Category Archives: Culture

I Took a Look at a Book on my Nook

I love books, always have. For most of my life I was a frequent patron of the local library. But some years ago, I started buying the books that I read – mostly from Amazon, but other online sites as well, e.g., the Conservative Book Club. In the last year, however, I have experienced various difficulties in the process: books sent to the wrong address, wrong book sent to the right address, or no book sent at all. Now I am a fairly tech savvy guy: cut my computing teeth on Unix systems in the 80s and 90s, have a laptop, use an iPhone, set up a wireless home environment. So I figured that I would try an e-reader. I bought the Nook instead of the Kindle or iPad because of cost, size and the fact that the Nook is touch-screen (like my iPhone) and the Kindle is not. This week I downloaded my first Nook book, Mark Steyn’s After America: Get Ready for Armageddon.

In his blockbuster predecessor, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Steyn warned that Western Civilization, as embodied in the ancient countries of Europe, was in its death throes. He speculated about the nature of the world, and especially of our country, when America remained the last outpost of that glorious tradition. In the new book, Steyn says that we needn’t worry about being the last man standing. He argues that in the last decade, and especially since the advent of the Prophet Obama, we have caught up to Europe on the death march and that, unless present trends are sharply and quickly reversed, the US, like the European countries, will soon cease to exist as a free society. Armageddon will be upon the world.

I’m only about a third of the way through the book. It is a fascinating, if exceedingly depressing, read. I recommend it highly. If only the Prophet would read it. But to return to the e-theme of this piece, I want to explore a claim that Steyn makes. To bolster his argument, in fact to demonstrate that the decay of Western Civilization has been going on for a lot longer than we realize, Steyn posits a time traveler from 1890 who makes two stops at 60-year intervals – in 1950 and today. Upon his first stop, the traveler finds that the world has changed far beyond anything he could have conceived in 1890. The automobile and airplane have been invented and are in widespread use. Indoor plumbing is ubiquitous. Radio, TV and movies provide spectacular entertainment. Washing machines, dishwashers and refrigerators transform the meaning of what it means to be a housewife. Miracle drugs like penicillin and insulin have been discovered and previously fatal diseases like diabetes, diphtheria and tuberculosis have been tamed. People routinely communicate across great and small distances by telephone. Homes are both heated and cooled by central systems that seem to require no maintenance. By any measure, the advancements of the 60 year period are spectacular. But, Steyn continues, the traveler gets back in the time machine

And when he dismounts [in 2011] he wonders if he’s made a mistake. Because, aside from a few design adjustments, everything looks pretty much as it did in 1950: the layout of the kitchen, the washer, the telephone…Oh wait. It’s got buttons instead of a dial. And the station wagon in the front yard has dropped the woody look and seems boxier than it did. And the folks getting out seem … larger, and dressed like overgrown children. But other than that, and a few cosmetic changes, he might as well have stayed in 1950.

There is a great deal of truth in Steyn’s analysis. But I think that he underestimates two points and misses a third. The two points are computers and space travel. To be fair, Steyn does acknowledge computing as the one great leap forward in the last 60 years. But he downplays the advance by emphasizing the frivolous and wasteful use of the technology (primarily for individual entertainment) as its main consequence. I think that is unfair as the advent of ubiquitous, high-speed computing has also revolutionized society in countless ways: from manufacturing to sales to advertising, from design of vehicles to military hardware, from social networking to education, not to mention the personal work environment of virtually all Americans.

On the second point, Steyn also acknowledges the phenomenal achievement of sending men to the moon. But then he “proves his point” by remarking that in the last 40 years, we have not followed through on the achievement, much less matched it by any accomplishment in space that is remotely comparable to a moon shot. This illustrates the third point, which he misses – namely, the uneven march of human progress. Human advancement and achievement is not a linear process. Even during the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, the great achievements sometimes came in bunches with fallow periods in between. Are we in a fallow period or are we well along on the irreversible, slippery slope to death and decay? Steyn clearly thinks it is the latter. On the other hand, I have some hope that, even if Europe is doomed, the American people are resilient enough to right the ship.

