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William F. Buckley, Jr., who has a sound theatrical instinct, saw it as such when, against his own first impulse, he decided to 695 696 THE FREEMAN November accept an appointment, in 1973, as a public delegate member of the U.S.A.'s UN mission. Bill differed with Abba Eban on one thing: he wanted to work in front of the scene. In what he calls his "only experience ... in pure, undiluted Walter Mittyism," he saw himself dramatically exposing hypocrisy as a missionary to the Third Com mittee (the one that deals with human rights). He had never vis ited the great assembly at the UN in his twenty years in New York, but he saw no reason why he couldn't use the rostrum to read to the world certain passages from Solzhenitsyn or to plead the case of the. trapped Soviet dancer Panov. After all, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt had unexpectedly used the UN scene to fight the Cold War in a day when not every Liberal was categorically expected to be in favor of detente, so why couldn't a worthy tradition be re vived to fight for western values within the limits imposed by Rich ard Nixon's "low profile" foreign policy stance?

Alas, Bill Buckley discovered that he was not a free agent to conduct a Mittyesque operation of any consequence. In an age that is concerned with ethnic sensibilities and national appearances rather than with individual rights, Mitty ism on behalf of Christian values or John Locke's old triad of "life, liberty and estate" would not be understood. "Race" had become the overwhelming preoccupation of the UN since Mrs. Roosevelt's day, and working for Mr..Nixon and Henry Kissinger had to be accepted in a limiting context that Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had only dimly foreseen. A De/egatels Diary At this point Bill Buckley would surely have offered his resignation if he had not formed a most ad miring opinion of John Scali, who was doing his best to fight rear guard actions in defense of Eight eenth Century individualist values as the U.S. Permanent Represen tative to Abba Eban's "scene."

Having elected to stay on and see it out, Bill decided on the limited Mittyism of keeping a diary. It is now published as United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey (Putnam, $6.95), and it says ev erything that Bill couldn't say in the open on the few occasions that he was called upon to address the "scene." The result is that the tone and texture of a period in the UN's affairs has been caught with ex quisite sensitivity. Human rights, in the year of the Buckley odys sey, made no appreciable advances, for the manipulators behind Abba Eban's "scene" were too busy con certing the maneuvers that were 1974 UNITED NATIONS JOURNAL 697 to end in pushing all the old "co lonial" powers of the West up against the wall in the little mat ter of assuring their economic systems of enough energy to keep going. The Arabs and the African dictatorships worked in harmony with the Soviet Union to exploit the Yom Kippur War with the Is raelis in a way that has drastically altered an ancient economic bal ance of power.

Bill Buckley does not say in so many words that the Afro-Asian bloc, edged along by the Commun ists, has been singularly success ful in using the excuse of the Israeli war to defeat the whole West in a relatively bloodless bat tle. But the theme peeks out from the Buckley descriptions of such events as General Mobutu's ap pearance before the General As sembly or Saudi Arabia's Ambas sador Baroody's interminable incursions into what Buckley calls "pop history." The diarist quotes and observes, setting down the minutiae. Buckley is here engaged in beautiful intaglio work. The broad-stroking can be left to those who use the diarist's nota tions to substantiate the general conclusions of the historian and analyst. Oil on Troubled Waters What interests me as an analyst is that Bill has caught the UN at a period that is certainly destined to pass into history within short order. The rise of the Arab money power will surely cause great splits in what, to date, has been the Afro-Asian united front. The so called Third World, which has been utilized by both the Soviet and the Chinese Communists to fight the "capitalists," will soon be convulsed with arguments about disposition of the greatly enhanced income that is now ac cruing to hitherto "underdevel oped" countries such as Nigeria, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which have oil. The needs of India, which has little to pay for fertilizer, or of the sub-Saharan poverty zones, are no longer identical with the needs of the "have" nations in the Third World. And with capital flowing into their treasuries, the new Third World "haves" must face the truth that neither Mos cow nor Peking offers an invest ment area that will pay nine per cent for the use of the money surplus that is now being con jured out of the possession of oil and other natural resources. Peo ple with funds to invest inevitably become capitalists.

