Book Reviews

56 BOOKS Second Thoughts: Myths and Morals of U.S. Economic History edited by Donald N. McCloskey Oxford University Press published for the Manhattan Institute. 1993 • 208 pages. $28.00 Reviewed by Daniel B. Klein T he two magnetic poles of social science are the bumper-sticker and quod erat demonstrandum-that is, the important and the precise. Anyone can make his state ments precise and cohesive if he is willingto be irrelevant, and anyone can prattle about important issues if he is willingto be impre cise and incoherent. The best social science balances the pull of both poles: it struggles to span both precision in statement and importance in message. Second Thoughts offers historical bumper-stickers by 28 researchers who have been through the Q.E.D.s of their field. In their research they have started with one set of bumper-stickers, explored the bases for them, and studied, studied, studied.

They have trudged and maneuvered through beds of quicksand to make their facts pre cise and their logics cohesive. But they do not get lost in the delightful Q.E.D.s of the academic enterprise. They emerge from the experience soiled, exhausted, and uncer tain, but holding in their outstretched hands new bumper-stickers, summary statements they have given rich subsidiary content to, statements that address our curiosity about how mankind's lot can be bettered. Second Thoughts represents a special effort to share with us the learning of these scholars, an effort too often left undone because the academic rewards for bumper-stickers are so thin. For example, Price Fishback writes a five-page essay entitled, "Does Workers' Compensation Make for a Safer Workplace?" Fishback' has written a book and numerous scholarly articles on the condi tions of coal miners in America's past. From his intimacy with the facts and logics of the subject come lessons for similar issues to day.

Prior to workers' compensation laws, li ability for workplace accidents was based on common-law standards of negligence. Fishback summarizes the legal notion of "due care" on the part of the employer, and explains that the employer often escaped liability because the injured worker had accepted the risks involved, had himself been negligent, or was harmed by a fellow worker's negligence. These doctrines "en couraged common-sense prevention of ac cidents by the parties with the lowest cost of prevention"-often the workers on the scene. Andjobs with high risks commanded high wages. But between 1910 and 1930 most states passed workers' compensation laws that tended to hold employers liable for all seri ous accidents' 'arising out of employment. " Fishback explains that, besides driving down wages and job opportunities, these laws sometimes even increased workplace hazard! In coal mining, accidents actually increased. "Since coal loaders and pick miners were paid by the ton of coal, they saw that by working a little faster and taking more risks they could get higher eamings even though a roof fall injured or sometimes killed miners who tried to finish loading cars before setting new props for the roof."

From his detailed learning, Fishback serves up a sort of historical bumper sticker-workers' compensation had high costs and sometimes did not achieve even its primary goal of inducing workplace safety and shows how this pertains to current liability issues. Here are some of the other bumper stickers offered in the book: • Aside from Africa the Third World is not stalled in dependency and squalor but improving rapidly. • Imperial powers serve their vanity not their fortunes by maintaining colonies. • Immigrants enrich a nation.

• The American economy is not falling behind any more than a father falls behind as his children gain poundage in the family. • Economic enterprise advances technol ogy as much as technology advances eco nomic enterprise. • The trade deficit itself is no ailment but perhaps a symptom of real ailments. • Monopoly persists by grace of govern ment privilege not market power. • Free banking in America worked rea sonably well. • People consume a lot of resources in jockeying for position to receive govern ment giveaways. Not news, perhaps, but here we can see how such claims are rooted in stories in volving the I.C.C., steamboats, wildcat banks, Teapot Dome, squatters, Ma Bell, Munn v. Illinois (1876), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), UNIVAC I, the Securities Exchange Act (1934), the Cavendish Lab, hand looms, Luddites, Regulation Q, and Alan Greenspan. The essays give parsimonious accounts of particulars that stand behind the bumper-stickers. Because the editor has chosen experts-including Julian Simon, Robert Higgs, Jonathan Hughes, Peter Temin, Gary Libecap, and Nathan Rosen berg-we have confidence that the bumper stickers emerge from deep learning. A brief bibliography invites the reader to deeper digging.

