June

THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY FEATURES 340 343 346 356 360 363 367 373 379 382 384 389 393 397 Center 354 371 395 338 398 Knowledge, Ignorance, and Government Schools by Sheldon Richman Educational planners simply cannot know what the market will reveal through the competitive process. History of the Voucher Idea by Antony Flew Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and other early proponents of vouchers. Vouchers: Politically Correct Money by Gary North The crucial relationship between moral authority, legal authority, and economic authority. Capitalism Is Merciless-to Capitalists by Allan Levite No matter how much they might try, capitalists cannot repeal the laws of markets. Lessons from a Year in Romania by Sandra L. Goodman The importance of prices, property rights, and entrepreneurship. Why Socialism Failed by Mark J. Perry Socialism's fatal flaw: it ignores incentives. The New Nihilism by Michael D. Weiss The terror culture's war on civilization.

A Walk on the Supply Side by Raymond J. Keating An in-depth examination of supply-side economics. The Minimum Wage Law by Raphael G. Kazmann The pernicious effects of misguided legislation. The Mushroom Wars by Richard B. Coffman A new "tragedy of the commons." Richard Cobden's Triumphant Crusade for Free Trade and Peace by Jim Powell A peaceful revolutionary remembered. If It Ain't Broke-Don't Regulate It by Wayne T. Brough Reducing the burden of government regulation. Freedom, Efficiency, and The New York Post by Joseph S. Fulda Some thoughts on the role of the entrepreneur. A Reviewer Remembered: John Chamberlain (1903-1995) by Edmund A. Opitz COLUMNS NOTES from FEE-Affirmative Action by Hans R Sennholz IDEAS and CONSEQUENCES-Destruction Is No Blessing by Lawrence W Reed A MATTER of PRINCIPLE-The "Root Causes" of Crime by Robert James Bidinotto ECONOMICS on TRIAL-$4,OOO a Month from Social Security? by Mark Skousen DEPARTMENTS Perspective-Matthew Carolan, Dean Russell Book Reviews -All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty by P. 1. O'Rourke, reviewed by William H. Peterson; On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society by Gertrude Himmelfarb, reviewed by Peter 1. Boettke; Inflation is Theft, The Foundation for Economic Education, reviewed by Steven Horwitz; In Defense ofAdvertising: Arguments from Reason, Ethical Egoism, and Laissez-Faire Capitalism by Jerry Kirkpatrick, reviewed by Mark Thornton; Liberty Against Power: EssaJ!sby Roy A. Childs, Jr., edited by Joan Kennedy Taylor, reviewed by Doug Bandow; Liberalism, Conservatism, and Catholicism: An Evaluation of Contemporary American Political Ideologies in Light o/Catholic Social Teaching by Stephen M. Krason, reviewed by John Attarian; Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action by Steven Yates, reviewed by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.; Princess Navina Visits Mandaat by Count Nef, reviewed by Robert Batemarco.

THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Published by The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 Phone (914) 591-7230 FAX (914) 591-8910 President: Hans F. Sennholz Managing Editor: Beth A. Hoffman Guest Editor: Raymond J. Keating Editor Emeritus Paul L. Poirot Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Book Review Editor Robert Batemarco Marymount College, Tarrytown, New· York Assistant Editor Gregory P. Pavlik Columnists Robert James Bidinotto Staff Writer, Reader's Digest Lawrence W. Reed Mackinac Center for Public Policy Midland, Michigan Mark Skousen Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida Contributing Editors Charles W. Baird California State University, Hayward Doug Bandow Cato Institute, Washington, D.C. E. Calvin Beisner Covenant College, Chattanooga, Tennessee Peter J. Boettke New York University Donald J. Boudreaux Clemson University Clarence B. Carson American Textbook Committee Wadley, Alabama Thomas J. DiLorenzo Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland Joseph S. Fulda New York, New York Roger W. Garrison Auburn University Bettina Bien Greaves Resident Scholar, FEE Robert Higgs The Independent Institute, Oakland, California John Hospers University of Southern California Tibor R. Machan Auburn University Ronald Nash Reformed Theological Seminary Maitland, Florida Edmund A. Opitz Chatham, Massachusetts James L. Payne Sandpoint, Idaho William H. Peterson Washington, D.C.

Jane S. Shaw PERC, Bozeman, Montana Richard H. Timberlake University of Georgia Lawrence H. White University of Georgia The Freeman is the monthly publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533. FEE, established in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, is a non-political, educa tional champion of private property, the free market, and limited government. FEE is classified as a 26 USC 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Copyright © 1995 by The Foundation for Economic Education. Permission is granted to reprint any article in this issue, except "Vouchers: Politically Correct Money" and "Richard Cobden's Tri umphant Crusade for Free Trade and Peace," provided appropriate credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to The Foundation. The costs of Foundation projects and services are met through donations, which are invited in any amount. Donors of $30.00or more receive a subscriptionto TheFreeman. Student SUbscriptionsare $10.00 for the nine-month academic year; $5.00 per semester. Additional copies of singleissues of The Freeman are $2.00. For foreign delivery, a donation of $40.00a year is suggested to cover mailing costs.