Strange New Alliances In the new power struggles that are even now shaping up, the UN is bound to see some strange new alliances. The old "colonial" pow698 THE FREEMAN November ers - the United States, the na tions of western Europe - will be using their technological and man agerial advantages to bid for posi tion. They still have something to use in a trade. The communists, who have shamelessly utilized what has been an Afro-Asian united bloc to· further their own strategies, cannot talk about "re cycling" possibilities to the new Third World "haves." Starvation in the Third World "havenot" countries will pose special compli cations. So, too, will the disappear ance of the Portuguese Empire. Israel, which has been the butt of history, may, curiously enough, find itself in a somewhat better position now that huge oil profits have satiated some of the Arab countries. With money to spend, the "have" Arabs must come to look upon future wars as unwel come interruptions in more im portant business. J ami! Baroody may have to get some new speeches.

In the coming struggles for po sition at the UN, what will be the fate of the human rights which were Bill Buckley's big concern when he accepted his UN assign ment? No doubt the rhetoric will continue as usual. I suspect, how ever, that the fight for human rights must be won everywhere as a local struggle. The UN in its very nature remains Abba Eban's "scene." ~ AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRIS TIAN ECONOMICS by Gary North, The Craig Press, Nutley, New Jersey, 413 pp., $6.50, paper. Reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz THE SOLID CORE of. this excellent book - nearly half of it - consists of the brilliant articles contrib uted by North to The Freeman. They treat expertly of such mat ters as inflation, urban renewal, property taxes, money and bank ing, and even range afield into such delicate areas as women's lib and the family. The writing has verve and wit. Some potential readers of this book may be put off by the title.

An "introduction" connotes an el ementary treatment of a subject, and easy reading -which this book is not. The writing is clear, but it is in the nature of the sub ject matter treated here to make demands of the reader. Economics, and especially monetary theory, are tough going. The book, how ever, will repay the effort put into it. The adjective "Christian" will, in the second place, mislead many of our contemporaries who have only the vaguest of notions of what the term means. North is clear on this point, and pretty hard nosed about his own commitment to Christianity and what this por tends for economic theory. What 1974 OTHER, BOOKS 699 he refers to as "the starting point for all economic analysis," is the curse upon the earth recorded in the third chapter of Genesis, re sulting in a scarcity of almost everything we need to survive. Be cause things are scarce, men must learn to cooperate with one an other. (Something of a blessing, one would think!) And because the earth now does not yield up its fruits unless human effort is ex pended, labor is an unavoidable necessity. "If any would not work," wrote St. Paul, "neither should he eat." Impossible to square welfarist policies with the New Testament! Economics, then, is the human effort to mitigate the curse of scarcity, and its primary ethical mandate requires that every able-bodied person contrib ute his labor.

There are some things no Chris tian economist will spend a mo ment's time on, the author points out. He will, for instance, spend no time trying to devise ingenious ways of inflating the money supply, nor will he try to provide a ratio nale for fractional reserve bank ing. To the contrary, he will de nounce the immorality of inflation and work toward sound banking practices and the use of real money, gold and silver. A significant portion of this book deals with monetary theory, so the author felt called upon to devote a lengthy chapter to the funny money people, by whom some conservatives are led astray. The Social Credit scheme associ ated with the name of C. H. Doug las has gained many disciples, and so have the monetary panaceas of Frederick Soddy and Silvio Gesell. These ideas come together in the writings of one Gertrude Coogan, and it is her two books which North dissects and disposes of.

Gary North offers interesting discussions of usury, the limited liability corporation, education and the schools, philanthropy, and even a little handbook of economic survival when and if the crunch comes. There is a freshness of ap proach to these various topics that makes this book recommended reading for even the well-schooled libertarian or conservative. The author's earlier work, Marx's Religion of Revolution, has here a worthy successor.