The libertarian might have a few bones to pick. Jeffrey Williamson seems to suggest that infrastructure development requires ac tivist government, Barry Eichengreen gives a mixed review to the gold standard and says it would be impossible to re-establish today, Hugh Rockoff says that in special circum stances for short durations price controls can work, and Paul Uselding tells of the "facilitative and supportive" role that the U.S. government has played and should play in technological development. But mostly the book offers stories in line with small-government thinking. My favorite passage comes in Elizabeth Hoffman's piece on how worker displace ment and retraining belong to progress: "The challenge for the future will be to train BOOKS 57 each generation for a lifetime of change rather than for a specific skill or job. This task suggests that the kind of education that will best prepare the next generation is an education in flexibility: learning to learn new things. "

Donald McCloskey has done an admira ble job in bringing the layman to the aca demic toiler and bringing the academic toiler to humanity. D Dr. Klein is an Assistant Professor ofEconomics at the University of California, Irvine. Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society by Peter MeWilliams Los Angeles: Prelude Press. 1993 • 817 pages. $22.95 Reviewed by Doug Bandow P eter McWilliams is serious about indi vidual liberty. In the introduction to Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do he declares simply: "This is a book about freedom. " More specifically, it is about the right of people to run their lives without the interference of government so long as they do not violate the rights of others. While this thesis might seem unexceptional to readers of the Freeman, McWilliams has produced a unique and enjoyable, if at times uneven, text for keeping the state out of our personal affairs.

Still, to some people the issues he writes of might seem to pale in importance com pared to, say, health care, until you realize the human cost of the government's attempt to stamp out what McWilliams calls "con sensual crimes." President Clinton wants to arrest you if you seek care outside of his government-controlled medical system. But the state is already daily filling the jails with people who have engaged in some act that others found to be unsafe, offensive, immoral, or something else. Writes McWilliams: 58 THE FREEMAN • JANUARY 1995 More than 350,000people are in jail right now because of something they did, some thing that did not physically harm the person or property of another. In addi tion, more than 1,500,000 people are on parole or probation for consensual crimes. Further, more than 4,000,000peo pIe are arrested each year for doing some thing that hurts no one but, potentially, themselves.

Looked at from this perspective, there are few more important issues than eliminating criminal sanctions against acts which only harm consenting parties, if anyone. As McWilliams points out, tolerance, just like responsibility, "is the price of freedom." The ultimate issue is not what we would prefer our neighbors not to do, but our justification in locking them up for doing it. McWilliams begins sensibly enough by discussing the characteristics of consensual crimes. He rightly prefers the term consen sual to victimless because he does not claim that such activities never cause harm. More over, he deftly distinguishes consensual crimes from real crimes that perpetrators attempt to portray as victimless: nonviolent theft, for instance, as well as drunk drivers "who recklessly endanger innocent (non consenting) others," in McWilliams' words. He also points out the absurdity of the state attempting to protect people "from being emotionally hurt by the self-destructive be havior" of others, insisting instead on phys ical harm to turn an activity into a crime. In the end, he argues, the law has a pretty important job-protecting "innocent people from likely harm to their person or proper ty. " And doing that right will keep officials busy enough.

Still, consent obviously does not affect the issue of morality. And it is the traditional tenets of the Jewish and Christian faiths that have done so much to shape government policies on consensual crimes. McWilliams gives no indication of sharing these moral visions, but he recognizes their potency: "To the people who find [consensual crimes] immoral, they are and may always be immoral. " Rather than arguing over what is moral, McWilliams nicely distinguishes different forms of morality. One type, he argues, is "personal moral ity," what we believe to be right. This can be conceived of as intra-personal morality, since it concerns the making of a good and virtuous person. The other category is what McWilliams calls "social morality," which means "not physically harming the person or property of another. " This may be best understood as interpersonal morality, gov erning a person's relationship with others.

