A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK

by John Chamberlain

With the publication by Jameson Books of Ottawa, Illinois, of the third volume of his "eyewitness" narrative history of the founding of the U.S. government, Jeffrey St. John, radio and television commentator, has completed the job he set out to do. His idea was to pretend that he was "there" when General Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and the other founders were deciding to cut loose from King George the Third, whose government tried to tax them without their permission.

For his volume one, Constitutional Journal, St. John pretended that he was in the room at Philadelphia and sneaking out daily reports of the new Federalist effort to provide something more solid in the way of government than the Articles of Confederation, which had staggered through seven years of war without the taxing authority needed to pay Washington's troops.

In volume two, Child of Fortune, St. John gave a weekly recounting of the battle in the states to ratify the Philadelphia constitution. It was hard going for the Federalists to combat the Anti-federalists led by Patrick Henry, of "liberty or death" fame, who wanted to scrap the centralizing work of Madison and Hamilton. There had to be a promise of a Bill of Rights to get the Constitution adopted in recalcitrant states.

St. John's volume three, Forge of Union, Anvil of Liberty, (320 pages, $24.95 cloth) reports on the first Federal elections and the creation of the Bill of Rights, a list of which was reduced from seventeen, then to twelve, and finally, with merger phrasing, to the familiar ten.

One interesting thing in St. John's Forge of Union, Anvil of Liberty is the way in which Washington relied on Madison to keep Patrick Henry and the Anti-federalists at bay. With the Spanish and the French and the British egging the Indians on in Florida and in the Mississippi Valley, care had to be taken in pursuing a foreign policy. Monetary policy was important too: Alexander Hamilton proposed that the federal government assume at face value the debts incurred by the states during the recent war, adding them to the debts carried by the general treasury. The government's taxing power and the projected national bank would assure repayment. Patrick Henry "could find no clause in the Constitution authorizing congress to assume the debts of the states," but President Washington, without fully understanding what Hamilton was proposing, backed him. "This is the first symptom," so Hamilton wrote of Patrick Henry's attack on debt assumption, "of a spirit which must either be killed or will kill the Constitution ...."

The difference between the American and French revolutions is continuously stressed through letters and documents produced by St. John. A parenthetical refrain running through the book is St. John's boast of "a copy having been obtained by this correspondent."

There was a savagery to the French revolutionary uprising that was, in St. John's words, fueled by a burning hatred for the aristocracy. "This type of savagery," says the author, "was almost totally absent during the American revolution .... in the last two years it has been demonstrated to a disbelieving world that it is possible, on this side of the Atlantic, to effect revolutionary political reform without recourse to mob violence and internal bloodshed. Even during the long War of Independence, the conflict was governed within specific codes of conduct that prevented it from degenerating into a savage civil conflict between people of the same cultural traditions."

Savagery, remarks St. John, was a commonplace in such collisions as those that Washington had witnessed in western Pennsylvania, but, "its appearance on the supposedly civilized streets of Paris has shocked and stunned American political leaders."

Violence might have developed from the Founders' failure to rid their culture of slavery. But compromise was possible here-in the so-called Northwest Ordinance territory, no slaves were permitted in new states north of the Ohio River. Kentucky and Vermont could peaceably join the union as the fourteenth and fifteenth states without provoking trouble.

New Jersey became the first state to adopt a Bill of Rights. The struggle for a permanent site of government was settled in favor of the "Powtomac" (the upper Potomac) at the expense of the Susquehanna, which was too far north.

Having emerged from the 18th century, Jeffrey St. John will be looking for something to do. He is tempted by the subject of the Cold War. But that would mean spending inordinate time with the ghosts of Stalin and Brezhnev. Better, one thinks, to stick with the 18th century. Why not a history of the Louisiana Purchase, which gave us half a continent?

LIBERTY & CULTURE by Tibor R. Machan

Prometheus Books, 700 Amherst Street, Buffalo, NY 14215 1989 - 288 pages - $21.95 cloth

Reviewed by J. E. Chesher

I 've just finished reading a delightfully thought-provoking and entertaining book, Liberty & Culture by Tibor Machan, professor of philosophy at Auburn University. Machan is widely published in professional journals and a frequent contributor to The Freeman. Though the great bulk of Machan's previous work is scholarly and aimed at a highly trained, specialized audience, Liberty & Culture is more widely accessible. This book is a collection of selected editorials that have appeared, over a period of 20 years, on the Op-Ed pages of many prominent newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Liberty, and the National Review.

The essays cover diverse issues and topics, beginning with Machan's touching and colorful account of his "Escape from Tyranny" as a youth in Communist Hungary. There are a number of essays each on Marxism, Democracy, Individual Human Rights, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Economics, Business Law, Morality, Medicine, and Culture. Each one addresses, in terms of some fundamental principle, a specific event, problem, or issue of the day. The essays, though varied in scope, are smoothly woven together by the common thread of Machan's concern with the relationship between "liberty and culture."

The essays are further unified by a common motive. As Machan observes, "my main concern in these writings has been with moral and political standards for contemporary society. I have stressed the enormous diversity open to each of us as we strive to live a morally proper life. And I champion the preservation of individual liberty, which makes moral conduct possible for everyone in the human community."

What the reader will find in this book are familiar themes freshly and originally applied to contemporary issues. For example, in response to the claim that video recorders make it possible to infringe on the rightful earnings of the Hollywood community, Machan observes that "the crucial question is whether the proposal advanced by the Hollywood creative community-that Congress tax tape equipment and transfer the funds to the industry-is consistent with individual rights. Is this a special case requiring government intervention or is it simply another case of specialinterest pleading?" Machan demonstrates that this plea for special government assistance is not consistent with rights of ownership.

Again, in response to the lament that the competition of free markets is good for the swift but cruel to the slow, Machan offers this perspective: ". . . competition is actually only a sideshow in a free market . . . what the market makes possible is only incidentally a matter of contest. More accurately it is a matter of excellence. In a free market people can excel at what they do, even if there is no one challenging them. If there are many who want to excel at some craft, profession, or art, then here we find competition.... But that is not crucial. Freedom allows those who want to work at some task to do their best without punishment."

Machan comments on strikes by public school teachers. He discusses the Supreme Court's support of statism. He points out that creeping fascism, not socialism, is the greater threat in this country. He writes of the business community's ironic disdain of capitalism. He explains why it is wrong to blame tobacco companies for the woes of smokers, why defense spending and social spending are no more comparable than apples and oranges, why the government's war on drugs may be more threatening than drugs themselves, why it is contradictory to claim that "given a free press, a fair and impartial jury is impossible," also when one has the obligation not to vote.

The essays in this book are challenging but "reader friendly," requiring no special knowledge, no dictionary at one's side. Liberty & Culture brings the philosophy of liberty down from the clouds and demonstrates how sound theory and moral principles are solidly grounded in experience. Each essay provides the reader with sufficient information to consider the issue intelligently. This collection of essays would be an excellent introduction to liberty for those many people we know who are not familiar with the literature on the subject, but are genuinely curious about its limits and applications. Such people are not moved by works on abstract theory and lofty moralizing. Give them this book instead.