Vol. 10.11, November 1977

A Monthly Newsletter

THE
Libertarian Forum

Joseph R. Peden, Publisher		Murray N. Rothbard, Editor
VOLUME X NUMBER 11	NOVEMBER, 1977	US-ISSN0047-4517

Two Exits

I: HHH

And still, it is not over—the endless preoccupation with HHH and his final illness. Just as it is now the imbecile fashion not only for a father to “parent” (a hideous neologism) but also to feel and enjoy the mother’s labor pains, so we were all taken step-by-step through every loving detail and nuance of Hubert Horatio Humphrey’s terminal illness, and through his interminable series of funerals. Surely, if they could have gotten away with a funeral in every town in America, they would have done so. Even now, when Humphrey is laid to rest, we shall be receiving indefinitely Hubert’s Messages from On High as relayed through the widow Muriel, slated to succeed him in the United States Senate. Already, we are being abjured—precisely in the spirit of “Win It for the Gipper”—to go out and pass the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill for the Hump.

There has been no such massive outpouring of hooey since the death of Harry S. Truman, when all of his former enemies rushed to nominate and elect him to sainthood. But that, at least, was a one-shot deal; the man died, was elevated, and that was that. Mercifully, we were spared every detail of Truman’s final illness. But now, as my friend Ronald Hamowy likes to say, we were to be spared nothing.

What are we to say of all this? First, in the interest of truth and of public common sense, we must right the historical record. The maxim nil nisi bonum was always pretty silly anyway, and certainly is intolerable for a government official, where the doctrine can be and is habitually used to whitewash not only the politician in question but, by extension, all politicians. Jimmy Carter’s absurd declamation that “Hubert Humphrey was the most beloved by all Americans” will be met by many of us with the immortal Sam Goldwynism: “Kindly include me out.” Hubert Humphrey was the very model of a modern Social Democrat, his only solution for all social problems the vast expenditure of federal funds. He was an enthusiastic and ardent champion of Big Government all the way, in domestic and foreign affairs, not only whooping it up for all American wars, hot and cold, but also a leading enthusiast, at the height of the Cold War, for packing alleged subversives away in a concentration camp. Always an opportunist, Humphrey reached the acme of this trait in his consistently sycophantic behavior as Vice President, that is, his absolute subservience to Power. Have we all forgotten so soon? Among his fellow opportunists and Social Democrats, he was distinguished largely for his unquenchable garrulity, for being the Motor Mouth of our epoch—a trait which people did not find nearly so lovable when he was in full vigor as they do now in retrospect.

Secondly, we must cry out against this culmination of the current tendency to expose every celebrity’s running sores to an avid, lipsmacking public. The moment when a President’s body became public property can be precisely pointed: Ike Eisenhower’s ileitis attack in the mid-1950’s. It was a disease which had not hit the public eye before or since, but every symptom was served up to the panting public in excruciating detail. Then came Ike’s heart attack, LBJ’s heart attack and abdominal operation, etc. With the apotheosis of HHH, we now have this practice brought down to other ranks of politicians. In these days of encounter groups, touchee-feelee, and Instant Intimacy, it might seem a lost cause to call for a return to the precious value of privacy, of the closed rather than the open, but it must be done nevertheless.

Another important lesson is the multi-partisan nature of the Humphrey love feast. For what do we see in the encomiums to a Humphrey or a Truman by such seemingly bitter former enemies as a William Buckley or a Richard Nixon? What we see in this ingathering of politicians is the lesson: all of us politicians really agree, we are really one—in short, they are all in it together at the public trough. In a crunch, they are as one: Republocrat, Demopublican, left, right, or center, the whole marauding gang; in the final analysis, it is them versus us. In the immortal phrase of Dos Passos: “all right, we are two nations.”

Lest all this seem too harsh, let us keep in mind that countless millions of people—most of them far more deserving of accolades then HHH—have died, unwept, unhonored, and unsung, and that many of them have died of cancer. Even a large number of politicians have died, and a considerable number have died of cancer. Yet this is the first time such a brouhaha has been made, such an extended fuss as to dwarf even the Super Bowl.

II: Arthur F. Burns

In its own muted way, the hoopla surrounding the potential and then actual ouster of Arthur F. Bums as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board was full of as much hokum as the fuss over HHH. Knowing that Burns’s terms as the powerful boss of America’s money-creating factory was up in January, the right-center, that is, the right wing of the Establishment, put on a quietly hysterical campaign for several months to pressure President Carter to reappoint Arthur Burns.

On the face of it, it was difficult to see why Carter should reappoint Burns. After all, a new President likes to have his own team around him, the head of the Fed is a crucial policy-making post, so why in blazes should Carter have continued this veteran Republican, this Eisenhower-Nixon-Ford retread, in high office? The carefully orchestrated campaign, headed by ex-Republican Council of Economic Advisors’ members Paul McCraken (in the Wall St. Journal) and Herb Stein (in the New York Times), stressed the politics of fear. The hype went as follows: Arthur Burns was the only person, the indispensable man, in the fight against inflation; this septuagenarian was the only man in America who could be trusted to battle inflation and whom businessmen here and throughout the world would trust to combat this menace. As a lagniappe in this campaign, the right-centrists trotted out the old saw about the importance of keeping the Federal Reserve “independent” from the government, of keeping the Fed “out of politics”—a status that would supposedly be endangered if the beloved Burns were not kept in a kind of lifetime spot as czar of the money supply. In short, the right-centrists were trying to do for Burns what their ancestors had once successfully done for J. Edgar Hoover, Harry Anslinger, and Frances Knight (of the immigration office)—lifetime “bipartisan” satraps unchecked by popular will.

This, of course, is all a shuck. The Federal Reserve is not some sort of mystical entity separate and apart from the government of the United States; on the contrary, it is a vital part of that government. It has never been “apart” from politics, but necessarily hip deep in political decisions. Arthur Burns, as I have said above, is a veteran of every Republican administration since World War II. The very idea of insulating “government” from “politics” only makes sense as a means of insulating dictatorial rule from any kind of popular check or influence.

But what of the most important issue: Arthur Burns as beloved battler against inflation? This is true if we consider only rhetoric and never substance. Burns has been outstanding, it is true, at rhetorical attacks on inflation; but his concrete actions have been to generate not only inflation, but the biggest and most deadly peacetime inflation in the country’s history. He did it by generating unprecedented and continuing creation of new money, money which then enters the economy and drives prices upward. As James Dale Davidson writes in a recent Penthouse, Burns has been “constantly denouncing inflation at the same time that he personally supervises its creation.” (James Davidson, “The Inflationists,” Penthouse, February, 1978, p. 51.) And yet, I suppose that in an America that pays attention to rhetoric rather than substance, it should not be surprising that an Arthur Burns should gain a reputation as an enemy, rather than a creator, of inflation.