Bound volumes of The Freeman are available from The Foundation for calendar years 1972 to date. The Freeman is available in microform from University Microfilms, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106. PERSPECTIVE Turning Libertarian: An Appreciation The earliest remembrance I have of the people called libertarians was a day, some years ago, when I flipped on the TV and saw some sort of libertarian convention. It was being held in Hartford, I believe, and was televised, probably to the horror of the delegates, by PBS. But to a young boy like me the libertarians might as well have been on Mars. They shared in my mind the same position as the communists: heathens caught up in some soul-threatening enthu siasm. After all, my Catholic parents called themselves neither communists nor liber tarians. But, over the course of my life, I, like many conservatives, such as William F. Buckley Jf. and George Will, have tasted the worldly enthusiasms, and find myself un dergoing a metamorphosis which leads me each day to identify myself more and more as a "libertarian."

Why does this happen to so many tradi tional conservatives? Where once I stood at my mother's knee in our warm and cozy kitchen, and listened as she told me about her hope for a pro-family tax credit, I now rage against the wind for a flat tax. Once I hoped the Supreme Court would allow prayer in schools, now I pray for school choice. Once I worried about the ERA, now I worry about the EPA, FDA, HHS, and the IRS. Is it simply cynicism, a recognition of the pervasive "intrigue" in government? It's true that as we grow older, and learn how politics works, we realize that politicians are not only people, but they are often small minded people, of small ideas and imagina tion. This is true of local politicians, and all national politicians start local. But no matter how much of this we see, corruption in government is something which merely shakes us from a deeper mythology about our world, namely our tendency to slough off our personal respon sibility, and to invest life and moral qualities into things larger than ourselves. Libertar ianism, it seems to me, has always been at its best an attack on this larger sort of 338 thinking. In many ways the libertarian movement, by no means a monolith, has brought a certain "dialectical" quality to American political philosophy, much the way the pre-Socratics challenged Hellenic mythology. Libertarianism, like other good intellectual movements, is about question ing assumed premises. And the premises in need of questioning today are those of the all-knowing expert-laden government.

A great period of questioning occurred in my life when I studied philosophy at St. John's University in New York. There I took a class in political philosophy with a lively, iconoclastic professor by the name of Douglas Rasmussen, who was something of an authority on Ayn Rand, and who flatly announced to us that he would teach the class from a libertarian point of view. "So this is what a libertarian looks like up . close," I thought. He used a book called The Libertarian Reader, by Tibor Machan, which to this day is one of those books that, when I open it, I relive the time in which I first read it. (I'm sure you all have books like that.) We began the class by analyzing the political theory of John Rawls. If there is ever a mythology about the state this is it. Rawls is, perhaps other than Marx, the archetypal mythologizer of the collective. Under the withering criticism of Rasmussen, with a little help from Robert Nozick, I felt a paradigm being shattered. It was a paradigm of the world as a collection of forces beyond my control. (I had a little help from Aristo tle's virtue theory and Augustine's criti cisms of determinism as well, I might add.) But as I reflect on this time in my life, and as I have seen years later as a college professor myself, the young often enter adulthood blithely unaware of the mecha nisms of their own free will, the power they have over their character and destiny. Yet, they are stuffed full of enthusiasms about how they must, must, change the world, a mantra which begins at the high school graduation. The more I reflect on the state of mind with which we begin adulthood, the more I call myself a libertarian.

My library is now well supplied with books by Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, and yes, PERSPECTIVE Ayn Rand. Many have yet to be read, but are on the list. As we all know, a library is a reflection of what its owner aspires to, not what he has accomplished. Yet I believe I have already assented to the core of liber tarianism, the remainder is the fleshing out. The libertarian knows that the world makes sense, that it will work for you, if you have but the mind and the will for it. Otherwise, it is all a confusing series of transfer pay ments. -MATTHEW CAROLAN Executive Editor, National Review Who Is a Libertarian? • A libertarian believes that the govern ment should protect all persons equally against-external and internal aggression, but should otherwise generally leave people alone to work out their own problems and aspirations. • A libertarian respects the right of every person to use and enjoy his honestly ac quired property-to trade it, to sell it, or even to give it away-for he knows that human liberty cannot long endure when that fundamental right is rejected or even seri ously impaired.

• A libertarian believes that the daily needs of the people can best be satisfied through the voluntary processes of a free and competitive market. And he holds the strong belief that free persons, using their own honestly acquired money, are in the best possible position to understand and aid their fellow men who are in need of help. • A libertarian favors a strictly limited form of government with many checks and balances-and divisions of authority-to foil the abuses of the fearful power of government. • A libertarian has much faith in himself and other free persons to find maximum happiness and prosperity in a society wherein no person has the authority to force any other peaceful person to conform to his viewpoints or desires in any manner. His way of life is based on respect for himself and for all others. -DEAN RUSSELL Ideas on Liberty (FEE), May 1955 339 THEmEEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Knowledge,Ignorance,and GovernmentSchools by Sheldon Richman T he president of the American Federa tion of Teachers, Albert Shanker, put it well: "It's time to admit that public edu cation operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and produc tivity. It's no surprise that our school sys tem doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."t Shanker knows more than he realizes.