Book Reviews

644 BOOKS The Cross and the Rain Forest: A Critique of Radical Green Spirituality by Robert Whelan, Joseph Kirwan, and Paul Haffner Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty & William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 1996 • 163 pages. $16.00 paperback Reviewed by Ken Ewert S trident, apocalyptic environmentalist rhetoric has become a regular feature of American life. Vice President Al Gore intones that, "We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization." Other eco prophets demand a halt to economic growth, an end to market economies and industrial develop ment, and an abandonment of the notion of "progress." Apparently we must repent of unen lightened desires to improve the quality of human life. While perhaps not yet accepted by "the man on the street," these extreme ideas are more than trendy prattle at yuppie (vegetarian) dinner par ties. The widespread preaching of environmental ism in public schools-from kindergarten through university-will have its implications. Already, ac cording to one survey,63 percent of schoolchildren have lobbied their parents to recycle, and the situation has one author suggesting that the tradi tional classroom three "Rs" are in danger of being replaced by the enviro three "Rs"-reduce, reuse, and recycle.

While numerous free-market rebuttals have been penned against radical environmentalism, for the most part these works have taken aim at the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Radical environmen talism is primarily a religion. And, as The Cross and the Rain Forest: A Critique of Radical Green Spir ituality makes clear, it must be examined and critiqued as one. This small book, authored by Robert Whelan, Joseph Kirwan, and Paul Haffner, is a worthy start. Well researched and providing a wealth of quotations, The Cross and the Rain Forest is an insightful look at the philosophical footings of environmentalism. While the roots go back much further, in 1966, the historian Lynn White gave what proved to be a significantspeech entitled The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis. In this speech White attributed the "ecologic crisis" to the Christian tradition. Christianity, White wrote, "insisted that it is God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends."

In what became a famous phrase, White pro claimed that Christianity was "the most anthropo centric religion the world has seen." He lamented that Christianity made science and technology possible by displacing the pagan animistic belief that everything has its own genus loci, or guardian spirit. Prophetically, White called for a new religion to replace Christianity. Modern environmentalism is a significant facet of this new religion. A tired and intellectually anemic Christianity is being deposed by a very old "new" religion: neo-paganism. The current battle, then, rages not over scientific facts or economic realities, but over religious presup positions. The decisivequestions are not regarding ozone depletion or species extinction. The ques tions are religious: Is nature made for man, or is man made for nature? Is man uniquely created in the image of God, or is he merely one (possibly carcinogenic) part of nature? Does sin consist of breaking the laws of a holy God, or does it consist of unapologetically using nature? Is the gospel the good news of God's savingwork, or the command that man conform himself to his "natural environ ment"?

The Cross and the Rain Forest cogently illumi nates the religiousnature of the conflict-a conflict not destined to be settled merely by appeal to scientific evidence or economics. The ultimate victor in this battle will be the most powerful g~p~ 0 Ken Ewert is the editor of U-TURN, a quarterly Biblical worldview publication. The Economic Laws of Scientific Research by Terence Kealey New York: 81. Martin's Press. 1996 • 396 pages • $75.00 cloth; $19.95 paperback Reviewed by George C. Leef A mericans have come to accept that a vast number of important functions can only be done if they are run by or at least subsidized by the state. According to conventional wisdom, govern ment has to provide lighthouses, bus service, income security, schools, disaster relief, and much more. To that listwe should add scientificresearch. Scientific research, it is generally assumed, is a "public good" that would be underprovided if left up to the market. Therefore, the government needs to supply enough funds to make sure that we don't miss out on scientific breakthroughs.