I cannot deny that Steyn’s arguments are compelling. If he is indeed correct, the US of A is in for some very rough times ahead. Our freedoms will erode, our prosperity will wane and our time in the Sun will conclude after a mere two centuries. The prospect is devastating. But also fascinating – I expect to read all about it on my Nook.
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This article also appeared in The American Thinker at:

The American Train has Jumped the Tracks

Unlike virtually all other countries, the United States of America was founded upon a set of ideas. Its people did not coalesce around a religion, race, ethnic heritage, language or geographical area in order to form itself into a coherent, recognizable nation. Rather the US was constituted by an amazingly astute and prescient group of Founders who created an entity that would maximize individual liberty and endow the people with the greatest chance to have a life of freedom, justice and prosperity. The ideals that undergird this nation, unique in the annals of world history, are enshrined in its founding documents – the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. To be an American is to subscribe to and strive to embody these ideals.

The founding documents laid out the track that Americans were to follow in order to preserve our freedoms, our just society and our unparalleled prosperity. Alas, America has jumped the tracks. It is my purpose here to explain the derailment more concretely and to pose an overarching strategy for returning to the rails.

In fact the tracks have three sets of rails as the American experience is grounded in three fundamental strains, all of which are crucial to the ongoing success of our grand experiment. The strains are political, moral and idealistic.

Political. The Founders established an unprecedented political system that has retained its uniqueness to this day. The Constitution provides for a federal Republic, whose government derives its powers purely from the consent of the people; it is made up of distinct branches with carefully delineated, complementary powers, replete with checks and balances – between the branches and between the national and State governments. The system was designed to establish a national government of VERY limited powers that would maximize individual liberty, establish the rule of law and dispense equal an unbiased justice. Moreover, it was intended to do so in perpetuity.

Moral. By placing the onus for the continued success of the American experiment on the people’s shoulders, not the government’s, the Founders understood that the desired success would depend upon the maintenance of a high moral fabric among the people. The system would only work if the people were generally “good” – meaning that they had a clear understanding of and could distinguish between good and evil, just and unjust, honesty and dishonesty, responsibility and irresponsibility. If the people made the right choices when confronted with moral opposites, the system would work well and the nation would thrive; if not, then corruption, vice and malfeasance would surely follow, with tyranny the ultimate outcome. The people would learn to make the right choices because they were embedded in a society that prized strong families and communities, charity and good works, universal education, a powerful work ethic and the fear of God.

Idealistic. The Founders also understood that they were creating something unique and revolutionary. They expected that their descendants would guard it zealously and hold it up as a beacon for the peoples of the world to emulate. In short the Founders were the first believers in American exceptionalism. They saw the American people as the “new Hebrews,” a people chosen by God to provide, by their example, a light unto the nations in regard to how a just and free society should be organized and governed. Without that type of faith and pride to complement their upstanding morals, the Founders feared that it might prove difficult to sustain the experiment in limited government.

Americans rode those rails for more than a century. But beginning in the so-called Progressive Era a century ago, continuing through the New Deal and the Great Society, and culminating today under the Prophet Obama, the American people have been abandoning these tracks. In all three strains, the train has been diverted onto a route that bears less and less resemblance to the path laid out by the Founders. We might ask:

  1. How and why did this happen?
  2. The loss of which track poses the greatest danger to the Republic?
  3. How can we get back on the rails?

How and why? It didn’t happen by accident. Inspired by ideas imported from Europe, “social reformers” at the turn of the 20th century decided that America’s founding philosophy was flawed. These statist revolutionaries envisioned an America where: fairness trumped liberty; equality of result is more important than equality of opportunity; a benign yet powerful government could achieve more for the health and welfare of the people than individuals could achieve when left to their own devices; change and progress is more important than stability and tradition; order and security outweigh freedom; morals are relative, not absolute. They also argued that there was nothing wonderfully special about a nation that condoned slavery, practiced genocide against its Native inhabitants and imprisoned its own (Japanese-American) citizens in camps.

