Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN DREAM by John Chamberlain R ichard Cornuelle, author of Reclaiming The American Dream, subtitled, The Role of Private Individuals and Voluntary Associations (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J., 1993, 258 pages, $19.95 paperback), is the man who restored Alexis de Tocqueville to his rightful place in Amer ican history. Cornuelle had worked as a young man for Garet Garrett. A good observer, he had noticed that it had become fashionable to speak of American life in terms of only two sectors: the public, a euphemism for gov ernment; and the private, or commercial sector. The division seemed somehow wrong. Cornuelle discovered the inade quacy of the two-part division by reading Tocqueville's Democracy in America, in which the Frenchman marveled about our tendency to handle public business through associations that had no connections with the state. Americans founded associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the Antipodes, and to establish hospitals and schools.

The omission of the independent sector had resulted in a tendency to shuffleoffwork onto government. It ignored the Kiwanis, Rotary, Civitan, and Lions clubs, as well as the Chambers of Commerce, and some 3,500independent private hospitals. "There were," so Comuelle observed, "1,357 private colleges and universities, and enroll ments in them went up faster than in the public schools." There is something of a contradiction in Cornuelle's lament that conservatives failed to have programs or that liberals had some of the programs that they did sponsor. Cornuelle should be happy that the Ameri can dream worked for a hundred years. Our founders had taken pains to design a gov ernment with limited powers. Sometimes, this power resulted in a crazy intensity decorating the walls of Alcatraz Prison or in the frivolity of groups organized for treks in classic cars, or even in learning to be clowns. But the independent sector, as Cor nuelle put it, is a kaleidoscope of human action, which takes a thousand forms.

Sometimes the driving power of the inde pendent sector may seem weak, but the demand to serve is none the less a compel ling drive. "We see the services and their many alloys," says Cornuelle, who is sat isfied to observe that "145,000,000 Ameri cans have some form of health insurance." Cornuelle sends me a copy of his revised book with the remark that, "Here it comes again." (Reclaiming The American Dream was originallypublished in 1965.)He says in his afterword that the Reagan mission was not to repeal the welfare state but to pre serve it and to accept debt or inflation for taxation. This was all true enough for the moment, 323 324 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1994 but movements have been created by Cor nuelle and others that must lead eventually to less dependence on welfare. "There is," says Cornuelle, "a sprawling politically in vincible middle class, the members of which believe they could be satisfied by the free market. " That is an optimistic note. It doesn't entirely satisfy Cornuelle. And I can see his point. We have a long way to go before reaching a totally free market. The difficulty we face is dealing with the ruined condition left us by the government process. [J Commager on Tocqueville by Henry Steele Commager University of Missouri Press. 1993 • 130 pages. $24.95 Reviewed by David M. Brown I n the 1830s, a young French aristocrat named Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States to research its penal system, took some notes, and returned home a few months later to write the classic Democracy in America.

Tocqueville was interested in the effect of democracy on equality and liberty. He wanted to apply the lessons of the demo cratic experiment in the United States to that Old World in which democratic im pulses would, he felt, inevitably gain sway. He issued warnings and he expressed hopes. Much of what he predicted for America was not borne out in the short run, but in the present century at least one central dynamic he described seems to be playing out. So now we may ask: to what extent was Tocqueville right for the right reasons? Are the trends we are witnessing reversible? Should they be reversed, in whole or part? Where do we go from here? The title of Henry Steele Commager's new book suggests a primary focus on Tocqueville, but though Democracy in America is indeed the starting point, what Commager really wants to do is explore "five questions that Tocqueville raised but did not-could not-answer. The questions examined are democracy and the tyranny of the majority, the price of the just society, centralization and democracy, the military in a democracy, and the contradictions be tween political equality and economic equality. " Commager is a distinguished his torian who brings a welcome historical sen sibility to his task. He covers a wide range of material within a brief compass. On some issues he is careless or wrongheaded, and hesitant about hinting why others might disagree; but he can also be incisive.