Like much that passes for conventional wisdom, this belief is mistaken, so argues Terence Kealey in The Economic Laws of Scientific Research. Kealey, a clinical biochemist at Cambridge University, has penned a thought-provoking book that blends economic theory with the history of science to challenge the idea that we need or even benefit from government support for scientificresearch. It is a book that buttresses free-market theoreticians, who will no longer have to say, "Well, in theory, there is no reason to believe that we need to subsidize scientific research." Kealey's book gives us a detailed treatment of the issue that should prove to be extremely valuable in arguing against this use of tax dollars. Government funding of science turns out to be no better than government funding of business; the political system can no more pick winners and losers in scientific research than it can in markets for goods and services. A case in point: In 1833, Charles Babbage came up with an idea for a mechanical computing device, and managed to persuade the British government to give him £17,000 for the construction of his so-called "Dif ference Engine." After squandering the funds and having produced nothing, Babbage asked the government for more money for a different project, his "Analytical Engine." When it denied his request, he denounced the government for its "indifference toward science." Twenty years later, two Swedish engineers managed to build the "Difference Engine" with a grant of less than 5 percent of what Babbage spent. But they found that there was no market for the invention.

Politicized science turns out to be just as wasteful as politicized housing, education, transportation, or anything else. But if government doesn't fund scientific re search, won't the "free rider" effectkick in and give us too little science? Won't organizations sit back and wait for others to undertake the basic research and then jump in to capitalize on it, getting a "free ride"? Like other claimed "free rider" problems that ostensibly call for some coercive "solution," the supposed need for government involvement in science disappears upon close examination. Kealey argues that scientific knowledge is never free. A firm can't keep up with, much less utilize current science unless it maintains a scientific staff that is 645 working in the field. And there is no more need for the state to subsidize a firm's costs of acquiring scientific knowledge that might prove profitable than there is for it to subsidize the acquisition of any other kind of useful knowledge.

Moreover, the author argues, government fund ing of science may well be a negative-sum game. Governmental money does not augment private scientificspending; it replacesit, often at more than a one-to-one ratio. Thus, we get less scientific research that someone thought held enough prom ise to justify voluntary expenditure (Le., was ex pected to pass the test of the market) and more scientific research of the sort that appeals to federal grant administrators. That is a bad tradeoff indeed. The Economic Laws of Scientific Research also obliterates the "market failure" argument used to justifygovernment intervention. There is no defect in the market for scientific information that re quires us to tax the populace, send money off to Washington, and then rely on bureaucratic grant ing agencies to make the optimal use of it by shipping it off to scientists who want support. We would be better off if we took the government out of the loop.

Terence Kealey has written a witty, well-argued book showing for the nth time that the market outperforms its statist alternative. An excellent addition to the literature of market success and government failure. D George C. Leef is the book review editor for The Freeman. PBS: Behind the Screen by Laurence Jarvik Prima Publishing. 1997 • 362 pages. $25.00 Reviewed by William H. Peterson "IfPBS won't do it, who will?" Clever PBS slogan all right, but· as to the part about "who will?"-how about the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, A&E, and other upscale, if for-profit, TV channels? Recall, PBS stands for Public-repeat, Public, which means, translated, government -supported-Broadcasting System, a 1,000-station radio and TV network of news, instruction, and entertainment. Currently PBS is the recipient of much sought after federal funding to the tune of some 14 percent of its estimated $2 billion budget, or about $280 million,while garnering but two percent of the U.S.

646 THE FREEMAN • OCTOBER 1997 audience. Viewer, listener, foundation, and corpo rate support along with some state and community funding cover the rest b~ the budget. One rub with government funding, says Lau rence Jarvik, then of the Capital Research Center, a Washington-based think tank, is its liberal ide ology, an ideology that permeates its programs. A related rub is its forcing legions of nonviewers and nonlisteners of PBS, who happen to be tax payers, to fund something not of their choice. These trapped forgotten men and women prefer to watch football, baseball, basketball, sitcoms, movie reruns, local and national news, and the like on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox-affiliated TV stations, yet they·· must pay up nonetheless. Jarvik also charges wasteful redundancy in the 300-station PBS TV network. (I attest the charge: As a D.C. resident I easily tune in either PBS Channel 26 in D.C. or PBS Channe122 in Baltimore.) Jarvik concedes the many quality shows pre sented by PBS, including "Nova," "The CivilWar,"