And then there were the curious events surrounding Bums’ ultimate ouster. After months of a press campaign to the effect that hysteria would hit the corporate boardrooms of the world should Arthur Burns be let go, what happened, you might ask, when the pilot was finally dropped—when it was announced to the world that Burns would be succeeded by the unknown businessman, G. William Miller? Were there howls, and wails, and much gnashing of teeth? Did corporations crumble from California to the Elbe? To the contrary. There were virtually no complaints at all, certainly not from the business or banking world. Everybody rushed to compliment the President on this wise and wonderful choice, and nobody fussed, including Bums himself. Irving Shapiro of DuPont and Raymond James of General Electric rushed to applaud, and even to take credit for, the selection of Miller.

Arts And Movies

by Mr. First Nighter

The Eagle Had Landed, dir. by John Sturges. With Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, and Jenny Agutter. At last! A rip-roaring, exciting adventure-spy yarn, replete with suspense and excitement. John Sturges has done an excellent job in filming the splendid spy-novel by Jack Higgins of the same title. A team of German commandos lands heroically in East Angelia during World War II to try to kidnap and/or assassinate Winston Churchill. It is a marvelous spy-caper story, with the reader/viewer’s sympathies neatly enlisted in behalf of the commando team (helped by the of course inevitable fact that German hero Steiner (Michael Caine) is authentically anti-Nazi.) Caine’s partner, a great character, is a stalwart of the Irish Republican Army (Donald Sutherland.) Particularly remarkable in Sturges’ direction is his ability to take such incurable hams as Caine and Sutherland and getting them to restrain their natural propensities for overacting. As a result, Caine and Sutherand give their finest, most subtle performances. Jenny Agutter is delightful as the East Anglia girl who falls for Sutherland.

As admirable as the movie is, it is not quite as good as the book. The sins are one of omission: the book’s marvelous love story between the East Anglia girl and the Irish agent is badly truncated in the movie; and there is very little of the book’s detailed and suspenseful buildup (a la The Jackal) showing how the Irishman accumulates his illegal materials for the assassination attempt. In other words, the movie should have been about half an hour longer. But nevertheless, the picture is highly recommended.

There are many lessons in this story. One, to put it very mildly, is not to believe everything you read. Two, is to heed the spectacle of all the luminaries: in business, banking, politics, the media, rushing to cozy up to the seat of Power, regardless of who happens to sit in it. If an Arthur Burns holds the top monetary power for umpteen years, he becomes, by virtue of that fact, wise, beloved, and indispensable. Any criticisms of him will be muted and behind the arras, because every one and every group wants to be a favorite of Power, and in this important case, wants to be close to the new greenbacks as they roll forth from the Fed’s printing presses (both literally and in the sense of checkbook money.) And when the current Power-holder is inevitably and irretrievably removed, well then the next guy, whoever he is—a Bill Miller or a Joe Zilch—will be automatically and instantly wise and beloved, and, after a decent interval, will himself be dubbed indispensable.

As for Miller’s actual policies, we can be sure, from his sponsorship and his few pronouncements over the years, of more of the same: inflation with a conservative face. What his rhetoric will be is a matter of personal style, but there is no reason to expect any change in substance.

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Rent Control: the New York City Case

by Walter Block

One of the clearest violations of the free market philosophy in the housing area is rent control. It amounts to a denial of the widely accepted view that consenting adults have the right to make contractual arrangements without outside interference. It is of the utmost importance to subject this law to critical analysis.

The problem with discussing rent control, however, is that many people are likely to have very strong opinions on the matter. If the proponents and opponents of rent control have one thing in common, it is the strength and certainty with which they hold their opinions on the subject. This is indeed unfortunate. For any subject which affects virtually the whole housing supply of a city would be far better dealt with in a dispassionate, logical and calm manner, one able to shed light rather than heat on the subject.

I shall nevertheless venture out onto these troubled waters because I think it important to demonstrate that rent control, and indeed any law which interferes with the right of consenting adults to make bargains among themselves, must inevitably lead to poor results. It is my opinion that rent control causes slums, that it causes discrimination in housing, both overcrowding and underutilization of housing, and that it interferes with mobility. But these things have been amply documented. In this paper I shall therefore discuss something not quite so fully documented: the question of who benefits and who loses from rent control.

If there is one thing that many of the proponents and the opponents of rent control have in common, apart from their strong views on the subject, it is the belief that rent control must benefit all tenants and harm all landlords. This could not be further from the truth, however. For what rent control actually accomplishes in its attempt to keep rents down is to raise the price of non-rent controlled apartments higher than they would have been in the absence of rent control. It does this by discouraging the construction of new residential buildings, as these new owners come to fear the imposition of rent control on their own buildings. (This fear will occur even when rent control does not apply to dwellings built in the future.) And anything that decreases the supply of housing, elementary supply and demand analysis tells us, will raise the price of housing. So the tenants of non-rent controlled apartments are made worse off by rent control.

What of the tenants of rent-controlled apartments? Surely they gain from rent control? Not necessarily. Although some few tenants of rent-controlled apartments can benefit from rent control, the overwhelming majority will not. The majority of rent-controlled tenants will pay lower rents than otherwise because of rent control, all right, but the quality, services, care, and upkeep of the apartment will decrease more than proportionately, so that even though they will pay less rent, they will be worse off. The quality of the apartment will decrease (compared to what it would have been in the absence of rent control) because the landlord will have virtually no financial incentive to maintain it. In the semi free market society that we live in, people do not provide services out of altruism. The butcher, baker and candlestick-maker provide us with top quality services, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because we pay them a competitive price to do so. If we refuse to pay them adequately, or are not allowed to pay them adequately, they will no longer provide us with the same quality of service. We cannot maim the goose and expect the same quality of eggs.

It is the same with landlords. The quality of apartment services will inexorably decrease. One, because financial incentives to maintain the property will have been stripped from the landlord; and two, because even if there were some landlords who out of a sense of duty, obligation, altruism, or whatever, maintained their buildings in the pro-rent control style, they would soon suffer grave losses, and either be forced into bankruptcy, or else held back from expanding their scope of real estate activity. In either case, under rent control, the market would penalize those landlords who attempted to maintain the quality of their buildings.