As usual, key questions hinge on defini tions and values. Commager liberally em braces quite opposing brands of ' 'equality' , and "rights," blurring conceptual boundary lines; and too easily succumbs to the "ne cessity" of big government, which he says lumbers on for at least a few very practical reasons. And Tocqueville? Well, here he is on the allure of democratic despotism, in a passage cited by Commager: Our contemporaries are constantly ex cited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led and they wish to remain free .... They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite; they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. . Commager admits that centralized government has indeed been the nemesis of liberty, and that freedom has tended to flourish in those lands and in those eras when central authority has been weakest.

Mid-century Italy and Germany confirm Tocqueville's worries amply enough; Hitler won power first at the ballot box. "But were generalizations and prophe cies based on some centuries of Old World history valid for America?" Commager wonders. It startles that any serious ob server, witnessing the progressive trad ing-off of individual autonomy for democratically demanded goodies in the past decades, from Social Security to Medicare, and beyond, can yet doubt the relevance of Tocqueville's insight for the United States. To be sure, Commager does not dismiss the dangers of big government lightly, and he does point out that to be more free of government, people must make fewer de mands on government. But his account of its growth both informs and misinforms. Have wars and global interventionism fueled the growth of bureaucracy and gov ernment, even if some of Tocqueville' s specific worries about the character of a democratized military are unwarranted?

Yes, and many just complaints can and should be logged about how the United States has conceived its role in the world and trespassed both abroad and at home. But these complaints need to be framed in relation to a military's legitimate purpose, namely, self-defense. That doesn't mean that freedoms and constitutional protections may be flouted at whim as long as some military goal can be alluded to. But it does mean that "military security" must be a governing concern of the federal govern ment, even if it "makes all the difference, after all, what it is that we secure." What we're securing may not be immaculate, but we still need to fend off the Visigoths. The growth of "big" or national govern ment has also been impelled by the need to thwart "local" violations of liberty, such as enslavement of blacks in the old South. The engine here is the Fourteenth Amendment, which by stipulating" equal protection" of all citizens encouraged a consolidation of national authority begun by the Constitution itself.

Commager is·right to laud the beneficent aspects of this centralization, but it has hardly been an unmixed blessing for indi vidual liberty. National government can be properly large in its ability to overturn abuses or neglect of state and local govern ments, but still carefully circumscribed in the aims of its power. But what if national government becomes "big" in a quite different way, exceeding its chartered mission by, among other things: BOOKS 325 protecting organized labor from competi tion, imposing shackles on peaceful busi ness activity, and instituting Social Security and Medicare? In endorsing the latter exer cise of power as enthusiastically as the former, Commager is welcoming the very tradeoff of freedom for favors that Toc queville warned us of. His ahistorical em phasis of the phrase "general welfare" plucked from the preamble to the Constitu tion, as if the Founding Fathers were all New Dealers whether they knew it or not, hardly reassures.

Commager is similarly sanguine about the national government's efforts on behalf of the environment. But here again the record is mixed at best, and in this volume the record goes unexplored. When a developer can be jailed for messing around with a "wetland" that was only defined as such after the start of the development, some thing is wrong. True environmental depre dation is best countered by clearly defining and enforcing property rights, which would mean forsaking federal land ownership. The main concern seems to be that we are ,'exhausting" our resources; a claim often asserted but yet to be proved. One can argue with that also. But more to the point for a book that takes Democracy in America as its launching pad, Commager offers no discus sion or even clue of how special-interest conflicts and demands can and have influ enced environmental legislation in direc tions quite askew the preservation and protection of the environment. How are democratic impulses wending their way in this arena? Again, liberal political prefer ences pinch-hit for substantive insight.