Thus, the key to preserving freedom is not to eschew legislating morality-the only firm basis for law is morality. What is critical is to enforce only social morality, in order to mitigate the impact of a person's sin on ot~ers. The state should not ~ttempt to legislate personal morality, engagingin soul craft rather than statecraft. McWilliams, obviously a free spirit when it comes to organizing books, goes on to add sundry observations on, among other things, the Age of Enlightenment, failures of alcohol Prohibition, and hypocrisy of to day's would-be prohibitionists of just about everything. Regarding the latter, he finds an obvious target: Cigarettes cause enormous carnage yet are not only legal but subsi dized. Lest his sustained attack on tobac co-" cigarettes are our country's most serious drug problem," he argues-confuse one, he opposes tobacco prohibition. There is much, much more in Ain't No body's Business If You Do. McWilliams devotes one long section to the many argu ments against criminalizing consensual con duct. Indeed, at times one feels that one is getting the "kitchen sink" treatment, with no conceivable claim left out. For instance, he leads off contending that such laws are "un-American." Now, they may be stupid, dumb, immoral, and a host of other things, but there is a long prohibitionist streak in u.s. history. And if the Founding Fathers had voted on the legitimacy of, say, an anti-sodomy law, McWilliams would prob ably have been disappointed by the out come.

Similar is the author's contention that the prohibition of consensual crimes is unconstitutional. It would be nice if they were, but that isn't the document given us by the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Still, McWilliams' chapter on this issue is enter taining, and will certainly expand the read er's understanding of what mightbe possible with a judiciary more sympathetic to a Con stitution that was intended to create a limited government of strictly enumerated powers. McWilliams' other claims are generally more persuasive. He titles one chapter: "Laws against Consensual Activities Are Opposed to the Principles of Private Prop erty, Free Enterprise, Capitalism, and the Open Market." It shouldn't be necessary to defend such a proposition, but McWilliams does so with verve. He also makes many more traditional arguments against consen sual crimes: the cost of arresting, convict ing, and imprisoning people for possibly hurting themselves; the catastrophic impact on those prosecuted; and the encourage ment of "real," or victimful, crimes. Read ingthese chapters alone should be enough to convince the hardened prohibitionist that he is doing more harm than good.

Alas, the author's desire to toss in the kitchen sink really shows with his section on "Consensual Crimes and the Bible." McWilliams' biblical interpretation is more convenient than convincing, and is reminis cent of deist Thomas Paine's reliance on Christianity to bolster his arguments in Common Sense. Suffice it to say that the Bible establishes scores of principles gov erning an individual's relationship with God and his neighbors, but virtually none about when he should jail other people for failing to fulfill their duties to God. Moreover, Christianity's unique emphasis on soulcraft suggests this to be an area beyond the state's purview. Where McWilliams does have something serious to say to believers is in his argument that separation of church and state is for their benefit-after all, as he points out, we are all "part of a religious minori ty," and if we allow government to meddle in religion' 'we have not invited God, but the devil, to be the leader of the nation."

Generally more convincing are the other parts of Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, BOOKS 59 covering how consensual crimes became crimes, the specifics of the most common consensual crimes, and answers to oft asked questions (e.g., "what about the chil dren?"). He even offers some truly clever ideas that deserve further discussion. What is the proper age of consent for kids, he wonders? Let parents and child attempt to come to a mutual agreement: with rights would then come responsibility. As McWilliamsobserves, "If the would-be new adults mess up, however, they do not get to hide behind their youth, inexperience, or innocence. They got the name (adult) and now they can play the game (adult court)." What does McWilliamsbelieve should be done about consensual crimes? Repeal the laws, of course, though he recognizes the very real political obstacles to doing so. In a short but helpful practical section, he reviews state laws regarding consensual crimes and gives some advice on how to take political action.

The most important step, however, is to simultaneously educate the public and rea waken people's commitment to liberty. Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do certainly should help do so. Peter McWilliams has entertainingly demonstrated that we need a second American revolution not only to reign in government spending and taxing; we also need one to stop the state from persecuting people who have harmed no one other than themselves. For helping to spread this message McWilliams deserves our thanks. [] Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and former Special Assistant to Presi dent Reagan. He is also a Contributing Editor to The Freeman and the author of The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology, recently released by Transaction Publishers.