and "Masterpiece Theater," with its own unfor gettable "Upstairs, Downstairs" series. He is also struck by William F. Buckley Jr.'s "Firing Line" and Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" series for their conservatismllibertarianism. But he charges that "Firing Line" represents "the triumph of tokenism" and all manner of subtle and unsubtle putdowns of host Bill Buckleyand his producers. And he recounts the trials and tribula tions of getting "Free to Choose" on the air. President Gerald Ford appointed conservative economist W. Allen Wallis as PBS board chairman. Wallis quit after a year, "disgusted" at the PBS lack of balance-its liberal ideology. For example, well before "Free to Choose," PBS staged liberal John Kenneth Galbraith's "Age of Uncertainty" TV series, with host Galbraith ever calling for state interventions as solutions of national economic problems such as high unemployment. Galbraith touted Keynesian fiscalmeasures and other central planning ideas. Natch.

Friedman's name, when it came up, was anath ema to PBS executives. They rejected his laissez faire policies, his seeing government as the prob lem and not the solution. Wallis says PBS viewed Friedman as "a fascist, an extreme right-winger and didn't want anything to do with him." That would've been the end of the story were it not for a fluke: a conservative/libertarian PBS station man ager of WQLN in Erie, Pennsylvania, and a gifted fund-raiser, Robert Chitester. Chitester had also found the Galbraith series statist and one-sided. He drove over to the nearby University of Rochester campus to lunch with its renowned chancellor, the self-same W. Allen Wallis. Chitester asked Wallis to name someone to rebut Galbraith. Wallis suggested Friedman. Chit ester agreed and raised the necessary seed money. Friedman was at first reluctant, but wife Rose helped persuade him. So was born an amazing counter-Galbraithian PBS TV series, Friedman's "Free to Choose," still available on videotape. The rest, as is said, is history.

Concludes Laurence Jarvik in this excellent expose of politically correct PBS: "If one truly values freedom, especially freedom of speech, one must honestly recognize that a free marketplace of ideas cannot possibly exist in an intellectual and administrative environment hostile to the very concept of the free market itself." Amen. Dr. Peterson, adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foun dation, is the Distinguished Lundy Emeritus Profes sor of Business Philosophy at Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina. Faith of Our Fathers edited. by Mary Sennholz The Foundation for Economic Education. 1997 • 398 pages • $19.95 paperback Reviewed by Norman S. Ream A lthough it cannot be established that Alexis de Tocqueville actually wrote his much quoted words to the effect that" America is great because America is good," that conclusion seems more and more to be verified by the passage of time as the greatness of America fades along with its goodness.

Tocqueville was convinced, as have been the majority of our best historians, that Americans of the eighteenth century were dedicated to the moral and ethical precepts of Jesus and the New Testa ment. That indeed was the "Faith of Our Fathers." The idea that many of the Founding Fathers were atheists and agnostics is completely false. Not only were most of them devoutly religious, they firmly believed that liberty and justice depended on an observance of the moral and ethical demands of the Christian religion. A people desiring individual freedom and national prosperity had of necessityto be guided by high standards of morality and ethics and a condition could grow and develop only out of a strong religious faith. These were the ideas whose consequence would be "one nation under God with liberty and justice for all." These are also the ideas and principles that have been nourished and advocated by The Foundation for Economic Education and its journal, The Freeman, for the past several decades. Now Mary Sennholz has culled from that journal 25 of the best articles concerning the faith that made America great, the ideas and principles that produce a happy and prosperous citizenry and how the great blessings of liberty can be preserved. As the editor states in her introduction, "The moral and self evident truths that guided our Founding Fathers may not be fashionable in our time, but they are as inescapable and inexorable as they have been throughout the ages. Weare free to ignore and disobey them, but we cannot escape the rising price we must pay for defying them."

