Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK Cruising Speed JOHN CHAMBERLAIN WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.'S Cruis ing Speed: A Documentary (Put nam, $6.95) begins as a chronicle of a week in the life of America's most engaging publicist. But time, with Bill Buckley, has a Proustian dimension, so the form becomes an excuse for unlocking years as well as days. A telephone call to Bill Buckley takes 'us in one direction, a "Dear Sir, You cur" letter in quite another, an encounter with a friend or colleague in still a 186 third, until after darting down a hundred avenues one has the illu sion that one is peeling off one of those Chinese eggs which contain egg within egg, almost to the vanishing point. But then, one re flects, the Chinese egg image won't do at all, for the average Buckley egg is so bursting with its own meat that it could contain nothing else. Since the form is immaterial, it scarcely matters that the docu1972 CRUISING SPEED 187 mented Buckley week began at Bill's Stamford, Connecticut,sea side home at ten o'clock on a Mon day morning after a. newspaper column had been written and some routine correspondence handled.

The important thing is that one thing provokes another even as Bill is riding into Manhattan to tape-record a couple of TV shows. Memories crowd until the book becomes as complex as the Buckley character, which deceives many who come upon it merely one as pect at a time. Yes, Bill Buckley can be offensive to modern-day liberals, as when he. sets down in his list of accomplishments in Who's Who in America the fact that he founded the National Com mittee to Horsewhip Drew Pear son in 1967. Like any man of wit, Buckley outrages those who have no wit at all. But witty outrage, with Buckley, procedes from a gor geous sense of unmalicious fun. As Critics See Him Unlike a few polemicists whom I could mention, Buckley stays in the kitchen not only because he likes to cook but also because he can stand the heat. His sense of editorial honor does not permit him to hide anything, so he prints a long diatribe about his character wri tten by one Hank Levine, the chairman of the Party of the Left of the Yale Political Union. Mr.

Levine sees Buckley in terms of a "kind of silent leer-wince," which, whatever this may say about the Levine eyesight, indicates that Leftist undergraduates at Yale can be as tone-deaf as a mummy. What seems to Mr. Levine to be a superiority complex is, in a way, Mr. Buckley's way of overcoming his environment. He grew up with "liberals" to the left of him, to say nothing of .those who kicked him from behind and gouged him from in front. (I recall defending Bill Buckley years ago against a charge, made by an editor of a well-known "liberal" monthly, that Buckley's National Review lacked humor, which is about as idiotic a criticism as could be made.) Bill had to rehabilitate wit among the witless, to reestablish elegance and finish in the arena of contro versy, to bring tone and savor and cutting edge to our polemics. He could not have done this without having had some theatrical sense.

Underneath the showmanship is the overmastering urge to instruct. A Becoming Modesty It may seem strange to Hank Levine, but Bill Buckley actually comes through in Cruising Speed as a person of most becoming mod esty. He cail kid J. Kenneth ·Gal braith, who is his friend, but when Galbraith tries, on the way to the ski slope at the Rinderberg in 188 THE FREEMAN March Switzerland, to persuade Bill to focus his energies on books, the bantering tone disappears from the Buckleyian text. Give it up, says Galbraith, give up the whole thing, National Review, journal ism, television, radio, lecturing. I did it, says Galbraith, I left For tune and went to Harvard. Come to the academy and write books. It is only books that count in giv ing theoretical depth to ideologi cal positions. Now, if Bill Buckley were truly arrogant, he would have turned on Galbraith and said something to the effect that books can mislead as well as lead. Instead of indulg ing in a flip retort, however, Bill was provoked only to some dispas sionate self-appraisal. He told him self that others had already pro vided the theoretical depth for conservatism. Wasn't it his mis sion, therefore, to advertise the profundity of the foundations al ready provided by others? How, he asked, could he hope to "do better against positivism than Voegelin has done?" How could he improve on "Oakeshott's analysis of rationalism?" How could he "rediscover orthodoxy more en grossingly than Chest~rton?"

W hat of the Reserves? To feel satisfied, so Bill Buckley told himself while musing on Galbraith's challenge, one must have a sense of social usefulness. But what, he asked himself, were his reserves? .What would he have to satisfy those who listened to him tomorrow? Turning back to "cruising speed," which involved getting to Washington in Frank Stanton's Columbia Broadcasting System jet plane and writing next day's col umn, Bill inevitably had to let the question of his reserves drop. But he needn't worry; the reserves will be there. Since Bill himself has tossed the name of Chesterton, a. superlative journalist, into the discussion, it should be said that journalism it self often has a theoretical depth that is missing in books. Gal braith's .view of the superiority of the academy is all too simple. H. L. Mencken, no .academician, wrote journalistic· essays and criticism that have stood the transplanting between book covers. But who re members W. C. Brownell, or Henry Beers, or other academic critics of Mencken's heyday? Who knows, Buckley's "journalism" may prove more enduring than, let us say, Galbraith's The New Industrial State? (Not wishing to be invidi ous, I hasten to add that I grant a permanent literary value to Gal braith's Affluent Society,. its phrasing is always first-rate, even 1972 CRUISING SPEED 189 when the logic leaves something to be desired.) Government's Limited Role Just how good Bill Buckley can be is proved by his little essay written in defense of the National Review position (see page 92, where he passes along his musings while driving to Bridgeport to de bate with Dick Gregory.) "It was fourteen years after NR began,"