700 THE FREEMAN November ~ ECONOMIC GROWTH AND STABILITY: An Analysis of Eco nomic Change and Policies by Gottfried Haberler (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1974) 291 pp., $10. Reviewed by Tommy W. Rogers DR. HABERLER'SWORK is the eighth volume in the Principles of Free dom series, sponsored by the Insti tute for Humane Studies, Inc., of Menlo Park, California. The pur pose of this study is to identify the public policies and the monetary and financial instruments that are best suited to achieve the two eco nomic objectives of stability and growth, grounded in what Haberler considers the more basic objective of personal freedom. In other words, the economic objectives of stability and growth must be re stricted to those which preserve the personal freedom of the individual and are consistent with the modus operandi of the free enterprise sys tem. . freedom of consumer choice, freedom of choosing one's residence and occupation, and free enterprise are values and policy objectives more important than those of growth and stability. Their preservation requires free markets and absence of price controls. Fortunately, these free doms, far from being in conflict with the goals of growth and stability, are conducive to bringing about rapid growth and stability. These free doms, thus, are means and ends at the same time.

In a chapter on "Growth and Growth Policy," Haberler deals with the meaning and measurement of growth, determinants of growth, the influence of government poli cies in promoting or retarding growth, and a discussion of recent popular attitudes toward economic growth. "Policies for Stabilization" looks at business cycle and anti-de pression policies, the effects of "fine tuning" discretionary mea sures, the "monetarist position" of Milton Friedman and others, the Keynesian position of "functional finance," and the argument of "monetary" vs. "fiscalist" policy. In other chapters, Haberler identi fies the inflationary practices fol lowed by various mature indus trial nations as well as the govern mental attempts to set "wage guide posts" and "incomes policies" and other forms of protectionism, as distinguished from free markets and international free trade. The ideal of the gold standard is dis cussed, along with the Bretton Woods or "adj ustable peg" system, and the propensity to impose con trols under :t system of fixed rates.

The concepts, principles, and in struments are clearly defined to give the reader a history of the ap plication of different approaches to 1974 OTHER BOOKS 701 economic stability and growth. The compilation will be of interest and value to more advanced students of economics as well as to intelligent citizens with no formal training in the subject. ~ ROOTS OF THE NEW REPUB LIC: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON EARLY AMERICAN CONSTI TUTIONALISM by George Dargo. (New York: Praeger Books, 1974), 187 pp. $8.00 Reviewed by Allan C. Brown/eld AT A TIME when the Constitu tional processes have been severe ly tested, it is proper that we re call the beginnings of the nation and gain some perspective on where we've been and where we're headed. Professor George Dargo of the City University of New York ex amines the foundations of Ameri can constitutionalism in a broad survey of government, legal rights, church-$tate relations, the press, and political life in the colonial period. Unlike a number of earlier studies which have stressed legal doctrines, ideological constructs, and social attitudes, Professor Dargo's book is concerned primar ily with the historical reality un der lying the accepted notions about the period. "What is ex traordinary about American colonial history is the degree to which a new society, beset by enormous physical problems and located on the edge of a hostile wilderness, succeeded in generating institu tions that, in retrospect, represent ed significant breakthroughs and advances in the evolution of West ern constitutionalism."

While the 18th century saw the entire thrust of English policy as one toward centralization and sub ordination, either to the will of the Parliament or to that of the Crown, the author believes that, "Precisely the reverse was the theory of the American federal union. The evolution of territories into states was to be an evolution from dependency to autonomy." Government was not a positive good, the early Americans be lieved, but a necessary evil. The most important thing was to sev erely limit and circumscribe it. Re calling the "Body of Liberties" adopted in 1641 in Massachusetts, an early "Bill of Rights," the author states that it was "the first mod ern code of the Western world, designed to limit the discretion of legisla tors and magistrates to fixed principles-an idea that was to reach fulfillment and conceptual clarity only in the constitutional period and the latter part of the 18th century."