The progressives and their philosophical offspring, through a relentless assault on many fronts, captured the media, academia, the legal profession, foundations and libraries – indeed, almost all of the opinion-molding organs of American society. The result is a brainwashed electorate that willingly – and unwittingly – aids the progressives in their goal of remaking America into a society that would be anathema to our Founders.

Which track is most important? I warrant that if one queried a progressive in 1905 as to this question, his answer would have been unequivocally #1. He believed that the fundamental political structure of America was wrongly conceived and that it had to be radically altered. He probably felt that going to church was a waste of time and that pride in America was silly; thus he might not focus on the latter two tracks. It was the levers of American governmental power that he sought to control, not the inclinations of the American heart or mind. Alas, to the misfortune of our beloved Republic, there were more astute progressives who understood that the Left could never achieve the political power it sought unless it first undermined the moral and idealistic foundation that made possible the American experiment in freedom and limited government.

The bastards succeeded. Look around. The debauched American culture, the ruptured American family, the President who grovels before and apologizes to world tyrants and miscreants for American misbehavior; all these bear testimony to how far off the second and third rails we have fallen. It is not surprising then that the people are insecure and without confidence, and that they look to government – rather than themselves, their families and communities – for the succor that they seek.

In summary, the first track is the key to controlling society, but the Left realized and acted upon the fact that one had to subvert tracks two and three first in order to achieve their dastardly goal of derailing society from the first track.

Can we recover? This is a grave question with enormous consequences. (For a glimpse into what’s in store if we don’t, the reader might have a look at Mark Steyn’s dire predictions in his brand new book After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. It’s very scary.) In fact, there have been only three previous attempts at recovery in the last century that bear mentioning: Coolidge, Reagan, Gingrich. Coolidge focused almost exclusively on the economy – with great success. But actually, the nature of the nation’s economy is determined as a consequence of the three tracks. As long as America was steady on the rails, it was inconceivable that it would implement any economic system other than free market capitalism – an economy that is most compatible with the tents of the three tracks. Indeed I think that Coolidge had no inkling of the assault on tracks #2 and #3. He probably believed that he and Mellon had undone the damage of the Progressive Era, but he did not appreciate the magnitude of the assault that America faced.

Reagan understood. But he only engaged on tracks #1 & #3. Like Coolidge, he had significant success: restoring America’s pride and military strength, defeating Soviet Communism and jump starting the economy. But, perhaps because he didn’t address #2, and perhaps because too much of the country did not yet understand the extent of the nation’s surrender to the Progressive assault, his successes proved ephemeral. Gingrich was a total flop. He might have understood, but he and his minions were co-opted before they ever got out of the barracks.

The rise of the Tea Party movement shows that a significant portion – albeit still a minority – of the people is coming to understand the nature of the radical assault on America, and what its consequences will be. Is it too late? Can we reverse course – at least on some of the tracks? I believe that the experience of Reagan proves that we can recover only if we counterattack on all three tracks. That’s the overarching strategy promised at the beginning of the article. More concrete details will be presented on another occasion.
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This post also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative at:

An American Playwright Sees the Light

In the fall of last year, I published two posts in this journal that were testaments to the genius of Friedrich Hayek (see On the Genius of Friedrich Hayek, post I and post II). I argued there that progressive education in America in the last decades has shielded the brains of our children from the monumental brilliance of Hayek. Of course it has done no such thing with his contemporary, John Maynard Keynes. Keynes’ big government, tax-borrow-spend, statist philosophy is taught in our schools as if it were the Bible, whereas whenever we adhere to its tenets, we suffer the inevitable miserable consequences: high unemployment, inflation, stagnant economic growth (cf. F. Roosevelt, L. Johnson, J. Carter and B. Obama). In those few instances when our country has followed the light shed by Hayek’s free market, limited government, individual liberty ideas (cf. Coolidge, Reagan), the US economy has exploded with robust growth, economic prosperity, increased government revenues and enhanced charitable contributions. Why we follow the discredited ideas of Keynes and ignore the proven philosophies of Hayek is a mystery that I will leave to another time.