60 THE FREEMAN • JANUARY 1995 The Fall of the Ivory Tower: Government Funding, Corruption, and the Bankrupting of Higher Education by George Roche Regnery Publishing. 1994 • 299 pages + index • $24.00 Reviewed by Steven Yates T his book picks up where Dinesh D'Souza leaves off. Not only has polit ical correctness reached epidemic propor tions in higher education, but so have mis management, waste, and corruption. The cause: a long history of expanding govern ment involvement which has created a class of dependents whose lust for easy money is matched only by their irresponsibility. Roche sees the scandal of public higher education becoming the S & L Crisis of the 199Qs, and for the same reasons. The Constitution never mentions educa tion as a federal responsibility. Neverthe less, in 1862 Congress passed the Morrill Act which created the land grant system. A guidingtheme of the Progressive era became "education for everyone at public ex pense." Government funding, whether through direct support for colleges and uni versities or student loans or support for faculty research, has grown exponentially ever since.

Roche's book highlights three conse quences of government involvement in ed ucation: (1) As federal subsidies increase, decisionmaking shifts from economic to political terms; (2) every government dollar comes with strings attached; and (3) with protection from the marketplace, quality declines, waste and mismanagement in crease, independence is discouraged, and excellence is supplanted by mediocrity. Roche presents compelling evidence that the deplorable situation cannot go on much longer. Expenditures have gone through the roof; government assistance to students alone costs taxpayers over $22 billion a year. Defaults on student loans are at record highs; $64 billion (out of $93 billion) in student loans between 1965 and 1989 has simply disappeared. The well is now drying up. While government dollars still flow abundantly into university coffers, univer sities are all having to tighten their belts.

Given exposes about campus radicalism, athletic scandals so numerous that new ones are barely newsworthy, academic dishon esty (including plagiarized and faked re search as well as cheating by students), and graduates who are behind their counterparts in other advanced nations, the public is starting to rebel. Colleges and universities, even prestigious ones like Harvard, have lost their reputations-to the point where the name Harvard once evoked boos rather than cheers from a group of business and community leaders (p. 250). Roche suggests three reforms. First, ed ucators need to recover leadership values. The socialist concept of "shared gover nance" should be scrapped, so that univer sity presidents can make decisions in the best interest of their institutions without being fought at every turn by faculty or forced to be glorified fund raisers. The stifling layers of bureaucracy should be disbanded. Second, educators should dis cover marketplace values. The tragedy of government funding is that it has protected higher education from the marketplace, thus nurturing mediocrity and irrelevance, not to mention ideologies resolutely hostile to in tellectual and economic freedom. Universi ties should be accountable to students and tuition-paying parents in the way a business is accountable to customers and stockhold ers who can take their money elsewhere if dissatisfied. Third, higher education must return to academic and moral values. Aca deme once represented the pinnacle of in tellectual achievement in the West. It com manded respect as the transmitter of knowledge, wisdom, and culture to the next generation. Today it is becoming a laugh ingstock. It is necessary to reject trendy relativism and restore the view that certain ideas have passed the test of time: truth, honesty, morality, the work ethic, economic liberty, limited government. Without re forms in all these areas, the ivory tower will continue to fall.

There are occasional gaps in Roche's discussion. For example, he says little of the tenure system which protects hundreds of unproductive professors at the expense of their more productive juniors. But this is a minor complaint in the face of what Roche has assembled here. This book, boasting a foreword by Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr., is a major contribution to public discussion of the crisis in higher education today. More comprehensive than either Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind or Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education, this book could have an even greater impact if enough people get to read it. It is worth observing that George Roche, President of Hillsdale College, practices what he preaches. Hillsdale accepts no federal money, direct or indirect, and offers stu dents privately funded alternatives to gov ernment loans. D Professor Yates is author ojCivil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (San Fran cisco: ICS Press, 1994).