The quality of the apartment will decrease more than proportionately to the fall in rent because this decrease in maintenance will ignite the well known “vicious circle” of decay: the decay of each apartment and each building will feed on and encourage the decay of every other apartment and building on the block and in the neighborhood. Services which were taken for granted before the advent of rent control will now have to be performed by amateur “block associations”, “tenant groups”, etc. But these part-time associations will never be able to insure the degree of sanitation services, police and fire protection, building code enforcement, etc., that associations of professional landlords with strong financial incentives in quality dwellings would be able to maintain. Let there be price controls in the restaurants of our city analogous in scope and severity to the rent controls the landlords have had to put up with, and all the amateur, part-time “restaurant associations”, “food cooperatives,” etc., will never be able to match the quality of service that our restauranteurs, with strong financial incentives in providing quality food and service, have been able to maintain. So the tenants of rent-controlled apartments will also be made worse off by rent control, as the entire neighborhood deteriorates, suffering fear of criminals, dirty streets, rampant garbage and vermin.

Not all tenants of rent-controlled buildings are made worse off by rent control. Some few are benefited. The key to understanding why some tenants are benefited while most are made worse off is the financial incentive to maintain his building that the landlord may have under rent control. The landlord will still have a financial incentive to maintain his building even under rent control in several cases. One, if he expects an end to rent control and his building is in a high rent district. Then he will be able to raise his rents to a high level after decontrol. Here, the whole neighborhood is not likely to fall pray to the vicious circle of housing decay that rent control engenders. (If the owner of such a building does not expect rent control to end, his incentives to maintain the building will be very low indeed; he will have a much greater financial incentive to hasten the building into disrepair, so that he can demolish it, and build a new non-controlled one instead). Secondly, the landlord will have a financial incentive to maintain a rent-controlled building if there are at least several decontrolled apartments within the building and/or the prospects of some more to come. Once again, the building will have to be in a high rent, luxury area, otherwise there is no sense investing in the maintenance of a building, waiting for decontrolled apartments which will not be worth much when they arrive.

In these cases, the dwellers in rent-controlled apartments are likely to benefit from great bargains. But in virtually all of these cases, the tenants will be rich and perhaps old people who have been living there for many years. And the few cases where the lucky tenants are not rich old people who have been living in luxury areas all their lives are likely to be government bureaucrats, especially housing and rent control bureaucrats who have taken advantage of their positions to obtain 12-room apartments with river views in some of the finest older apartment houses in Manhattan. These limousine liberals can sometimes obtain these apartments for less than $100 per month.

What of the landlords? Is it true that they all lose from the imposition of rent control? Again, not necessarily. The landlords who have continuously owned their buildings since 1941, the year that rent control began, most assuredly do lose out because of rent control. Hundreds of millions of dollars of housing value have been lost by these landlords; and some of the landlords whose buildings have been subject to the vicious circle of housing decay may have lost their total housing values.

Some people have argued that it is entirely unfair to force a small part of the population, landlords, to subsidize the poor via rent control; that if the poor are to be subsidized, they should be subsidized by the entire population, not by a small persecuted minority. And this argument, as far as it goes, is correct. Indeed, if the poor are to be subsidized, it would be particularly unfair to expect a small group of people to bear the full burden. But the argument does not go far enough. The actual case is even worse. It is bad enough to single out the landlords and force them to subsidize the poor; but the truth of the matter, as we have seen, is that the poor almost certainly do not benefit from rent control! So the landlords end up subsidizing rich people and government housing bureaucrats. And this is certainly unfair, since in many cases the rich tenants may even be richer than the landlords. Unfortunately, even this argument does not go far enough. The actual case is even worse yet. It is bad enough to force the landlords to subsidize rich tenants; at least someone gains from the theft from the landlords in this case. But in actual point of fact, many of these millions of dollars of housing values lost by the landlords do not go to anyone, not even rich people. They are what the economist calls “dead weight loss”: losses to the society as a whole that do not accrue to anyone.

The dead weight loss takes place whenever the landlord loses more than the tenant gains. This difference, the dead weight loss, accrues to no one at all. Let us illustrate how the dead weight loss of rent control arises with a numerical example. Suppose that $250 per month was the precontrolled rent and that the controlled rent is now $100. (Rent control works somewhat differently in practice. Instead of lowering the rent, rent control freezes the rent at a given level, and then allows inflation to lower the real value of the dollar level rent. Our supposition is for simplicity only, and does not alter the facts of the case.) The landlord clearly loses the $150 differential between the free market price in the absence of rent control ($250) and the controlled rent ($100).

How much does the tenant gain? In order to find out how much the tenant gains from rent control we must know how much the apartment is worth to the tenant; e.g., how much the tenant would have been willing to pay for the apartment in the absence of rent control. Since we can have no way of knowing this, we must consider all the possibilities.

If the tenant would only have been willing to pay less than $100, he would not now be occupying the apartment, since it would be costing him more than it was worth to him. So we can ignore this case.

If the tenant would have been willing to pay just $100, then he gains virtually nothing from rent control. True, he sees some benefit, otherwise he would not stay. But he may not regard it as much of a bargain, even though the most willing renters would be willing to pay $250 per month. Since the landlord loses a monthly $150, and the tenants’ gains are minimal, virtually all of the landlord’s loss is frittered away, benefitting no one.

If the tenant would have been willing to pay anything in between $100 and $250, he gains the difference between that amount and $100. Thus, if he would have paid $175, he gains $75. If he gains $75 while the landlord loses $150, the landlord subsidizes the tenant to the tune of $75, while there is $75 of dead weight loss that benefits no one. It is only in the case that the tenant would have paid $250 or more that there is no dead weight loss. Here, the full $150 that the landlord is forced to give up accrues to someone—but probably a rich person, or a bureaucrat, as we have seen.

Paradoxically, however, most landlords do not lose money because of rent control. Those who have bought their buildings after the imposition of rent control need not have lost any money at all because of rent control! For the effect of rent control in decreasing the rents charged by the landlord is to lower the value of the entire building. This is because the value of the building is closely tied to the level of rents that may be charged. At the lower sale price, the building, even though rent controlled, must be, in the mind of the purchaser, at least as attractive as any other investment that might be made. If the sale price of the rent-controlled building did not make it as attractive as any alternative investment, the rent-controlled building could not be sold. Since we know that in fact—rent controlled buildings, like other buildings, do get sold, we know, then, that the buildings get sold at prices that tend to reflect the losses due to rent control, and that therefore the new owners of rent- controlled buildings are not at a disadvantage compared to alternative investments they might have made. The only time a landlord will lose from the purchase of a rent-controlled building is when he underestimates the losses that rent control will cause in the future (as all too many landlords have done.)