The ear ly Americans wanted written guarantees and did not 702 THE FREEMAN November wish to trust their liberties to the benevolence of the men who hap pened to be their rulers. Dr. Dargo writes that, "... by the end of the 17th century, the American con stitutional experience-as reflected in royal charters and concessions handed down by the Crown or by the proprietors of royal grants as well as in legislation initiated from below by the people's dep uties-recognized the central im portance of legal guarantees of personal liberty secured by some kind of written enactment whose authority was beyond ordinary statutory control." While Americans at this time reject the idea of a property test for voting, Dr. Dargo reports that such a test was widely used in the colonial period, and for reasons quite different from those we might suppose. He reports that, "The property restriction was a device-originally a liberal reform - for preventing local men of wealth, power, and influence, from controlling the outcome of elec tions. Given that most voting was oral and that a man's choice was public knowledge, it was necessary to insulate the voter as much as possible from social pressure. A tenan t was not very likely to risk his lease by voting against the known inclination of his landlord; nor would an apprentice or bound servant vote against his master or a debtor against his creditor. The theory was that tenants and ser vants, like women, slaves and chil dren, did not have 'wills of their own,' and only a man with a mini mum of property was sufficiently self-possessed to exercise a free choice ... it was believed that in the absence of a property qualifi cation the rich and powerful would be able to march to the polls at the head of a parade of dependents prepared to vote at their dicta tion."

Professor Dargo is not happy with those historians and critics who have seen fit, in recent years, to denigrate the American past. To argue against calling the early American experiments with gov ernment "constitutional" because they "did not promote tasks that we, more than two centuries later, consider central, is to distort colo nial America's real achievement and its primary contribution to the betterment of man." Reflecting upon our current period and the abuse of power which we have witnessed, Profes sor Dargo recalls the lessons we should be busy learning from our colonial experience. He concludes that, "Constitutionalism is our best and safest foundation for dealing with the social ills that be set us. It is, after all, primarily out of our constitutional tradition that the notions of social justice 1974 OTHER BOOKS 703 and equality that we as a people profess have emerged. Constitu tionalism supplied to colonial Americans the values, the tools, and the assurance that enabled them to respond to tyranny when they perceived it. We, too, draw upon that rich legacy when we re spond to threats to liberty in our time-threats that the early Amer icans would have understood, and which they taught us how to meet."

., PAGANS IN THE PULPIT by Richard S. Wheeler (Arlington House, 81 Centre Ave., New Rochene, N.Y. 10801, 1974, 137 pp., $7.95) Reviewed by N O1'man S. Ream THIS BOOK is better than its title. The alliteration may attract atten tion but it is not an accurate' des ignation of most of those about whom the author writes. A so cialistic, left-wing position in po litical and economic thought does not forsooth make one a pagan. One cannot argue the fact that many clergymen are oriented to ward increased government con trol of the economy. Some may indeed be pagans, but a great ma jority are misguided idealists whose education in economics and experience in the business world have been terribly neglected. It is about these persons, charged with being our religious and moral leaders, that Richard S. Wheeler writes well. He concludes that they "suffer under the most terrible theological delusion of our age, the delusion that substitutes wel fare for charity, the state for God, bureaucracy for mercy and equal ity for justice." If indeed these religious leaders are so terribly misled then perhaps the kindest thing we can do is to pray, "Fa ther, forgive them for they know not what they do." Unfortunately that commendable moral position will not undo the vast harm they have done during the past three or four decades.

The author makes a strong point in demonstrating that it is not a mere difference in means that di vides the liberal clergy from their more conservative counterparts who believe in the limited govern ment, private property, free-enter prise tradition of our American heritage. It is not true that our goals are the same and only our projected means are different. "Christianity and socialism are not cousins, but enemies. The one is a secular political enterprise that employs government coercion as its motor. The other is a reli gion, concerned above all with the relationship of persons, of souls, with God." The end of one is free dom; the end of the other is total itarianism.

704 THE FREEMAN November Mr. Wheeler makes his point with force and clarity while dis cussing from a Biblical basis the problems of suffering, egalitarian ism, women's rights, civil disobe dience and peace. This reviewer, a clergyman, found his Biblical ex egesis to be thoughtfully and care fully done. Here is a book that will be helpful and supportative in demonstrating that socialism is neither Christian nor moral. 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. 24, NO. 12. DECEMBER 1974 AlexsandrSolzhenitsynSome Lessons for Americans George H. Douglas 707 It is never easy to detect the losses of liberty within a familiar system of attrition. Capitalisma,nd the Wages of Virtue Roger Donway 719 Removing some barriers for those who would extol the virtues of competition.