The book is in four sections designated: 1. The Spirit of '76; II. A Biblical View; III. The Rights of Man; and IV. The Crisis of Our Age. Among the authors well known to Freeman readers are Clar ence Carson, George Roche, F. A. Harper, Ben Rogge, John Williams, Ed Opitz, and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. The authors agree that the crisis facing America today is not an economic nor a politicalone but a moral and spiritualone.It is a crisis of character that has produced a crisisof behavior, a poverty of values caused by a poverty of faith. BOOKS 647 It is within the limitations of this Faith of Our Fathers that the authors included here believe any economic and political system must operate if it is to preserve and protect individual freedom. It is a faith in universally valid principles and objective truths which hold man to be ultimately responsible for his own welfare and considers it immoral for government with its monopoly of power forciblyto take from one citizen in order to give to another.

Hence this faith becomes the source of the free market philosophy.' Again, as the editor insists, "To the Founding Fathers, the God of nature and the God of Scripture was the same God. Surely there were differences in the understanding of natural law and the interpretation of revealed law, but the differ ences did not raise a doubt on the common bond, the Judea-Christian faith. It was a spiritual and moral foundation on which America was built." It is the same spiritual and moral foundation that shall make it. possible for us to endure as a "great and good" nation with liberty and justice for ~L 0 Norman S. Ream is.a retired minister living in Estes Park, Colorado.

"The mostexcitingnewintellectualjournal" tn many yearS!-WILLIAMNISKANEN,Chairman,Cato Institute T ranscending the all-too-common politi cization and superficiality of public policy research and debate, The INDE PENDENT REVIEW is the interdisciplinary, quarterly journal devoted to political econo my and the critical analysis of government policy. Edited by Robert Higgs, The INDE PENDENT REVIEW is superbly written, provocative, and based on solid scholarship. Ranging across economics, political sci ence, law, history, philosophy, sociology, and related fields, The INDEPENDENT REVIEW boldly challenges the politicization and bur eaucratization of our world, featuring in depth examinations of current policy ques tions by many of the world's outstanding scholars and policy experts. Undaunted and uncompromising, this is the journal that will pioneer future debate! liTheIndependent Review is ofgreat interest.II - c. VANN WOODWARD, Pulitzer Prize-Winner, Yale U.

liTheIndependent Review is distinctivein badlyneededways.II - LELAND YEAGER, Professor of Economics, Auburn Univ. liTheIndependent Review is an excitingnew journal." - JOHN DIGGINS, Prof. of History, City U. of New York ". .. does not acceptthe pronouncementsofgovernmentofficials atface value,nor the conventionalwisdomoverseriouspublic problems." - JOHN MACARTHUR, Publisher, Harper'sMagazine liTheIndependent Review avoidsfaddish pyrotechnicswhile seekingobjectivityand high standards." - TIMUR KURAN, Prof. of Econ., U. of Southern California "A great team,economiclogicand toughanalysis." - BRUCE YANDLE, Former Executive Director, F.T.C. In RecentIssues: The Ambitious,AccommodativeAdam Smith - SALIM RASHID PreventingBankingCrises in the Future - GEORGE G. KAUFMAN What is Livingand What is Dead in ClassicalLiberalism? - CHARLES K. ROWLEY The End ofWelfareand the ContradictionofCompassion - STEPHEN T. ZILIAK The InternationalMonetarySystemin Retrospect - LELAND B. YEAGER The Originsof the War on Drugs,1984-1989 - BRUCE L. BENSON AND DAVID W. RASMUSSEN Culture,Politics,and McCarthyism - IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ Market-BasedEnvironmentalismand the Free Market - Roy E. CORDATO AND PETER J. HILL Why the Great DepressionLastedSo Longand Why It Ended - ROBERT HIGGS The Case AgainstPsychiatricCoercion - THOMAS S. SZASZ THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON LIBERTY FEATURES 652 654 656 660 666 671 673 676 679 681 683 686 693 Center 658 669 705 650 707 The Central Economic Fallacy of the Century by Steven Yates The futility-and danger-of government planning.