The Critique of Interventionism

by Richard M. Ebeling

We live in the Age of Crises. The energy “crisis,” with the threat of oil rationing; the inflation “crisis,” with the threat of wage and price controls; the equal opportunity “crisis,” with the threat of racial job quotas; the moral “crisis,” with the threat of diminished civil liberties; and the “crisis” of national security, with the threat of foreign war abroad and State secrecy at home.

But this Age of Crises is only the outer symptom of the more fundamental malady, the Crisis of Interventionism. The energy “crisis” is the consequence of regulating domestic oil production and foreign imports; the inflation “crisis” is the effect of Central Bank monetary expansion to finance budget deficits and “guarantee” full employment; the equal opportunity “crisis” is the culmination of State actions on behalf of ethnic collectivism; the moral “crisis” is the product of State-supported ethical authortarianism; and the national security “crisis” is the result of aggressive moral and economic imperialism.

While various perspectives on the politico-economic spectrum might very well agree that the existing crises are a result of the failure of interventionism, not all would see that failure in the same light.

One popularizer of the “left,” Robert Lekachman, insists that, “Inflation, like unemployment and income distribution, is rooted in concentration of power and power relationships. A cure of inflation, consistent with high employment, requires the limitation of private discretion and substitution of public for corporate discretion.”

Another popularizer and academic advocate of the “right,” George Stigler, insists, “The defense of competition . . . has . . . been too theoretical; elegant economic theory which describes a competitive system has received entirely too little statistical elaboration . . A modern economist has no professional right to advise the federal government to regulate or deregulate the railroads unless he has evidence of the effects of these policies.”

Lekachman sees the crisis of interventionism in the unwillingness of those who must enforce the decrees to show the courage to overcome “concentrations of power and power relationships”—i.e., a weakness of the will to resist self-interests in defense of the “public interest.” Stigler, believing that “the past is the only source of knowledge of the future,” wishes the “facts” to guide the interventionists—and considers the failure to use the “facts” of the past as the explanation for the failure of interventionism. But, we might ask, what is to guide the interventionists when a control is being considered that had not been tried before? And when has enough time elapsed to make a “fair” assessment of “the facts?” As the English classical economist Walter Bagehot saw clearly over a hundred years ago, “If we wait to reason till the ‘facts’ are complete we shall wait till the human race has expired.”

What is amazing about these interpretations of the interventionist crisis is not their diversity, but rather how little they have changed in the past century—and how close their implicit premises really are to each other. What is equally as amazing is the almost total neglect of the “Austrian” analysis of interventionist policies. What in the early 1930’s Lionel Robbins had referred to as the “Kritik des Interventionismus” by Ludwig von Mises remained completely ignored by the economics profession, even after Professor Mises began presenting his analyses in his English-language books. Now, those original essays penned almost fifty years ago are finally available to the American reader as A Critique of Interventionism (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1977; 164pp) $8.95.

As Professor Mises explains, the classical economists “learned that prices are not set arbitrarily, but are determined within narrow limits by the market situation . . . that the laws of the market draw entrepreneurs and owners of the means of production into the service of consumers, and that their economic actions do not result from arbitrariness, but from the necessary adjustment to given conditions.”

In the free market economy, each participant demonstrates his relative valuation for various goods and services on the market. Consumers demonstrate their preferences by the prices they are willing to pay for finished products. In turn, producers are guided in deciding what costs to incur in a production process by the anticipated value of the finished product. And costs—ultimately—are the market-determined prices for various factors of production, based on their expected value in satisfying consumer demand. The market economy, then, is an integrated process in which consumers adjust their expenditures to their respective preference patterns and producers adjust their activities and costs to reflect those demonstrated patterns.

Professor Mises’ analysis of interventionist policies can be divided into two parts: firstly, the purely economic consequences of interventionism; secondly, the political-economic causes and effects of the rise of the interventionist state.

Mises shows, in the essays entitled “Interventionism,” “The Hampered Market Economy”, and the “Theory of Price Controls”, that isolated encroachments upon the market economy create an untenable position. If the authorities, for example, decide that the price of a product on the market is too high, a regulation may be imposed that the good be sold at a lower price (and that all the existing stock be sold at the newly imposed lower price). But since the costs in producing the product are still the same, the lower selling price acts as a disincentive for future production, thus making the product even more scarce, with resources flowing to those areas where profitable opportunities still exist and are greater Sian in the regulated industry.

If government would like production to continue, it must force the producers to continue, and it must also control the prices of raw materials, semifinished products and wages . . . The controls must encompass all branches of production, the prices of all goods and all wages, and the economic actions of all entrepreneurs, capitalists, landowners and workers. If any industry should remain free, capital and labor will move to it and thus frustrate the purpose of government’s earlier intervention.

The logical sequence of events, if the interventionists were committed to securing the desired quantity of the product at the imposed lower price, would require the controls to be extended further and further through the economy until all market activities had been placed under the guidance of the state apparatus.

What the “facts”—which Professor Stigler wishes us to be so carefully attuned to—can tell us is the forms the interventions take, e.g., minimum wage laws, maximum prices, import and exchange controls. And the joining of economic theory with the historical data would enable an extended analysis of the actual consequences of the interventionist act. A priori, the theory could not give a quantitative prediction of the effects forthcoming from a state encroachment upon the market. It would enable a statement of general principles, however, that all interventions that bring about a deviation of prices from those that would have existed through the free play of the market will set in motion distortive factors in the economy.

In the essays on “Social Liberalism” and “Anti-Marxism,” Professor Mises discusses the politico-economic elements in interventionism. His discussion, of course, revolves around the arguments and positions advocated by the German Historical School, still so dominant and so influential in the 1920’s. Their defense of interventionist activities usually took the form of denying any general economic theory that could show the detrimental results of state actions. Mises quotes one member of the Historical School who stated, “Schmoller did not care to see his road to scientific justification of social policy blocked by the concept of an external economic regularity independent of man.” Since the mid-1930’s, the interventionists have argued their case through the theoretical framework of Keynesian economics.

