In new opinion polls only 1.3% of voters said they would Port Townsend, Wash. vote for the feminist party. Party co-founder Gudrun A glimpse into the objectives of a modern-day Schyman said, "The reason for this campaign against peace movement, from the PTforPeace "cultural state­ [Rosenberg] is that she's a lesbian. The attacks against her ment": are homophobic." "Knowing we have all internalized the violence, patriar­ Lynnwood, Wash. chy, white supremacy, and alienation so prevalent in our society. Knowing that dismantling these systems of oppres­ Novel theory of police ethics, from the Seattle sion involves becoming aware of where they are hiding in Times: our own minds, and that day-to-day patterns of oppression Lynnwood police concede they engaged in "rarely used" are the glue that holds together systems of oppression. tactics, which included officers having prostitutes mastur­ Cultivating gratitude toward the person who points out bate them in exchange for cash, during an undercover inves­ where we may have internalized oppression without being tigation into a suspected prostitution ring. aware of it." Lynnwood police Cmdr. Paul Watkins said he spent a great deal of time justifying the officers' actions to prosecu­ Caracas, Venezuela tors to prove that the officers themselves weren't breaking A statesman looks out for his constituency, from the law. "The officers didn't cross that line of engaging in the Guardian International: intercourse or oral sex," Watkins said. "We have a very ethi­ President Hugo Chavez cautioned Venezuelan parents to cal police department. This does not violate the ethical stan­ protect their children from Halloween with a spooky warn­ dards of our department." ing that the U.S. tradition is rooted in "terrorism." "What they have implanted here, which is really a 'gringo' Diyarbakir, Turkey custom, is terrorism," Chavez said. "They disguise children as Two letters that will not be sponsoring "Sesame witches and wizards, that is contrary to our culture." Street" in Istanbul, from Polish paper Rzeczpospolita: His comments came after authorities in Caracas seized A court fined 20 persons for using the letters Q and W on pumpkins, cardboard skeleton costumes, and other traditional placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a 1928 Halloween items inscribed with anti-Chavez messages. law banning characters not used in the Turkish alphabet.

Special thanks to Russell Garrard, Bryan Coupal, and William Walker for contributions to Terra Incognita. (Readers are invited to forward news clippings or other items for publication in Terra Incognita, or email [email protected].)

46 Liberty Amazing Victory! How ADAM SMITH TRIUMPHED OVER MARX AND KEYNES Dr. Mark Skousen has written a bold, new history like none other. Unlike previous works penned by socialists, Marxists, and Keynesians, Skousen's book provides a running plot with a singular heroic figure, Adam Smith, and ranks every thinker for or against his "system of natural liberty." Highlights include..... The Totem Pole of Economics with Adam Smith, Keynes and Marx. • Exciting new revelations about the lives of Adam Smith, Marx, Keynes, Mises, and Friedman, Artist James Saqui, with in-depth biographies and the author's own research ... commissioned by Mark Skousen. An amazing tale of idle dreamers, academic scribblers, occasional quacks, and madmen in authority. • Over 100 illustrations, portraits, and photographs. • Provocative sidebars, humorous anecdotes, even musical selections reflecting the spirit of each major economist. • The story of three economists who became millionaires, and one who lost it all in the Great Depression. • Three full chapters on the Austrians and two chapters on the Chicagoans. Chapters Titles Reviews 1. It All Started with Adam (Adam Smith, that is) "I couldn't put it down! The musical accompaniments for each chapter are a 2. The French Revolution: Laissez Faire Avance! wonderful touch. Humor permeates the book and makes it accessible like no 3. The Irreverent Malthus Challenges the New Model of Prosperity other history. It will set the standard." 4. Tricky Ricardo Takes Economics Down aDangerous Road 5. 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