Book Reviews

Where the libertarian philosophy is strictly applied, the state taxes only to support the police, the courts of law, the military forces, the public services that guard the individual against disease and the invasion of privacy, and the cur rency that is used in contractual relationships. Mr. Meyer is under no illusions that we live in a liber tarian society today, which means that he does not support what passes for liberalism in an age of sloppy nomenclature. He is, in a way, a Whig, but without the nineteenth century Whig's care lessness about letting a bit of so cialism creep into the practical or dering of affairs. Thinking as he does, Mr. Meyer has often been the target for tra ditionalist conservatives who think the. pursuit of virtue is the only important consideration. Mr. Mey er parries the traditionalist's as125 126 THE FREEMAN February sault upon his - and the libertar ian's - position by conceding that it is the duty of all men to seek virtue. But he insists on the need for individual freedom if the pur suit of virtue is to have any human or moral significance. Virtue, if compelled by an unlimited govern ment, is, as Mr. Meyer puts it, a mere "simulacrum" of the good.

The virtuous individual must make his own uncoerced choice between good and evil if he is to be some thing more than a zombie. Means and Ends So Mr. Meyer comes to his con clusion that modern conservatism must be a fusion of two different historical streams of thought. Freedom is an end, as the libertar ian has always held. But it is an end only at the political level. When the higher ends of the human being are considered, freedom at the po litical level becomes the means which enables the individual to make his own moral and religious decisions for himself. Since power cannot he wished out of existence, as the pure an archist might wish, both the liber tarian and the traditionalist wings of the modern conservative move ment must insist on the continued relevance of the thinking of James Madison to American conditions. The powers of the central state must be divided and balanced, and the nonenumerated powers must be left to the voluntary associa tions where they are not considered to be within the discretion of the local governing unit. The Madison ian would reject both the authori tarian extreme of nineteenth cen tury conservatism and the utili tarian extreme that betrayed John Stuart Mill into socialism in his old age. There is room for "provi dence," "honor," and "valor" in Mr.

Meyer's Madisonian fusion of the conservative and libertarian streams of thought. As Mr. Meyer says, the champion of a freedom that is founded on the "deep na ture of man" does not revise Patrick Henry. He does not say, "Give me liberty if it doesn't mean risking war; give me liberty, but not at the risk of nuclear death." The traditionalist conservative who quotes Aristotle against Mr. Meyer's "fusionist" position runs up against Mr. Meyer's own su perior knowledge of Aristotelian ethics. "In order to be good," said Aristotle, "one must be in a certain state when one does the several acts) i.e., one must do them as a result of choice and for the sake of the acts themselves." From Abstract to Concrete Mr. Meyer is more willing than most journalists to argue in terms of abstractions. But the bulk of his book applies the abstract "princi1970 THE CONSERVATIVE MAINSTREAM 127 pIe" to the concrete instance of modern "heresy." Thus Mr. Meyer is able to take on such enemies of his own conservative fusionist position as John Maynard Keynes, Robert McNamara, the majority members of Chief J ustice Earl Warren's Supreme Court, Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedys, Senator Eugene McCarthy, the more "New Dealist" of the Republican Party (Javits, Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller). At the other end of the con temporary spectrum, one finds Mr.

Meyer attacking the Populism of George Wallace, who would substi tute for the "liberalism" of the Eastern Establishment the tyranny of the majority as "pure will," un trammeled by "considerations of freedom and virtue." Wallace is against the modern liberal's urge to impose a "utopian design" on society. This in itself is good. But in his campaign against the "pointy heads" and the "briefcase toters," Wallace combines "nation alist and socialist appeals" (he is for the Welfare State in Alabama) and betrays a "contempt for the intellect in all its manifestations." His "polar opposite" of the modern liberal's "political perversion" is just another perversion. It is not "true conservatism." Naturally Mr. Meyer is very much concerned with foreign pol icy. He takes communism seri ously. Marxism is devoted to the ultimate destruction of capitalism, the bourgeois order, or whatever you want to call the Western way of life. This being true, the con frontation of East and West can not come to an end without sur render by one side or the other.

(The surrender could be peaceful, depending on internal political overturn in Moscow and Peking, or in Washington, London, Paris, and West Berlin.) Since Mr. Meyer is in no mood to surrender, he insists on fighting the Cold War, and even such Hot Wars as the one in South Vietnam, which was forced on us by inept statecraft. If we and our allies are to be overrun by the communists, the opportunity to pursue virtue would obviously be closed to everyone save a few con genital martyrs. There would be no more scope for argument be tween traditional conservatives and libertarians such as Mr. Meyer; indeed, there would be no fundamental arguments of any type. We would be back in the cata combs, facing a new Dark Age. Differences Among Friends Mr. Meyer's insistence that So viet intentions are wholly dishon orable leads him into controversy even with some of his generally anticommunist colleagues such as James Burnham. Burnham, as Mr.

Meyer sees it, has ceased to be wholly persuaded that Moscow 128 THE FREEMAN February must, by virtue of Leninist doc trine, be committed to an expan sionist program forever. This seems to Mr. Meyer to be a repu diation on the part of Mr. Burnham of the old anticommunist position which regards Leninism as in herently imperialistic, and there fore continuously menacing to the capitalist world. Mr. Meyer's own thinking is that Moscow pursues "co-existence" purely as a tactic. It is aimed at making the Soviet Union's western front safe, thus freeing the communists to follow a strategy of subversion and the promotion of "people's war" and "liberation" in the old colonial re gions of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. In the opinion of this reviewer, Mr. Meyer is correct in his assump tions. But surely Mr. Burnham, however he may have nodded in a particular instance, is in funda mental agreement with Mr. Meyer.

After all, the author of the Suicide of the West can hardly have gone over to the cause of self -destruc tion through the lack of eternal vigilance. ~ HANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX FREEMAN BINDERS $2.50 each Order from: THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION, INC. IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 10533 the Freeman VOL. 20, NO.3. MARCH 1970 Drugs and the Law Donald M. Dozer 131 The lawmaker turned moralist may create more social problems than he solves. Freedom for IntellectualProgress Sue Pick 136 Socialism stifles not only industrial progress but intellectual and moral growth as well. Freedom for Farmers Charles B. Shuman 138 Forty years of government intervention in agriculture have failed; the better alternative is freedom. Getting to Know Beans Leonard E. Read 146 If human labor were not a scarce economic resource, there would be no need for the market method of pricing it as a commodity. Economics Henry Hazlitt 152 An encyclopedic review of the scope and purpose of the study of economics.