Regardless of the choice of tactics, the purpose has been to establish or defend the privileges of particular groups in the market. Among the “social liberals,” the debates have been over to whom the benefits of state actions were to redound and upon whom the economic burdens would fall. And in “Anti-Marxism,”—an analysis that brilliantly anticipates the development of German Nazism and the resultant consequences that would befall Germany and Europe—Mises forcefully argues that the true distinction and clash between classical liberalism and collectivism is being totally ignored as the variants of socialism, e.g., Marxism, nationalism and racism, take over center-stage and battle with each other over control of society.

As Professor Mises, perhaps most concisely put it in his 1932 article, “The Myth of the Failure of Capitalism”*:

In the interventionist state . . . it is much more important that one has “good relations” with the controlling political factions, that the interventions redound to the advantage and not the disadvantage of the enterprise. . . . It is much more important to have “connections” than to produce well and cheaply. Consequently the men who reach the top of such enterprises are . . . men who know how to get along with the press and with the political parties . . . men . . . who deal more with federal dignitaries and party leaders than with those from whom they buy or to whom they sell.

Robert Lekachman believes the failure of interventionism comes from weak polices failing to resist “concentrations of power and power relationships,” The problem is, however, that power relationships are the heart of the interventionist ideology. Interventionism is the political means to achieve economic ends, in defiance of market forces.

For men such as Lekachman and Stigler, the issue is not over interventionism as a policy; both accept and, in fact, desire it. Their disagreements over interventionism are purely ones of preferences and efficiencies. Implicitly and explicitly, they both accept the concept of State intervention—the concept that the State is to act as the servant of some and the master of others.

Professor Mises points out that the Historical School of turn-of-the-century Germany had two wings: the followers of Brentano, who favored equalization of income, and the followers of Schmoller, who favored a “class” arrangement of privileges.

Similarly, there are those like Lekachman who wish to use the Interventionist State to achieve egalitarianism. Others, like Stigler, wish only to use the Interventionist State to bring about an “efficient” redistribution of wealth and benefits to various groups and sectors of the economy.

The “Austrian” analysis of interventionism—starting with individuals and the interactions of individuals in the market-place—sees that market forces and “laws” do exist; and that every State intervention must disturb and distort the voluntary choices and plans of market actors. Interventionism, therefore, must always involve infringements of liberty and property rights, so some might gain by force what others would not voluntarily give or exchange away.

Though originally published in 1929, Ludwig von Mises’ Critique of Interventionism is one of the most relevant and important works for grasping the underlying principles causing the crises of our age.

*To be published in a forthcoming Occasional Paper of the Center for Libertarian Studies, entitled “The Clash of Group Interests and other essays” by Ludwig von Mises.

Rendering Unto Caesar: Those Preachers Again

by Justus D. Doenecke

Ray H. Abrams, Preachers Present Arms. Rev. ed. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1969.

George Q. Flynn, American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, 1932-1936. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1968.

George Q. Flynn, Roosevelt and Romanism: Catholics and American Diplomacy, 1937-1945. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1976.

Hertzel Fishman, American Protestantism and a Jewish State. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973.

Among the variety of protesters against the Vietnam War, the clergy were both vocal and visible. For every clergyman who sided with Cardinal Francis Spellman in seeing the conflict as “one for civilization,” there were ten, perhaps fifteen, who denied his claim and who occasionally took to the streets in support of their position. Such dissent, however, has not always taken place, and we now have studies showing how religion, in the not too distant past, has fostered state power and cultural uniformity, and has served as “guardian spirits” of professional warriors.

The first of these works is the most biting. Less than a decade ago, Ray H. Abrams, retired sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, updated his classic Preachers Present Arms (1933). Most of the book still deals with what a former generation called “the Great War,” although it now contains minor material on World War II and Vietnam.

The quotation on the frontispiece from Miles Standish betrays Abram’s theme: “War is a terrible trade;/But in the cause that is righteous/Sweet is the smell of powder.” Beginning with the erosion of peace sentiment in 1915, Abram’s describes how clergy called for avenging the Lusitania and marched in preparedness parades. Although the Episcopal Church was always in the forefront of such activity, other churches of English origin—ranging from Presbyterian to Unitarian—were markedly pro-British.

And once the United States entered the war, rare was the clergyman who dissented. The president of Oberlin College called the struggle “a truly Holy War”; the Superior of the New York Apostolic Fathers claimed that “The man who is disloyal to the flag is disloyal to Christianity”; and a Liberty Bond ad in Christian Work bore the slogan KILL THE HUN/KILL HIS HOPE. One Baptist pastor looked upon enlistment with the same fervor as “the departure of a missionary for Burma.” The American Tract Society published a soldier’s prayer that began, “My God and Father, I rejoice that Thou art the God of battle.” Theological learnings meant little. If the Unitarian Christian Register asserted that Jesus “would take the bayonet and bomb and rifle and do the work of deadliness,” the Reverend Billy Sunday declared, “If you turn hell upside down, you will find ‘Made in Germany’ stamped on the bottom.”

There were, of course, some convenient conversions. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who had traversed the Middle West to fight Wilson’ preparedness tour, led —says Abrams—in the cry for “slaughter of the Boche.” In 1915 Cardinal James Gibbons warned against the “sacrifice” of “thousands of young men”; two years later he called upon “Catholic young men” to “step up and take their place in the front rank.” Frederick Lynch, a founder of the Church Peace Union, had recommended the “excommunication” of “every man that takes up the sword.” Yet once in the fray, Lynch called the Germans “baby-killers” and did so with gusto. The Advocate of Peace, journal of the American Peace Society, opposed retaliation after the Lusitania incident; by May 1917, however, it wrote, “We must aid in the starvation and emaciation of a German baby in order that he, or at least his more sturdy playmate, may grow up to inherit a different sort of government from that for which his father died.”

In a thousand and one ways, religious groups contributed to the hysteria. Both interdenominational Christian Century and the Northwestern Christian Advocate (Methodist) published gory atrocity stories, the latter journal informing the pious how Germans sprayed prisoners with burning oil. (For the Wilson administration, the most useful atrocity tales dealt with sex, since—before pornography was legalized—one had to satisfy such prurient interests indirectly). The pastor of Seattle’s First Presbyterian Church hoped to shoot any person “who buys an article in Germany for the next hundred years.” The leader of Chicago’s Ethical Culture Society told readers of the Atlantic Monthly of the “Duty of Hatred.”