However, on occasion, the light from Hayek’s brilliant mind does shine through to a previously inoculated denier. One such convert who has seen the light is David Mamet, the famous American playwright, who had an epiphanous change of heart within the last decade. This is explained in Mamet’s new book, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture. Not unexpectedly, the playwright writes with great force, clarity and humor. I read his book and felt somewhat like I did when I read Hayek a few decades ago. I must have marked two score pages in Mamet’s book that contained quotes, which were memorable for their wisdom, insight and sensibleness. And so I would have liked to replicate here for the reader’s benefit what I did with Hayek’s work – i.e., compile a substantial compendium of the most penetrating, edifying and forehead-slap inducing paragraphs in the book. Alas, my compendium ran in excess of 2,000 words and Mamet’s publisher informed me that he could not permit that. Thus the reader will have to be satisfied with the standard, if somewhat ill-defined, limit for ‘fair use’ in a book review, namely some hundreds of words.

In order to pare down, I restricted the choice to quotes having to do only with culture – Mamet’s primary emphasis, as his subtitle indicates. Actually, Mamet also writes brilliantly on politics and economics; he has clearly studied Hayek very carefully. But as he is a playwright, the culture is clearly of preeminent importance to him. Of course, Mamet, unlike Hayek, is plowing well trod ground. On the other hand, Mamet writes with more literary style than Hayek – without a commensurate loss in clarity. As you peruse these trenchant quotes, those of you familiar with Hayek’s work will recognize familiar themes and I trust all of you will reach the conclusion that I did – Mamet’s book, like Hayek’s, should be standard fare on high school and college curricula. (Don’t hold your breath though!)

The great wickedness of Liberalism, I saw, was that those who devise the ever new State Utopias, whether crooks or fools, set out to bankrupt not themselves, but others…I saw that I had been living in a state of ignorance, accepting an unexamined illusion and calling it “compassion,” …I saw that to proclaim…beliefs in individual freedom, in individual liberty, and in the inevitable surrender of powers to the State, was, in the general population, difficult, and in the Liberal environment, literally impossible…

So let us enact hate crime laws, as if getting beaten to death were more pleasant if one was not additionally called a greaser. And let us ensure that the Government, to eradicate “hate speech,” will become the arbiter of all speech – the same Government whose very return address on the envelope awakens fear.

And it [liberalism] may indict religion as superstition. But man cannot live without religion, which is to say, without a method for dealing with cosmic mystery and those things ever beyond understanding; so the new religion will not be identified as such. It will be called Multiculturalism, Diversity, Social Justice, Environmentalism, Humanitarianism, and so on. These, individually and conjoined, assert their imperviousness to reason, and present themselves as the greatest good; but as they reject submission either to a superior unknowable essence (God), or to those operations of the universe capable of some understanding (science and self-government), their worship foretells a reversion to savagery.

This is the meaning of Social Justice. It means actions by the State in the name of Justice, which is to say under complete protection and immunity from review. Its end is dictatorship.

That our culture is falling apart is apparent to any impartial observer. But what observer can be impartial? Conservatives are aghast; we are shocked at the actions of the Left, and we are astounded that they do not acknowledge these actions’ results…It is not that they do not care. But that they cannot afford to notice, for comparing their actions to the results would bring about either their ejection from the group (should they voice their doubts) or, should they merely follow their perceptions to their logical conclusions, the psychic trauma incident upon a revision of their worldview.

Curiously, the brightest (or, perhaps, the highest achievers) of our educational system go to the elite universities where intelligent young people are misled into the essential fallacy of Liberalism: that all society and human interaction is susceptible to human reason, and that tradition, patriotism, marriage, and similar institutions are arbitrary, and stand between the individual’s spontaneity and his ability to create a perfect world: that the individual’s reason is supreme, that he is, thus, God

To fix a game for money is called corruption, to fix a game from sentiment is called Liberalism.