Those who disagree are "imprisoned" by an outmoded world view. When we encounter attempts to clarify concepts like equality, justice, and the like it is even harder to catch hold of Commag er's argument. The liberal faith in welfarism prevails. Yes, equality and liberty contra dict each other-if equality means equality of economic results, not equality of legal protection, equality of rights. Whatever Tocqueville's concerns may have been, Commager himself is puzzled, even disap326 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1994 Reviewed by Jim Christie David M. Brown is a freelance writer. A ccording to Old Right, paleoconserva tive columnist Pat Buchanan: "To un derstand the new rifts on the Right, scholars have begun to research its history, to ex plore its roots. Latest to do so is a San Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement by Justin Raimondo Center for Libertarian Studies. 1993 • 287 pages. $17.95 (includes postage) pointed that "equal protection of the laws" Francisco writer, Justin Raimondo of the was not extended "into the economic are-Mises Institute. In his recently released na" after it was finallyapplied to civilrights. book, Reclaiming the American Right: The "Neither the court nor the Congress is at Lost Legacy of the Conservative Move this stage prepared to say that equal protec-ment, he argues that conservatism is a cause tion of the laws means an equal right to ajob, corrupted and betrayed."

means equality in housing, means equality Raimondocertainly does-and with gusto, in medical care... ," he laments. Actually, cutting right to the chase-indeed, on pages such "rights" have been claimed by men in one and two-in his accusation ofJust who power, and programs instituted on such is to blame for ideological high treason. grounds. But the warrant for them under the \ "Today, the conservative movement is rubric of equal legal protection is less clear. united on nothing, not even the traditional Or wholly unclear. What is the nature of the conservative credo of limited government, " rights that should be legally protected? If I writes Raimondo. "Instead of railingagainst have a "right" to housing, medical care, the corruption of the Republic and the etc., is the person compelled to provide my depredations of the New Deal and the Great housing, medical care, etc., being equally Society, [neoconservatives] are comfort protected in his right to the freedom to retain able with the legacy of FDR and seek not to the product of the sweat of his brow-his repeal it but only to trim it around the edges right to survive, live, pursue his happiness? ... In this view the American state is much Reading Commager's essay, I get the feeling like its European cousins; it is provider as he might regard such a question as annoy-well as protector, and policeman not only of ingly ideological or beside the point. its own mean streets but of the entire But in no other discussion could it be world."

more relevant. The lock-step totalitarianism Raimondo's writing is clearly influenced that would attend utter economic equality, by Buchanan: if Raimondo were a boxer, he rationalized or not by the Kantian categor-certainly wouldn't be known for many fan ical imperatives evoked during the close of ciful moves or for jabbing, but for fast this book, would go far to confirm the combinations and, certainly, a roundhouse "generalizations and prophecies based on punch-delivered, naturally, from the right. some centuries of Old World history" ad-His tenacity is evident throughout Re vanced by Alexis de Tocqueville. D claiming the American Right, with his tar gets purposely right-of-center. But then again, Raimondo admits he wrote Reclaiming the American Right as a fighting mani festo for the emerging paleoconservative cause rather than as a complete or impartial history of the Conservative Movement.

Still, for all its exclusivity and its fight, Reclaiming the American Right does have a considerable amount of good material re garding the reactionary and libertarian wordsmiths of the Conservative Movement, for Raimondo serves the admirable purpose of celebrating the Old Rightliterary canon hence the felicitously appropriate subtitle, The Lost Legacy ofthe Conservative Move ment. Raimondo gives Old Right writers such as Garet Garrett, John T. Flynn, and Colonel Robert R. McCormick of Chicago Tribune and anti-New Deal fame a sense of depth and texture that is no doubt lacking in even the handful of graduate-level courses that dare to touch on the Old Right. When such courses do, they usually tend to promote the conventional, caricaturesque, eighth-grade level history of the Old Right based on the stigmatizing of the America First movement as isolationist, xenophobic, pro-Nazi, rac ist, anti-Semitic, anti-progress, you name it.