Civil liberties, of course, went by the boards. Father John A. Ryan claimed that authorities were justified in “preventing obstructive criticism,” while Cardinal John Farley called criticism of the government “little short of treason.” New York’s Episcopal Bishop William Manning protested against the German-born Karl Muck directing the Boston symphony. Rabbi Wise branded the pacifist People’s Council (of which Rabbi Judah Magnes was a sponsor) as socialism of the “basement and cellar type.” Clergy found the anti-war posture of the Society of Friends particularly galling. The Episcopal Living Church said that “Quakerism is sixteen hundred years too late to be entitled to the epiteth Christian,” and the Methodist Zion’s Herald referred to “Quakers and men of Quaking disposition.”

Religious agencies strongly backed the war effort, with the YMCA taking the lead. One “Y” director even published a manual on hand-to-hand fighting. (“Never miss an opportunity to destroy the eyes of the enemy,” it read.) The Federal Council of Churches passed a resolution calling for the protection of conscientious objectors; however, when their rights were obviously violated, and when they experienced torture in prison, it refused to intervene. In addition, the FCC turned down a bid of Swedish churches to aid in securing a truce, while its president, Frank Mason North, proclaimed, “The war for righteousness will be won. Let the Church do her part.” The Episcopal House of Bishops welcomed the resignation of one of its own members, Paul Jones of Utah, believing that his pacifism had “impaired” his “usefulness.” The American Unitarian Association, a group in which former President Taft was prominent, threatened to withhold aid from any congregation what employed a minister who was not an “outspoken supporter of the United States.”

Abrams claims to be writing a value-free study, one that eliminates “moral praise and blame.” Yet he is as much of a “preacher” as anyone he describes, and we have a highly colored, if helpful, account of religion at war. No attempt is made at balanced sampling, at weighing intensity of opinion, and at discerning influence. The author just lists one horrible quotation after another in expose fashion and lets it go at that. He does touch on one significant theme, namely that the clergy might well have welcomed war to bolster religious faith and traditional values, but we do not have the background needed to illuminate this point.

The real questions go unanswered, and perhaps remain so to this day. Otis Graham, Jr.’s Great Crusades—And After (1974) attempts to link progressivism and war fervor, and systematic work on the churches could develop this tie. Did the clergy believe that wartime service might enhance their personal status, something that had long been threatened by increasing security? To what degree did Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, and Mormons see wholehearted support of the military as a way of proving their “loyalty” to the wider community? Did the Social Gospel, with its stress on reconstructing society, naturally spill over into international “crusades” against “evil,” and does this explain why such theological liberals as members of Ethical Culture and Unitarians supported global Wilsonianism?

Later decades are dealt with by George Q. Flynn, historian at Texas Tech. In a well-researched, clearly written, and balanced study, Flynn covers the most numerous of America’s religious denominations, Roman Catholicism. His findings lay to rest many stereotypes, particularly concerning the New Deal.

Early in the thirties, Catholic anti-capitalist rhetoric was strong. The Reverend James L. Gillis, editor of the Catholic World, accused management of treating labor worse than animals, and Father Wilfred Parsons, S.J. of America found the nation’s economy producing nothing but “unlimited opportunity for avarice and greed.” In the 1932 election, the vast majority of American Catholics supported FDR at the polls, although they voted less as Catholics than as uncertain Americans, many of lower middle-class status, who hoped that a new administration could end the depression. Fervent Catholic support for the President was soon coming, with the denominational press continually presenting the New Deal as the American version of papal encyclicals.

True, the good fathers greatly exaggerated the influence of Quadragesimo Anno while ignoring the influence of the Protestant Social Gospel. However, could Roosevelt fail to be heartened by the claim that “Almighty God raised up FDR—the Apostle of the New Deal” (the Most Reverend W.D. O’Brien), or that Roosevelt’s every action was “motivated by a Christian philosophy which moves forward in the right direction” (Brooklyn Tablet)? Archbishop John T. McNicholas of Cinncinnati told Catholics to buy only from shops displaying the “blue eagle”; James I. Corrigan, S.J. assured listeners of the Catholic Truth Hour that Henry Wallace’s farm program “served agriculture.” To Father John A. Ryan, new of the National Catholic Welfare Conference NCWC), the Wagner Act was “probably the most just. . .piece of labor legislation ever enacted in the United States.” And to the Denver Catholic Register, there was a “real chance” for large-scale federal relief as “Al Smith is the power behind the throne and Al Smith has the Catholic slant.”

Obviously politics played a role. Roosevelt appointed two Catholics to his cabinet, gave Catholics one out of every four judicial appointments, and named numerous priests to regulatory boards.

Some Catholic spokesmen dissented on certain issues. If the Knights of Columbus backed the National Recovery Act, and if president Edmund A. Walsh, S.J. of Georgetown called it democracy’s last stand, Central-Blatt and Social Justice claimed that the measure would destroy America’s middle class, and the San Francisco Monitor found parallels to Marxism and “Kantism.” Most prominent clergy opposed federal child labor legislation, claiming that it gave Congress the right to regulate American youth. Care should be used in noting Catholic support for labor, as such backing was always qualified by fear of violence, opposition to strikes, and respect for private property.

Recognition of Russia met with the unanimous opposition of the Catholic press, although it finally and naively accepted Roosevelt’s meaningless assurance that Americans there would have religious freedom. “Leave everything to me, Father,” Roosevelt said to Georgetown’s Walsh. “I am a good horse trader.” The President, of course, could not deliver on persecutions—any more than can Jimmy Carter today. But the Church remained content with symbolic gestures, and Roosevelt, as usual with such pressure groups, had his own way.

Even greater Catholic pressure came when FDR attempted to reach an accord with Mexico, a nation that had passed much anti-clerical legislation during the 1920’s. Catholic spokesmen, including the liberal Commonweal, sought the dismissal of Ambassador Josephus Daniels, whom they unjustly accused of endorsing aethistic education. Through Senator David I. Walsh, the Knight of Columbus got Senator William E. Borah to advocate a Senate investigation “into the persecution of Christians . . . now being practiced in Mexico.” (The Supreme Knight, Martin H. Carmody, was a lifelong Republican and might well have wanted to embarrass the Administration). Although Roosevelt squelched Borah’s resolution, Congressman John P. Higgins got 242 members of the House to back a similar demand. However, a more moderate policy in Mexico, and support for Roosevelt’s Mexican policies from such prominent Catholics as Bishop Spellman of Boston, alleviated the crisis. In 1936 Catholics voted overwhelmingly for FDR, again doing so on economic—not religious—grounds. Such prominent prelates as Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago and Father John A. Ryan of Washington openly backed the President and, often acting in an orchestrated manner, the hierarchy attempted to squelch Catholic support for the Union Party, a populist group led by Father Charles E. Coughlin.