Your Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism About National Health Care by Jane Orient, M.D. New York: Crown Publishers. 1994 • 276 pages. $23.00 Reviewed by Ron Paul, M.D. E ven without Clintonian socialism, the private practice of medicine, in which the individual doctor is responsible to the individual patient, is on its last legs. Francis A. Davis, M.D., founder and publisher of Private Practice, recently shut down his 25-year-old magazine with the lament that the battle is lost. But I predict that Dr. Davis, a true cham pion of freedom, will no more give up than I will. No matter what the prospects-and they are glum-we owe it to our country, to our patients, to our children and grandchil dren to uphold the banner of liberty. At worst, we can diminish the virulence of statism now. At best, because we have BOOKS 61 moral and economic truth on our side, we may win. And whatever happens, we build the intellectual foundations of freedom for the future, and our descendants willbless us for it.

But a resistance needs a central plan (if Freeman readers will excuse the expres sion!). A number of valuable books have been published in recent years to defend private medical care, but none measures up to Your Doctor Is Not In. Now, perhaps before it is too late, we have a brilliant and principled champion who can also organize and write: Dr. Jane Orient. Dr. Orient, a physician who saw the socialized beast at first hand in the Veterans Administration, has revitalized the Ameri can Association of Physicians and Surgeons as executive director. AAPS is the only free-market doctors' organization, and I proudly belong to it rather than to the corrupt and statist AMA. But as with FEE in the pre-Sennholz years, a great organiza tion had somewhat slowed down. Also as with Dr. Sennholz and FEE, Dr. Orient's leadership has brought AAPS roar ing back. Her newsletters are famous for their intelligence and strategic thinking. Her lawsuit opened up Hillary's secret comin tern meetings. Perhaps most important of all, Dr. Orient has now given us the hand book offreedom that our movement needed.

It may already be giving nightmares to Ira Magaziner and the other leftists who wrote ClintonCare. And don't they deserve it. Arguing from first principles, Dr. Orient shows that the free market enforces such virtues as honesty, hard work, and consci entiousness, whereas state intervention does just the opposite, as anyone who has ever dealt with the government knows. There is no right to medical care, she shows, any more than there is a right to housing, food, or clothing, and the attempt by government to create such a right leads to totalitarianism-the road we are traveling today. For to say that someone-the poor, the elderly, the "uninsured," etc.-has the right to the life, liberty, and property of someone else is a moral outrage, and a grant of absolute power to the state.

62 THE FREEMAN • JANUARY 1995 And the state corrupts whatever it touches. When I was trained, I gladly took the Hippocratic Oath, solemnly pledging, in a tradition thousands of years old, never to commit abortion or euthanasia. Now young doctors, in the words of such oaths as that of Dr. Louis Weinstein, "remember that it is wrong to terminate life in certain circum stances, permissible in others, and an act of supreme love in others." Dr..Kevorkian could be an Angel of Love only under statism, for when the state is spending its hard-stolen money, it resents any patient who lives "too long." In the Netherlands, the socialized system murders more than 20,000 patients a year- "invol untary euthanasia" it is called. Socialized medicine was an invention of Bismarck, the warfare stater who also gave us social security. Lenin and Hitler institu tionalized the system, and most of the world followed. As Dr. Orient shows in riveting detail, however, even the "best" of these systems, as in Canada or Germany, is a disaster for the patient and the taxpayer.

Medical statism got its start in America thanks to the AMA and its anti-competitive medical licensure laws, an intervention cou rageously condemned by Dr. Orient. She also shows that modern health insurance is a non-market institution. Invented by the AMA-sponsored Blue Cross and Blue Shield, health coverage violates the princi ple of insurance. With the exception of catastrophic insurance, health insurance is prepaid consumption of an incredibly inef ficient and bureaucratic sort. Lyndon Johnson's Medicare and Medic aid, Richard Nixon's Health Care Financing Administration, Ronald Reagan's CLIA not to speak of the Indian Health Service and the VA-have given us a system that is more than half statized. And our Fabian socialist First Couple want to finish the job, and us in the process. In response, the Republicans, from Bob Dole to Phil Gramm, provide their own versions of socialized medicine. They don't call it that, of course, but once admit the principle of universal access-that the tax payer should provide equal health insurance for every American-and there is no stop ping the leviathan.