We may be inspired to break the laws, discard the customs, and to destroy the culture which allowed us the freedom and leisure to so engage ourselves; and I, growing up in the sixties, thought it a grand idea: to bring about Social Justice…That such actions, whatever their supposed intention, caused havoc and that we who espoused them were responsible for the same, was to me a difficult perception. It still is…The embrace of Conservatism, my own, and that of anyone coming to it in maturity, necessitates a deep and rigorous survey and evaluation of thoughts and actions, and their honest assessment… It means leaving the group…It…is painful to recognize the incredulity and scorn which one encounters from one’s native Group (the Liberals) on announcing a change of philosophy. It is shocking. And it is sobering, for it reveals this truth: that the Left functions, primarily, through its power as a primitive society or religion, dedicated above all to solidarity, and not only to acceptance but to constant promulgation of its principles, however inchoate, as self-evident” and therefore beyond question. But, as Hayek points out, that something is beyond question most often means that its investigation has been forbidden. Why? Because it was untrue.

It is rare to encounter an American “celebrity” who takes a strong political stand on the right. More typically, we are exposed to moronic celebrities like George Clooney, Bill Maher and Susan Sarandon, who spew forth from their limited intellects leftist claptrap, socialist dogma and their fervent belief that they are enlightened and people like Mamet have been corrupted by the devil. Sadly, our biggest celebrity, namely Barack Obama, is equally benighted. I am certain that Mamet’s life among the glitterati has been far less pleasant since he emerged from the liberal closet. I, too, as a conservative academic in the liberal cesspool that passes for higher education in America today, have suffered the indignities of scorn from my enlightened colleagues. Therefore, I admire Mamet for taking such a public stand. The magnificence of his book should serve as a partial reward for his courage.

In fact, another part of his reward has been an enthusiastic embrace by conservatives around the country. His book has been highly favorably reviewed in conservative journals and he has been interviewed on Fox and other conservative venues. Just as a representative sampling, here is a short portion of a review by Steve Laib in The Intellectual Conservative:

The essential substance of The Secret Knowledge is a laser precise dissection of all of the sacred cows of modern liberal politics.  This dissection is performed not through a textbook approach of straightforward topic-by-topic analysis.  Instead the author uses a brilliantly conceived sort of travelogue wandering through the landscape of popular culture and behavior using examples and anecdotes from the usual and unusual sources to explain exactly why the liberal mind operates the way it does, and further, why it is generally impossible to move one toward rational thought…David Mamet’s…work is one of the most fascinating pieces of writing I have ever encountered, not only because of its source and content, but because of the way it is written.  It is truly extraordinary. 

I heartily endorse Laib’s last sentiment. Mamet’s book is extraordinary because the pace is brisk, the scope is amazing, the analysis is penetrating, the skewering of liberal thought is complete and delightful to read, the explanation of conservative philosophy is sharp and convincing, the humor, honesty, introspection and lack of self-aggrandizement is on full display.

I will close by remarking that a reverse endorsement is provided in Mamet’s book. Namely, I believe that his book endorses the sentiments expressed in the concluding paragraph of my second article (referenced above), which briefly summarize Hayek’s brilliant ideas. It reads: “The fundamental truths which Hayek espouses should serve as a guide to conservative politicians and economists, indeed to all people in the nation whose desire for the country is success and prosperity. Clearly, they have guided Mamet. Hayek explains why free markets work better and are more just than collectivist planning. He describes how social values and cultural morals that are developed by communal trial and error are more reliable and humane than behavior dictated by political elites. He argues that social advancement and individual accomplishment are better served by uninhibited competition than by edicts and artificial rules imposed by anointed experts. In order for one to accept the legitimacy of Hayek’s reasoning one must be willing to trust the efficacy of “unseen forces,” invisible hands, seemingly irrational and/or random processes and unprovable theories over and above the desire for order decreed and enforced by leaders and experts. To do so arguably goes against human nature. It requires a difficult leap of faith – not religious faith, but more a faith in the reliability of historical observation, acquired wisdom and the unformulated but immutable laws of human nature. If teachers do not accept this paradigm, their students learn its negative – despite the vast history that shows how accurate Hayek’s formulations for societal and economic organization have proven to be.” Mamet gets it. Let’s hope that his star quality will help others to see the light.
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This post also appeared in The Land of the Free at:
and also in The Intellectual Conservative at:

The Stock Market is Making Me Dizzy – and Nauseous

Last summer I posted an entry in this blog entitled The Stock Market is Making Me Dizzy. In that piece I bemoaned the – what seemed at the time – wild gyrations in the stock market. I pointed out that as a newly retired person, it was very difficult to know how to position and manage my 401(k) funds if I had no idea what the short-term – much less long-term – trend of the stock market was going to be. I worried that the current moment resembled 1934 in that Bush-Obama was startling similar to Hoover-FDR and I wondered whether the upcoming fall election would channel that of 1934 or 1994. Fortunately it was the latter. Of course we are all wondering whether the election of 2012 will mirror those of 1936 and 1996 or of 1980, but that history is still 15 months from being written.

At the moment, the market is even wilder than it was last summer. The daily gyrations are worse – both in frequency and amplitude. The prognosticators are all over the map with their explanations of why, not to mention what comes next. And the recommendations for coping range from apocalyptic to incoherent: convert everything to precious metals (ignoring the risk that the astronomical price of gold might be at its apex); or convert everything to cash (upon which the effective rate of return is miniscule, and actually, essentially negative due to the fact that our official “low” inflation index is bogus); buy T-bills (backed by the full faith and credit of our newly downgraded government); move equities to bonds; or stay put. I don’t have Warren Buffet’s resources and insider information. Trying to decide what to do is enough to make one nauseous.

Why might this summer’s stock market turmoil be worse than last summer’s? Three reasons occur to me:

  1. Europe and the global economy. There have been days on which “analysts” attribute the wild swings on Wall Street purely to economic (or political) events in Europe or the Far or Middle East. Given how intertwined global finance has become, I have no doubt that there is some – perhaps substantial – truth to these assertions. It seems to me that these trends will only strengthen and, therefore – since the world is not getting any more stable – investors had better get used to stock market volatility as the new normal.
  2. The US financial situation. Things really haven’t gotten better since last summer. Well, it is true that the liquidity/banking/housing/auto manufacturing crisis of 2008-09 has ameliorated to some extent. But it is also true that our deficit/debt/unemployment/stagnant growth crisis continues unabated. Moreover, a much greater percentage of the population has become aware of the perilous and deteriorating economic health of our country. More people now understated that the federal (and also State) government(s) have grown into monsters that are eating our wealth, corrupting our business and diminishing our future prospects. The worry is palpable and it certainly affects Wall Street performance.
  3. It has been conventional wisdom that political gridlock in the form of mixed control of the various branches of the federal government is good for the country. One can cite many supporting examples: for example, the good times during the eras of Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton. Conversely, when one party has been in complete control, things have not gone so well – for example, under Johnson, Carter and during the first two years of the Obama administration. Well, we have mixed control now; why aren’t things improving? One possible reason is the hardening of the nation’s political arteries. The hard Left now virtually controls the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is coming under increasing control of the hard Right. These two communities hold sharply different visions for the future of America. The possibilities of a meeting of the minds in the middle are increasingly remote. Political polarization intensifies. One result: greater instability on Wall Street.

So will we be OK? Optimists say: the US still has the most dynamic economy on earth; Americans remain among the most hard-working and resilient people on the planet; the country is rich in natural and (now we know) energy resources; its competition around the globe, while growing stronger, is still very weak compared to us; our economy – mired as it is in government debt and regulation—is still in better shape than that of our competitors; profits are good, corporations are sitting on a pile of cash and labor unrest is almost unheard of. We’ll tame unemployment and stagnant growth – it just might take longer than after past recessions.