Flynn’s second work deals with foreign policy, and it is crucial for anyone hoping to understand isolationism. American Catholics were originally strong backers of the isolationist movement, with memories of World War I, distrust of European allies, Anglophobia, and—most important of all—fear of communism serving as factors. Hence they welcomed the Nye Committee and endorsed the neutrality acts. Archbishop McNicholas went so far as to urge Catholics to consider forming “a mighty league of conscientious noncombatants.”

The Spanish Civil War, of course, only bolstered such sentiments. Flynn acknowledges that “Catholic concern with the advance of atheistic communism at times bordered on the neurotic,” but asks if liberals were any the less simplistic in portraying the struggle as “Loyalist-democratic” versus “Nationalist-fascist.” Scholars later might claim that Loyalist murders of priests, a major source of Catholic alarm, were exaggerated, and that the Spanish church was a political institution. However, Catholic bitterness was quite understandable.

Flynn presents a more subtle picture than most historians: after Michael Williams left Commonweal, it shifted from a pro-Franco position to a neutralist one (a stance that caused it to lose sales and face banning by some bishops); public opinion polls showed only four of every ten Catholics backing the Nationalists; the decision to retain the embargo on both sides was made by the State Department. Although Catholic opinion strongly supported the Administration, one should beware—so Flynn argues—of endowing “Americans Catholicism with a reputation for political power it did not deserve.”

The author makes an equal contribution in showing how Catholic opinion became more interventionist. Once what John Lukacs calls the “last European war” broke out, the Church was strongly isolationist. Father Gillis saw the conflict as merely an attempt to rearrange the British empire, an “impossible organization” to begin with; Archbishop Spellman told the American Legion that our democratic system was not transportable; and the Reverend Robert Gannon, S.J., president of Fordham, stressed that Germany had a right to “its economic existence.” In 1940 many Catholic spokesmen opposed conscription, with the Commonweal for once lined up alongside the Brooklyn Tablet. When FDR proposed lend-lease, Father John LaFarge, S.J. saw it heralding the end of popular sovereignty, and the Reverend Joseph Thoming, S.J. demanded that the British stop persecuting Ireland before receiving aid. The Roosevelt government soon sought to undermine such attitudes. In 1939 it promoted such Catholic advocates of neutrality repeal as Al Smith, Cardinal Mundelein, Father Ryan, and Chicago’s auxiliary bishop Bernard J. Sheil. It sent steel magnate Myron Taylor as the President’s personal emissary to the Vatican, pressed Pope Pius XII to keep Mussolini neutral, and sought to get curia endorsement of aid to Russia. If most of the hierarchy remained uncommitted, Roosevelt kept the intervention debate from becoming a “Catholic” one. With each piece of legislation, the number of pro-Administration Catholics kept increasing—and the names of such Catholic intellectuals as Michael Williams, Carleton J.H. Hayes, Harry J. Carman, and Ross J.S. Hoffman appeared on more and more interventionist petitions. If McNicholas and Dubuque’s archbishop Francis J.L. Beckman backed the America First Committee, Spellman and Monsignor Michael J. Ready of the NCWC made sure that most Church opinion reflected the national consensus. To historian Flynn, Catholic leadership feared alienation from the wider mainstream, particularly after the Spanish Civil War. Hence, “Catholic leaders were desperate to reassert their place in the community”, and World War II gave them this opportunity. Even when it came to the touchy question of aid to Russia, Roosevelt was able to have the Vatican pressure those prelates who criticized his policy.

After Pearl Harbor, the Roman Catholic Church enlisted for the duration. The Denver Catholic Register claimed that “any half-hearted or inimical attitude toward national leaders is treason.” The Bishop of Fargo wrote, “When a government speaks with the voice of authority, it speaks with the voice of God.” The Southwest Courier rejoiced that the declaration of war came on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, for the Blessed Mother was America’s own patron. Father Gannon publicly admitted that he was wrong to oppose Roosevelt’s interventionism, while Father Ryan, who prided himself on membership in the ACLU, wanted the government to suspend mailing privileges for the Brooklyn Tablet and Catholic World. In 1943 the president of the Catholic Historical Association claimed that prevention of an isolationist resurgence was a professional duty.

Except for a few dissenters (the Catholic Worker movement, the Sign magazine, the undergraduate newspaper at DePaul), Catholic enthusiasm for the war was unreserved. Church spokesmen endorsed unconditional surrender and total victory, with Spellman telling troops they were “sacred institutions” in a modern crusade. Flynn writes, “The way Catholic leaders adopted the dubious garb of moral cheerleaders for the United States . . . led to an atrophy of their ethical feelings.” True, the Church did balk at certain policies, for it opposed the Morgenthau plan, the bombing of Rome, and the use of atomic weapons. For the most part, however, until Russia began to occupy eastern Europe, the faith that prided itself on its internationalism was among the most nationalistic of groups.

Fishman’s book lacks the detatchment of Flynn’s works. The author, who currently serves as advisor to the Israel Minister of Education, uses the apparatus of scholarship to present an indictment, one that accuses American liberal Protestantism of consistently fighting “against Jewish national and ethnic interests.” Heroes include such spokesmen as Reinhold Niebuhr who saw “Jewish peoplehood in theological terms as a legitimate component on the divine plan,” villains include editor Charles Clayton Morrison of the Christian Century who long opposed Jewish nationalism.

Since the book reads like a lawyer’s brief, it is best to begin by looking at the author’s assumptions. Fishman claims that Jews are a nationality as well as a religion (though he prefers the term “a people”) and that the land of Israel is central to Judaism. In short, the author is a strong Zionist, although some of his findings—if read with care—could aid inquirers more sympathetic to various Arab positions.

The scenario is as follows: liberal Protestants, as represented by the Christian Century, long opposed cultural pluralism, and in particular the concept of Jewish nationalism. In 1937, the Century claimed that it was “Jewish nationalism,” which it juxtaposed to “Jews as Jews”, that crucified Christ, for Jesus’ plan for Jews “ran counter to the cherished nationalism of Israel’s leaders—political and priestly.” Eight years later, it asserted that Jews should decide “whether they are an integral part of the nation in which they live or members of a Levantine nation dwelling in exile.”