says Bill, "that .Peter Drucker would write in The Age of Discon ti.nuity that the only thing govern ment cando effectively is wage war and inflate the currency ... individuation is what happens when the state ceases to be taken for granted as the necessary in strument for human progress. The conservative who spoke to little audiences fifteen years ago about the necessity for arresting the growth of government was saying then what the followers of Reich (author of The Greening of Amer ica) have come upon, except that they are now condemning Ameri ca, while what they ought to be condemning is what I once called the special effronteries of the twentieth century. . . ." For fifteen years Bill Buckley has been. trying to tell people that nobody can "lead happy or full lives by buying one share each of com mon stock in - The State." This position was not new when Chesterton. espoused it in England, nor when Albert Jay Nock taking off from the German Franz Oppen heimer, gave "theoretical depth"

to it in Our Enemy, The Sta,te. Readers of The Freeman know better than most, however, that the theme was never in such need of refurbishing as now, when prices are being "controlled" in a time of peace. Bill Buckley's re furbishing is elegant, precise, and engaging, whether it appears as journalism - or in a book. • LIBERTARIANISM: A POLITI CAL PHILOSOPHY FOR TO MORROW by John Hospers. (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing Co., $10) Reviewed by: Allan Malz THIS simply and lucidly written introduction to the free market philosophy summarizes the argu ments of the finest libertarian literature. In the first ten chapters, the au thor - a University of Southern California philosopher - discusses a broad range of topics. He defines the proper scope of government action, and analyzes the various 190 THE FREEMAN March types of State intervention whose disastrous results are so often blamed on capitalism. A persua sive justification of profit, on both moral and economic grounds, is presented. In an especially incisive chapter, Professor Hospers ex amines the welfare state, describ ing how, after each antipoverty program, the poor somehow end up even poorer, and demonstrat ing that only a truly free market can effectively reduce poverty.

This leads him into a discussion of taxation and its corrosive effects on enterprise. The author's most important arguments, however, are reserved for the final chapter, in which he presents the case against anarch ism. The no-government philos ophy speaks for itself through lengthy quotations from its parti sans, after which Professor Hos pers analyzes it from a limited government point of view. He shows that anarchy would mean open season on minority groups and nonconformists. In the ab sence of government, there could be no Rule of Law, and certainly not the "objective law" of which the anarchists claim to be the champions. Even an anarchist must admit that some services cannot be supplied by the market, the author concludes, and it is pre cisely these that is the task of government to provide. A society in which any man can call himself a "defense agency" and take the law into his own hands would surely be an unstable one in which peaceful cooperation could not last; a "no-government society is always trembling on the verge of chaos," he observes. And there is no reason to believe that any gov ernment emerging out of chaos would be a limited one.

The weakest section is Hosper's discussion of natural rights. Too much of what Bentham would have called "sentiment" is brought into the explication. The reader is given no firm reason to believe that natural rights really exist, and it is not explained why they are' "inalienable." Rousing prose about the beauty of liberty is sometimes substituted for rea soned explanation of its practical benefits. Fortunately, the flaws are limited to the opening chap ters, and do not detract much from the value of the book. All in all, a useful book, both as an introduction for the beginner and as a sort of memory-refresher for the advanced student.

1972 OTHER BOOKS 191 ~ THE REGULATED CONSUMER by Mary Bennett Peterson (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1971~ 271 pp., $7.95) Reviewer: Tommy W. Rogers CONSUMERISM has spawned a mul titude of regulations and a host of federal agencies to enforce them, but has it helped the con sumer? It is the author's conten tion, well documented and illus trated, that consumerism is in herently uneconomic - and, iron ically, anticonsumer; it adversely affects individual choice and di minishes efficiency in the use of our resources. Americans pay car tel prices for the coffee they drink and the sugar they eat, and in the process injure efficient interna tional producers and world compe tition. Unions, as well as the gov ernment controlled farm sector, have the makings of giant cartels as government induced and pro tected monopolies. Government farm programs continue to widen the gap between rich agricultural ist-businessmen and poor farmers, and compulsory unionism not only limits freedom but breeds corrup tion.

The author contends that "com~ binations and conspiracies against trade may appeal to the monopo listic mentality, but in practice, unless enforced by government, they tend to evaporate." Regula tory agencies which supposedly "protect" the consumer become buffer agencies which act as ac commodative bodies of the busi nesses they. are supposed to regu late, at the expense of the public, as classically illustrated by the· In terstate Commerce Commission. A determined ICC seeking to give the image of zealously pro tecting the public interest has forced higher costs· on the shipper, carrier, and, most important of all, the consumer. The activities of the Civil Aeronautics Board similarly illustrate that regulation can mean anything but security for those who are regulated, or economy for the consumers who are the sup posed benefactors. The CAB, an opponent of competition between airlines, has constantly reflected a basic anticonsumer, pro-producer bias. Because of CAB regulation "commercial aviation has been treated as a giant subsidized pub lic utility, managerial decision making has been impeded, con sumer sovereignty frustrated, economies of scale blunted, inno vations and technological efficiency in airlines operations hampered."

"Interventionistic regulation," as Mrs. Peterson thoroughly dem onstrates, leaves much to be de sired. It is structured against the interests of the consumer whom 192 THE FREEMAN March its rhetoric claims it seeks to de fend ..Illustration after illustration is used to nail down the truism that quotas, minimum prices, sub sidies, decrees, and regulations op erate to the detriment of the For gotten Man. There· is a remedy: an enlight ened government and citizenry should progressively deregulate our regulated society and reen throne the consumer in the mar ketplace. Only so may we provide justice, preserve freedom. ~ HANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX FREEMAN BINDERS $2.50 each ORDER FROM: THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 10533 tile Freeman VOL. 22, NO.4. APRIL 1972 Objectivityand Accountability:A One-Way Street C. Howard Hardesty, Jr. 195 An appeal to public opinion for a better appreciation of the role of business.