Reclaiming the American Right is worth reading on that single accomplishment. Rai mondo gives a much needed nuanced anal ysis of the Old Right, a rarity in a United States that now rarely acknowledges its anti-statist past in acceptable public debate. D Jim Christie is with the Independent Institute of Oakland, California. Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas by Thomas Sowell The Free Press. 368 pages. $24.95 Reviewed by Patrick Groff O ne searches in vain for euphemistic comments about his subject in Thomas Sowell's scathing new criticism of our na tion's educational systems. "I have long been appalled by the low quality and con tinuing deterioration of American educa tion," Sowell bluntly asserts. From my vantage point as a longtime true insider in the educational establishment, I have grown increasingly aware of how much I share his feeling. Since Sowell is bold, forthright, and re lentless in his negative evaluation, there is no mistaking his doleful opinions about our public schools: their teachers and unions, their bureaucrats, teacher credentialing and training, the lack of accountability, ~ ~class room brainwashing," and the implementa tion of assorted dogmas such as psycho therapeutic, sex, multicultural, and bilingual education. Sowell's palpable outrage at the widespread adoption among educators of BOOKS 327 "miscellaneous psycho-babble," such as "relevance, the whole person, role models, and self-esteem," springs off the pages of his text.

Sowell is no less harsh in his indictment of university education: of its professors, ten ure, the massive federal spending for, and the overcharging and waste in research, the lack of accountability (again), the displace ment of teaching by useless research, ethnic studies departments, racial and ideological double standards on campuses, unfair ad missions practices, and the exploitation of athletes. The impressive thing about Sowell's in tense yet highly readable denunciations of these educational evils is that he makes the case against them so irresistibly compelling. Few reasonable readers of Inside American Education are likely to leave his volume not convinced that our education systems have ~ 'taken our money, betrayed our trust, failed our children, and then lied about the failure with inflated grades and pretty words." It will be the obstinate reader, indeed, who is not persuaded by Sowell that education in America has exploited our children in fool ish experiments, in schemes for propagan dizing them, and for purposes of racial balancing and bilingual programs. What reader will be able to disclaim Sowell's expose of universities supposedly dedicated to the freedom of ideas, which actually turn out to be ~ 'the most intolerant institution in American society"? After reading Sowell's book, parents will no longer be sure that the high university tuition they spend will en sure that their children are instructed by bona fide professors, rather than by gradu ate students.

But while Sowell is long on revealing the numerous disgraceful shortcomings, mach inations, and duplicities in American edu cation, he comes up short with detailed solutions for them. The dramatic rhetoric that fills Sowell's book suddenly becomes muted at this point. The two pieces of advice he offers education reformers are uncharac teristically conventional, hardly the radical, spirited, and extraordinary calls to action that his book leads his readers to expect.

328 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1994 To achieve the "institutionalized chang es" that Sowell says are needed, reform agents should (1) "mobilize enough political muscle to win decisive votes in state legis latures," and (2) should "mobilize their superior fire-power for decisive assaults on strategic objectives." Sowell leaves us in the dark, unfortunately, as to the dynamics of how such mobilization of public opinion and its follow-through can be activated, nor why it has not been triggered so far. Sowell's book makes clear, therefore, that it is far easier to identify our present educational woes than it is to propose real istic, easy-to-implement resolutions of them. His book carries with it, then, a somber yet hidden implication: our tax supported educational systems basically are so structurally flawed that they now are probably beyond redemption. We likely must scrap them and start over with a system that provides built-in protections against the educational evils that Sowell describes. Sowell's insight into this matter regrettably appears to stop short of this discernment.

It is not that radical start-over plans are unavailable. For this purpose Sowell could have consulted Lewis J. Perelman's School's Out: Hyperlearning the New Technology, and the End of Education (New York: Wil liam Morrow, 1992). To rid ourselves of the educational monster that Sowell depicts, we must outlaw academic credentials in favor of demonstrations of workplace competency, and bypass the educational establishment by privatizing schools, diverting the money saved in both cases into educational technol ogy development and implementation, Perel man explains. D Patrick Groff is professor of education emeritus at San Diego State University. THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Now, a better value than ever! SPECIAL OFFER! Begin or renew your subscription to The Freeman by June 30, 1994, and receive absolutely free: Politicized Medicine 157 pages, paperback, a $14.95 value OR Man and Nature 221 pages paperback, a $14.95 value It's your choice! Either way, you receive twelve great issues of The Freeman and one of FEE's latest gems! A donation of $25 or more is all it takes. Call today with your Visa or MasterCard order: Tel. (800) 452-3518; Fax: (914) 591 8910. For addresses outside the U.S., please remit $40 to cover shipping costs.