Equality is the most politically pernicious idea on earth. Claim that human beings, who are manifestly unequal, should be treated the same, and you have opened the way not only to systemic injustice, but to the om nipotent state. God created each of us as a unique individual, and we should celebrate this. We could not even have an economy or the division of labor, Ludwig von Mises pointed out, were not a "radical inequality" the chief feature of the human race. As Dr. Orient shows, we don't need any sort of national system of health care, any more than we do of dry cleaning. We need the free market. If we are concerned about the deserving poor, and we should be although secondarily to the producers-a free market is best for them too. But most important, in this clarion call to roll back the state, Dr. Orient shows us that liberty favors the paying patient. The IRS agent is bad enough. Equip him with a scalpel, as Bill and Hillary would, and we'll soon findthe government not only liftingour wallet, but submitting us to Dr. Weinstein's ,'supreme act of love. " D Dr. Paul, a practicing physician and former Congressman, is chairman of the National En dowment for Liberty in Lake Jackson, Texas.

The History of Freedom by Lord Acton, with an Introduction by James C. Holland Acton Institute, The Waters Building, 161 Ottawa NW, Grand Rapids, Mich.• 1993 • 93 pages. $5.95 Reviewed by Salim Rashid "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. " This one sentence, from a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, not from some public document, has served to immortalize Lord Acton's thought for posterity. And yet, like most short summaries, it hides so much of central importance to Lord Acton that it is almost misleading. What led Acton to such a con clusion, so totally at variance with Plato's notion of a philosopher-king? The two lec tures on The History ofFreedom provide us a partial insight into Acton's inner thoughts. It is entirely appropriate that this book be published by the Acton Institute, a non profit organization set up to promote Clas sical Liberal ideas among clergy and other interested individuals, a goal close to Ac ton's heart.

The text consists of two short essays of equal length: "Freedom in Antiquity" and "Freedom in Christianity. " The absence of dates and names gives each part a timeless air, making the essays readable, particularly by young students who have little back ground to appreciate the drama Acton writes about. I have used the essays for a short course on "Christianity and Capitalist Civilization" and was pleasantly surprised that students found many stimulating pas sages. One student was struck by the illib eral statement attributed to Aristotle that the mark of the worst governments is that "they leave men free to live as they please" (p. 40). Another was struck by the political transformation said to have overcome Christianity around AD 500: "Christianity which in earlier times had addressed itselfto the masses, and relied on the principle of liberty, now made its appeal to the rulers, and threw its mighty influence into the scale of authority" (p. 60).

The brevity and style of these essays pique one's curiosity. There are many pas sages that cry out for further detailed ex amination. Of Athenian democracy Acton wrote: "Their history furnishes the classic example of the peril of Democracy under conditions singularly favorable. For the Athenians were not only brave and patriotic and capable of generous sacrifice, but they were the most religious of the Greeks" (p. 32). No references, no guides, no further evidence supports such a sweeping claim. But if one knows about Acton, here is a clear guide to Acton's own beliefs. The religiosity of the Athenians was the foundation of their liberty, Acton believes. But how can he BOOKS 63 persuade those who wish for more than just his authority? The connecting thread between antiquity and Christianity is the statement of natural law by the Stoics. By appealing to an au thority superior to the state, by urging the prior constraint of natural law upon all civil law, the Stoics broke with the political tradition of the Greeks. Acton is struck by the fact that Antiquity had provided the noblest precepts yet these truths did not save them from ruin.

"Freedom in Christianity" begins by crediting the Teutonic and Germanic tribes with the final ingredient-participatory in stitutions-that finally led to the growth of political liberty . No details are provided and in subsequent pages the tribes are forgotten. Instead, what emerges is the importance of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the period between AD 500 and 1500. It was from the conflict between church and state in this period that political liberty eventually took root. Acton is careful to point out that both institutions sought absolute control and it is striking to note how leading spokesmen of both the Guelphs and the Ghilbellines spoke almost the same language in deriving power from the welfare of the people. "Looking back over 1,000 years ... this is what we find-Representative government, which was unknown to the ancients, was almost universal" (p. 67). A conclusion that shocks the modern ear! Most of Acton's remaining space is devoted to the demise of such political liberty under the influence of Ma chiavelli and the subsequent return to more "moral" politics with the writings of Gro tius. Acton has kind words for the United States and believes it provides the best example of a country that has been able to combine liberty with progress.