Pessimists counter: the deficit/debt problem is unprecedented, perhaps insoluble and no one in Washington is addressing it seriously; all the metrics indicate that we are a poorer county than we were in the previous generation (which never happened in our history) and the markers point toward continued decline; the government has metastasized beyond the point that its growth can be tamed by other than revolutionary means; 50% of the people pay no income tax, reflecting the fact that we are not a country of rich and poor but a country of givers and takers; industrial innovation increasingly comes from overseas; our military is stretched thin and by any objective measure grows weaker and weaker, and we do not have the funds to restore it.

So which is it? I don’t know. That’s why I am nauseous.

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This blog post also appeared in The American Thinker at:

What Would the Founders Say Back on the Road to Serfdom?

The title refers to two recent books: What Would the Founders Say, by Larry Schweikart and Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism, edited by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. On the surface, these are very different books that treat distinct topics in unlike styles. Schweikart identifies ten fundamental questions concerning the role of government – ranging from “Should the government stimulate the economy and otherwise ensure full employment?” to “Should…governments…have the authority to regulate gun ownership?” He then presents ten essays, each addressed to one question, in which he strives to explain how he believes the Founders would have answered the question. He does this by meticulously consulting original sources (of course including America’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers), but also pamphlets, letters and newspaper articles penned by the Founders. His findings are neatly encapsulated in these paragraphs from his final summary chapter.

It should be apparent from what the Founders said and how they acted that such current practices as bailing out banks and auto companies, having the federal government dictate diet and health practices, requiring the government to provide jobs, and sending the nation spiraling into astronomical levels of debt would all be anathema to them. Many modern government “functions” are so outrageously outside the powers that the founders permitted the government to have that, faced with modern society, they would certainly be revolutionaries, burning the whole structure down to start anew. In such a case, a new bill of rights would likely be double its current size, and deeper in specificity and the limitations on the power of the federal government would almost certainly be vastly expanded.

                              …

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Opposing tyranny and despotism are not only man’s right, Jefferson concluded, but it was “their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” The current administration and those in Congress today seldom refer to the Founders, and with good reason. The Founders would have utterly rejected their attitudes and direction.

                                          ….

What can we learn from the Founders, even when “our” problems weren’t “their” problems? A great deal. They operated on a set of principles that, like mathematics, was applicable in almost any situation, and across time. It is the genius of the Constitution that it provided flexibility to adapt to almost any modern problem, while at the same time containing the overall imperative of reducing or limiting the power of the national government and placing power in the hands of the people. Not surprisingly, virtually none of the modern Left – save when it comes to certain civil rights – ever refers to the Constitution. To them, it is a stumbling block, an impediment. To the Left, the Constitution must be overcome, flanked or ignored. When Martin Luther King Jr. led civil rights marchers in singing “We Shall Overcome,” he meant that they would overcome the barriers that denied them their constitutional rights. When modern leftists employ the phrase, they mean “We Shall Overcome the Constitution”! A better solution to the nation’s problems would be overcoming the Left and its deviant, perverse, and, yes, sinister ideas, once and for all.

Woods’ book also contains ten essays, but each by a different author. The essays treat the origins, development and consequences of massively expanded government in our so-called mixed economy. Topics treated include: protectionism, entrepreneurship (its practice and its vilification), crony capitalism, class warfare and cultural collapse. Whereas single authorship in Schweikart’s book leads, not surprisingly, to an enviable consistency in the content and style of the essays, the varied authorship in Woods’ book results in markedly different styles, organization and effectiveness. However, the ultimate conclusions are remarkably similar to Schweikart’s. Here are the telling passages from Woods’ introductory chapter:

The unifying theme of this book, though, is the brute fact that a shift toward statism is indeed occurring, and that it will not end happily. History is littered with foreign and domestic crises that became pretexts for the expansion of government power, and the present instance appears to be no exception.

                                          ….

The problems we face stem from the mixed economy, as opposed to the fully socialist ones that Hayek criticized. All over the world, the impossible promises governments have made to their populations are beginning to unravel. Millions of people have arranged their lives in the expectation of various forms of government support that will be mathematically impossible to provide.

                                          ….

