June

Book Reviews A Life of One's Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State by David Kelley, reviewed by Ellen Frankel Paul; Mugwumps: Public Moralists of the Gilded Age by David M. Tucker, reviewed by Burton Folsom; Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom by Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, reviewed by Fred D. Miller, Jr.; Secession, State & Liberty edited by David Gordon, reviewed by George C. Leef; Money and the Nation State: The Financial Revolution, Government and the World Monetary System edited by Kevin Dowd and Richard H. Timberlake, reviewed by Bert Ely; Policy Analysis and Public Choice: Selected Papers by William A. Niskanen, reviewed by Bruce Yandle.

THE F'EEMAN Published by The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 Phone (914) 591-7230 FAX (914) 591-8910 E-mail: freeman@fee.org FEE Home Page: http://www.fee.org President: Donald J. Boudreaux Editor: Sheldon Richman Managing Editor: Beth A. Hoffman Editor Emeritus Paul L. Poirot Book Review Editor George C. Leef Editorial Assistant Mary Ann Murphy Columnists Charles W. Baird Doug Bandow Dwight R. Lee Lawrence W. Reed Russell Roberts Mark Skousen Thomas Szasz Walter Williams Contributing Editors Peter J. Boettke Clarence B. Carson Thomas J. DiLorenzo Burton W. Folsom, Jr. Joseph S. Fulda Bettina Bien Greaves Robert Higgs John Hospers Raymond J. Keating Daniel B. Klein Wendy McElroy Tibor R. Machan Ronald Nash Edmund A. Opitz James L. Payne William H. Peterson Jane S. Shaw Richard H. Timberlake Lawrence H. White The Freeman is the monthly publication of The Foundation for Eco nomic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533. FEE, established in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, is a nonpolitical, educational champion of private property, the free market, and limited government.

FEE is classified as a 26 USC 50l(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Copyright © 1999 by The Foundation for Economic Education. Per mission is granted to reprint any article in this issue, provided credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to FEE. The costs of Foundation projects and services are met through dona tions, which are invited in any amount. Donors of $30.00 or more receive a subscription to The Freeman. For delivery outside the United States: $45.00 to Canada; $55.00 to all other countries. Student sub scriptions are $10.00 for the nine-month academic year; $5.00 per semester. Additional copies of this issue of The Freeman are $3.00 each. 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. When Bullies Take Power Life is Beautiful, winner ofAcademy Awards for best foreign language film and best actor (Roberto Benigni), is a remarkable movie.

This story about a Jewish father's attempt to shield his son from a Nazi concentration camp is perhaps the most powerful movie ever made about the Holocaust. The movie makes a stun ning impression precisely because it focuses on one family's ordeal and juxtaposes horror and humor. I'd like to know what audiences are thinking when they leave the theater. I suspect the stan dard reactions are along these lines: The Nazis sure were bad. Or, hate and intolerance are terrible. That's fine, as far as it goes. But it doesn't go nearly far enough. I wonder how many people came away thinking: Government certainly is dangerous. How can we limit its power so it will never engage in systematic mass murder again? Too few, I fear. Murderous hatred was certainly a necessary condition for the Holocaust. But it was hardly a sufficient condition. How many Jews could Hitler and his thugs have killed had Germany had a strong classical liberal tradition under girding a constitutionally limited government.

The question answers itself. Murder on the scale perpetrated by Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, et al. requires a state; that is, a legitimized machinery of force. Only a state can concentrate the resources (thanks to taxation) necessary for such a monstrous feat. More important, only a state has the mystique (thanks to its schools, among other things) to command the sort of allegiance required to induce large numbers of people to cooperate or at least to stand by and let it happen. A dictator is just a bully with a state at his disposal. Hate and intolerance are likely to be fea tures of the social landscape for quite some time to come. Trying to avert future systemat ic mass murders by abolishing hate and intol erance is naIve and futile-especially if gov ernment accumulates new powers in the process. A more efficacious and feasible 2 course (albeit still extremely difficult) is to institutionalize strict limits on government power. When that's achieved, aspiring dicta tors will have difficulty achieving office high er than neighborhood bully.

* * * Thanks to a passel of government pro grams, Americans are·increasingly getting the message that parenthood can't be left to ama teurs any longer. A century and a half after responsibility for schooling was lifted from parents' shoulders, is the state ready to relieve them-starting with low-income people-of the rest of the job of rearing children? Susan Orr doesn't like what she sees. Programs such as Head Start are often defended as "investments" in children that promise to avoid later social problems like crime and dependency. John Hood looks at the data and isn't impressed. No matter how the advocates of gun control try to evade it, America's founding generation was avidly pro-gun and not just for sporting purposes. Joseph Stromberg explores the rela tionship between firearms and the philosophy on which the United States was established. The federal government did many things to tum what might have been a short recession into the Great Depression. In his series finale, Richard Timberlake explains that one of those things was the manipulation of the banking system's reserve requirements.

One of Franklin Roosevelt's first acts was to outlaw the possession and monetary use of gold. It was an assertion of executive power that would have far-reaching consequences, writes James Bovard. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission get upset when a company achieves a dominant share of a market. Are consumers at risk from a dominant firm? Christopher Mayer ponders the question, showing that "market share" is not the simple concept that regulators think it is. Is the market order compatible with author itarianism? Even some champions of capital ism reluctantly believe so. John Marangos disagrees, arguing that economic freedom holds the seeds of political freedom. Francis Hirst is virtually unknown today. But in his time, he was a prominent advocate of individual liberty and opponent of state power, both the welfare and warfare variety. Mark Brady introduces us to this forgotten English champion of freedom.

A government-controlled education system that only sought to teach children to read would have been bad enough. But what about a school system designed to recast society in a collectivist mold? Daniel Hager profiles an old proponent of such a system, George Counts. Our columnists once again find provocative topics to chew on. FEE President Donald Boudreaux reminds us government isn't a god, then looks at a claim that workers are being forced to work without pay and responds, "It just ain't so!" Lawrence Reed sees differences between taxes and user fees. Doug Bandow explores President Clinton's Balkans folly. Dwight Lee illustrates that even gifts entail opportunity costs. Mark Skousen thinks economic growth could double and go on indefinitely. Russell Roberts warns that nothing is free. Our reviewers render verdicts on books about money, the welfare state, Mugwumps, the classics, secession, and the work of a major public choice economist.

-SHELDON RICHMAN The apple icon _ identifies Freeman articles that are appropriate for teaching high school·students several major subjects-including economics, history, government, phi losophy, and current issues. We also provide sample lesson plans for these articles on our Web site www.fee.org and in written form. Teachers and homeschooling parents need only to visit our Web site or request written lesson plans to take advantage of this unique service. 3 e>rl by Donald J. Boudreaux Government Is No God A ssume you need surgery to remove a brain tumor. Two physicians in your town offer to perform this operation. Dr. Smith spe cializes in neurosurgery; it's his sole occupa tion. Dr. Jones, however, divides his time among a variety of occupations. Along with performing neurosurgery, he practices den tistry, gynecology, podiatry, and radiology. He also spends part of each day teaching political science at the local college, and another part of each day as an investment counselor.