Given this general position, it is hardly surprising that the Christian Century saw the Balfour declaration as simply another example of Britain’s policy of “divide and rule,” particularly as its promises to Jews “could not be realized consistently with justice to other elements of the population.” Yet the Century in 1938 opposed letting “an appreciable number of Jews” settle in the United States; such lowering of immigration bars, it said, at a time when millions of native Americans were already unemployed would only increase anti-Semitism. As time went on, the Century—and the Protestant liberals for whom it often spoke—opposed the establishment of the nation-state of Israel, continually sought to reduce its borders, and refused to support Israel in the 1967 war.

The Century was not alone. In 1947 Henry Sloane Coffin, president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, protested that politicians were alienating 300 million Arabs “in order to fish for votes.” Denying that the Bible promised Palestine to today’s Jews, the theologian found such promises conditional on obedience to the divine law. And in 1967 the National Council of Churches, while calling on Arab nations to recognize Israel, stressed Israeli responsibility for the Arab refugee problem, took the Jewish state to task for not yielding conquered territory, and sought internationalization of Jerusalem.

Fishman finds, however, a Protestant minority that, in his words, realized “the absence of any realistic alternative for Jewish refugees” and therefore backed the Zionist movement. Within this minority, views varied. Unitarian cleric John Haynes Holmes, for example, combined his enthusiasm for Jewish settlement in Palestine with the warning that “it were better that she (Jewish society) perish utterly than by such survival bring mockery to a sublime tradition.” Niebuhr told the Zionists to stop claiming that their demands entailed no injustice to the Arabs, although he did claim that the people now called Palestinians could move to “a vast hinterland in the Middle East.” Were Fishman updating his book, he could point to the ardently pro-Israel books written by Congressman Robert Drinan, S.J., Temple University theologian Franklin H. Littell, and Lehigh religon professor A. Roy Eckardt. In addition, he could note the resurgency of Zionism among fundamentalists ranging from extreme rightist Carl McIntire (who calls the Palestinians “Descendants of Esau . . . claiming Jacob’s land”) to the more moderate Billy Graham.

Christian groups supporting Zionism, Fishman writes, “did not arise spontaneously” but “were deliberately cultivated and even channelled organizationally by American Zionists.” In his research into the archives of the pro-Zionist American Christian Palestine Committee, he notes heavy Zionist financing (and claims CIA funding for the pro-Arab American Friends of the Middle East). Again, were Fishman updating this volume, he could note that a Jewish leader who wishes to remain anonymous “advanced” the cost of an ad signed by prominent fundamentalists proclaiming “Israel’s divine right to the land.” (See Christianity Today, November 18, 1977, p. 50).

The book has some positive features. It reveals the cultural arrogance implicit in the Christian Century’s opposition to ethnic pluralism. (The magazine’s position, however, is more complex and humane than Fishman has it appear. It stressed Jesus as Jew and claimed that Judaism bore a witness to which Christianity should lay heed). It contains valuable material on such missionaries and educators as Harold and Daniel Bliss, Garland Hopkins, and Bayard Dodge. It shows the naivete of the Century in regards to news of Nazi persecutions (though skepticism concerning atrocity accounts is more understandable when one realizes—via the Abrams book—how badly it was burned in World War I).

The scholar, however, should use this work with extreme care. There has long been a need for a thorough and balanced study of Christian reactions to Zionism. Unfortunately, despite the imprimatur of a university press, the need still remains.

Part of the problem lies in over-reliance on two sources, Christian Century and Christianity and Crisis. Fisher defends his selectivity on the grounds that no major Protestant body took issue with Century views. Yet it remains doubtful whether the Century’s reformism and pacifism any more reflected the views of rank and file Protestants (and the clergy as well) than do the editorials of the New York Daily News reflect the attitudes of most New Yorkers. One wonders if other Protestant journals were really silent, including the fundamentalist Moody Monthly and Our Hope (the latter founded by a converted Jew), the Unitarian Christian Register, the various Methodist Christian Advocates, the Anglican Living Church and Churchman, and various Quaker periodicals. As Protestant reaction to such an event as Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was intense it is hard to believe that other journals commented seldom on Middle East events. Given the present strong support of some evangelicals for Israel, one needs to trace how such fever came about. (Incidentally, a study is needed on the general shift in rightist and conservative circles concerning Israel over the past thirty-five years).

What is more disturbing is Fishman’s tendency to enter into a running debate with the historical actors of whom he disapproves. For example, he attacks the Century’s acquiescence in the British White Paper of 1939 (but takes uncritically A. Roy Eckardt’s talk of “the Christian death wish for Jews.”) There are related problems, often stemming from his choice of words. He describes the Irgun as “the major Palestinian dissident underground group” while asserting that Arabs in 1936 launched a “campaign of terror.” Protestant prayers for alleviation of Jewish suffering are mere “lip-service sympathy” and “formal piety” if linked with opposition to Zionism. Rabbi Morris S. Lazeron is “obsessed by his anti-Zionist attitudes” whereas Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver simply adopts “the militant Zionist position.” Those Reform-rabbis who oppose Zionism are said to fight “the concept of Judaism denoting anything more than a religion,” but the rationale of such opposition is even more neglected than that of their Protestant counterparts. Fishman brands Christian Century features stressing the power of Israeli’s Orthodox rabbinate and the condition of Arabs in Israel as “carping,” “stressing the negative,” and “blatantly and consistently prejudicial to Israel’s public image and national image.” When Wayne Cowan writes critically in Christianity and Crisis in May of 1970 about Israeli expansion and Israel’s denial of Palestinian nationality, he is “vehemently anti-Israel”—even though the essay scolds Arabs for ignoring Israeli moderates and recognizes Israel’s anxieties over security. Fishman misunderstands the universalistic pacifism of Charles Clayton Morrison, outlined in his book The Outlawry of War (1924), and incorrectly accuses the Century editor of advocating “isolationist nationalism.”

Such loading of the dice is not necessary. Urbane and responsible models that show empathy for their subjects include Samuel Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism (1961); Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (1972); and Melvin Urofsky’s American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (1975). Nor should students neglect the valuable (and more pro-Arab) work of Fred J. Khouri, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (rev. ed., 1976).

All in all, the four books reviewed reveal a most instrumental use of religion. Caesar is indeed being rendered unto—and with a vengeance. From the days of Billy Sunday to those of Billy Graham, the secular is continually being confused with the sacred. And given the type of pietism we now have represented on the Potomac, we cannot look upon the future with optimism.