What are the weak points of Acton's presentation? There is very little about the importance of the Crusades, the Italian Mercantile Renaissance, the Age of Discov ery, or the Industrial Revolution. Acton cautions his readers at the outset that he is concerned with ideas, not institutions, and chronicles instances when despotic acts were undertaken by liberal institutions. It 64 THE FREEMAN • JANUARY 1995 allows him to continue with little emphasis on the social and economic conditions which permit and encourage a free society. This is all the more surprising since Acton notes among the enemies of liberty "the perpetual struggle for existence" which ac tually leaves men "eager to sell their birth right for a pottage" (p. 21). If hungry men are so eager to surrender their liberty, is not economic subsistence a precondition for sustaining a free society? With all his eagerness to establish religion as a fundamental prerequisite for liberty, Acton fails to note that Christianity is con cerned with saving souls. Liberty is neither necessary nor sufficient to achieve this goal.

He. never quite considers the point that, under certain conditions, God's work is furthered by accepting social evils such as slavery. Like most modern Christians who have discussed the rise of the West, Acton feels constrained to minimize the energy, intellectual force, and societal support pro vided by Christianity through the ages. Modern scholarship (e.g., Francis Oakley, The Medieval Experience) has provided us so many more reasons for appreciating the nurturing of Western civilization provided by Christianity. These lectures thus provide an eloquent minimalist argument for the Providential view of the growth of freedom. Acton's essays are certainly worth reading but one must constantly keep in mind how unselfconsciously he is the product of the Victorian age~ D Dr. Rashid is Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois. CRIMINAL JUSTICE? THE LEGAL SYSTEM VERSUS INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY Edited by Robert James Bidinotto L iberal theories about the causes of crime have virtually destroyed our criminal justice sys tem, and turned our once-great cities into desolate battlefields. In response, FEE is proud to announce a new book-already being hailed by law enforcement experts and crime vic tims as the definitive modern work on the subject of crime and punishment.

"America's law enforcementofficers-and crime victims--owe a debt of gratitude to Mt: Bidinotto for documenting in one book how and why our justicesystem is broken-and how to fix it." -James J. Fotis, Executive Director Law Enforcement Alliance of America CriminalJustice?is a powerhouse collection of essays by 14 distinguished scholars, justice profes sionals, and journalists. They explode decades of excuse-making about the "root causes" of criminal behavior-and offer tough, no-nonsense reforms for our lenient criminal justice system. "Robert Bidinotto has done it. He's managed to assemble a group of scholarl)T,yet immensely readable, articles that completely demolish a half century of half-baked theo ries about the causes of and society's response to crime. You're going to find out that the average citizen was right all along and the' experts' deathly wrong." -Walter E. Williams John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics George Mason University Edited by award-winning Reader'sDigest investigative journalist and Freeman columnist Robert James Bidinotto, CriminalJustice?is one of the most important and unique titles FEE has ever published. Sure to be a classic, it is essential reading for every citizen seeking ways to stop the bloodshed on our streets.

"Persuasive ... a compelling message." -Dominic S. Amato, Circuit Judge, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 320 pages $19.95 paperbound $29.95clothbound THEmE ........... IDEASON LIBERTY CONTENTS FEBRUARY 1995 VOL. 45 NO.2 68 Should Star Trek Be Regulated as a Monopoly? by Gary North The marketing of Star Trek from an economic point of view. 73 The Education of Thomas Edison by Jim Powell How a genius's love of learning flourished without benefit of schooling. 77 E Pluribus Unum by Ralph A. Raimi Unity in our common culture. 81 Ideas and Consequences-Dissatisfaction Guaranteed and No Money Back by Lawrence W. Reed Some thoughts on school prayer. 83 Business-Government Collusion by Eric-Charles Banfield "Pro-business" ideas are all too often inconsistent with "free market" ideas. 90 John C. Calhoun: Champion of Sound Economics by William J. Watkins, Jr. Reconsidering the wisdom of an often-overlooked statesman.