Warren Brookes, 1929-1991

Still, when he died at age 62 trying to outwork pneumonia on the last weekend of 1991, Warren remained mainly a presence on the pages of newspapers in secondary markets and conser vative journals. Although politicians were confronted with his arguments thanks to an out let in The Washington Times, he remained virtuMr. Ferguson writes the Business World column for The Wall Street Journal. ally unknown to the Pooh-Bahs of the big-city press. Television? Except for a moment of glory on a 60 Minutes segment following up on his work, for get it. I remember calling Ray Brady, economics correspondent of CBS News, months after a media watchdog had chided him for being ignorant of Warren's writings and statistics. Mr. Brady main tained he'd stillnever heard of Warren Brookes. Warren got harder to ignore over the last few years, however, as his powerful drive and indepen dence led him away from the macro-economy and into the area of environmental science. Many of us market-oriented commentators tend to shy away from that subject because the topics often seem so technical that precious weeks of study would be needed before one could write with confidence about them. A Harvard grad with an average guy's instincts, Warren showed no such trepidation. He wrote pathbreaking articles challenging conven tions of the environmental media about pollution, food safety,you name it.

He had a strong notion that the various scares were a left-wing fraud, just as years before he had kept writing-to only belated notice-that Michael Dukakis's "miracle" in Massachusetts was bogus. Warren was proven right on that latter story and I suspect that, even conceding the genuineness of some environmental perils, he will emerge cor rect in his more recent cause. He raised some conservative eyebrows toward 173 the end when he aligned himselfwith Representa tive John Dingell in attacking "political science" by tax-paid investigators. Maybe he didn't always consider the whole chessboard of power. But, at the very least, in his overall efforts he succeeded in engaging the regulatory bureaucracy in popular argument where it had hardly before been so tested. In recentyears, Warrenwas not only writing, but speaking, and proved popular with business audiences. His stuff was somewhat of a samizdat on the right. Among free-market conservatives, you would hear increasing references to his findings, even while the prestige media would carry nary a reference. I was surprised he got even a three-inch obituary in The New York Times.

His columns weren't often stylistic gems. Inter views seemed to require "so-and-so told us" ref erences, and he used exclamation marks where punchy rhetoric would have sufficed. Only in his spiritual column each Christmas season did he let his humanityshow. But by sheerdintofinforma tion, his stuff was one-of -a-kind. With a bit of Warren's tenacity, a number of us mighttry to shoulder his load. If only we had his grasp of the numbers. D 174 George Mason and the Bills of Rights by Gary Williams T he Bill of Rights received a lot of atten tion during its recent 200th anniversary, but little recognition was given to George Mason, who was the driving force behind the document. Mason (1725-1792)was the author of the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, whieh the Marquis de Condorcet called "the first Bill of Rights to merit the name." Mason fought against ratification of the United States Consti tution because it contained no bill of rights. As a leader of the Anti-Federalists, his objections led to the first 10 amendments, which were ratified in 1791.