What the rising generations across the developed world are facing is a genuine road to serfdom. They will have to work harder and longer than their parents just to tread water, if they can find work at all in artificial economies battered by years of “stimulus” and misdirected resources. Retirement will seem like something out of science fiction. And to add insult to injury, they will be putting in this effort on behalf of transfer programs that are going to collapse anyway – Social Security, Medicare, pensions, and so forth.

                                          ….

The more functions the state usurps from civil society, the more institutions of civil society will atrophy. Once supplanted by coercive government, tasks that people used to perform on a voluntary basis come to be viewed as impossible for civil society to manage in the absence of government – even though civil society did indeed perform these functions once upon a time. The spiritless population comes, in turn, to look for political solutions even to the most trivial problems.

                                          ….

Americans are taught a great deal of civics-book nonsense about the nature of the state, the benefits it confers, and the unbearable difficulties we would face without its careful custodianship of society. In reality, Americans are ruled by a patchwork of self-perpetuating fiefdoms, which beneath a veneer of public-interest rhetoric seek to pursue their own power and resources.

There is, one would think, another way for human beings to live than this. Ironically, it is government itself that is about to teach that very lesson. When its grandiose schemes and promises inevitably unravel, all that will be left is civil society managing its own affairs, the very thing we have been taught to believe is impossible.

Both books are thoroughly researched and very well written. However, like so many of the genre, it is unfortunately quite likely that they will be preaching to the converted. Conservatives will find much within these books with which they will heartily agree. They will also find new information and perspectives that will boost their arsenal in their fervent, if forlorn, verbal battles with their liberal colleagues and friends. Liberals, on the other hand, will find little of interest to them in these fine books. That is simply because liberals won’t read them. In both books it is immediately clear that the authors condemn the ongoing liberal assault on America’s economy and culture, and that they believe that said assault is bringing America to ruin. Liberals treat such beliefs as hogwash (when they are not branding them as treasonous) and they certainly will not expose themselves to that kind of thought by reading traitorous books.

Continuing to pursue the thread that – despite their apparent differences – the books are surprisingly similar, I wish to point out three subthemes that are present in both books, even if they are not emphasized.

  1. Both books inherently assume that America began to seriously lose sight of the wisdom of the Founders, and started its unwise trek down the road to serfdom during the so-called Progressive Era, which began in earnest in 1900 with the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt.
  2. With rare exception (under Coolidge and Reagan, e.g.), the country has moved steadily over the last century and a decade to the Left. It experienced extreme lurches to port during the eras of Wilson, FDR, LBJ and between 2008 and 2010 under Obama-Pelosi-Reid. Through its domination of the media, educational establishment, legal profession, government bureaucracies, libraries and foundations, the Left has been able to monopolize the national conversation, presenting (even egregiously) leftist policies as mainstream while demonizing (even modestly) conservative ideas as perverse, dangerous and out of the mainstream.
  3. A century of damage is not going to be undone overnight – if it is going to be undone at all. To think – even if the Republicans recapture the White House and Senate in 2012 – that 18th and 19th century-style America is going to rapidly reemerge is the height of folly. No second coming of Reagan is going to balance the budget, retire the debt, free up our markets, restore the concept of American exceptionalism, re-instill traditional values, deregulate the government bureaucracy and restore prosperity – all in the space of four or eight years. It will take at least two generations. Alas, it is far from clear that the American people can sustain the will over that long a period to accomplish the task.
Which brings me to my last point about the books. Both tracts contain more a description of “what went wrong” rather than a prescription of “how to make it right.” Recipes for fixes are scarce in either book and what suggestions are made are actually quite minor – a step in the right direction, rather than a radical global fix. What stratagems appear are more in the vogue of “a camel’s nose under the tent” as opposed to a second American Revolution. This is in some sense ironic because it mimics the Left’s “successful” 20th century game plan, that is, the slow, steady, inexorable expansion of government control of the economy, politics and culture. It pains me to recommend that conservatives take a page from the liberal playbook – as these books implicitly do – but that might be the only winning strategy.
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