What is the justification for the United Nations? It is hard to see what it has done to further any interests that might be helpful in preserving the values that have made western civilization what it is. Clarence Streit’s “Atlantic union” would have done better. The UN, as it has evolved, has become the happy hunting ground of all the two-bit bully boys who talk about liberty and use stolen property to bolster their one-party regimes. So why do the inheritors of the Judeo-Christian-Greek tradition put up with it? Abba Eban, the civilized Israeli who was Golda Meir’s Foreign Minister, when pressed to explain why he made his periodic visits to the UN slab in New York City, put it wittily when he said that “if one is to work behind the scene, one must have a scene to work behind.” That just about sums it up: the UN is a scene.
William F. Buckley, Jr., who has a sound theatrical instinct, saw it as such when, against his own first impulse, he decided to accept an appointment, in 1973, as a public delegate member of the U.S.A.‘s UN mission. Bill differed with Abba Eban on one thing: he wanted to work in front of the scene. In what he calls his “only experience… in pure, undiluted Walter Mittyism,” he saw himself dramatically exposing hypocrisy as a missionary to the Third Committee (the one that deals with human rights). He had never visited the great assembly at the UN in his twenty years in New York, but he saw no reason why he couldn’t use the rostrum to read to the world certain passages from Solzhenitsyn or to plead the case of the trapped Soviet dancer Panov. After all, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt had unexpectedly used the UN scene to fight the Cold War in a day when not every Liberal was categorically expected to be in favor of detente, so why couldn’t a worthy tradition be revived to fight for western values within the limits imposed by Richard Nixon’s “low profile” foreign policy stance?
Alas, Bill Buckley discovered that he was not a free agent to conduct a Mittyesque operation of any consequence. In an age that is concerned with ethnic sensibilities and national appearances rather than with individual rights, Mittyism on behalf of Christian values or John Locke’s old triad of “life, liberty and estate” would not be understood. “Race” had become the overwhelming preoccupation of the UN since Mrs. Roosevelt’s day, and working for Mr. Nixon and Henry Kissinger had to be accepted in a limiting context that Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had only dimly foreseen.
A Delegate’s Diary
At this point Bill Buckley would surely have offered his resignation if he had not formed a most admiring opinion of John Scali, who was doing his best to fight rearguard actions in defense of Eighteenth Century individualist values as the U.S. Permanent Representative to Abba Eban’s “scene.” Having elected to stay on and see it out, Bill decided on the limited Mittyism of keeping a diary. It is now published as United Nations Journal: A Delegate’s Odyssey (Putnam, $6.95), and it says everything that Bill couldn’t say in the open on the few occasions that he was called upon to address the “scene.”
The result is that the tone and texture of a period in the UN’s affairs has been caught with exquisite sensitivity. Human rights, in the year of the Buckley odyssey, made no appreciable advances, for the manipulators behind Abba Eban’s “scene” were too busy concerting the maneuvers that were to end in pushing all the old “colonial” powers of the West up against the wall in the little matter of assuring their economic systems of enough energy to keep going. The Arabs and the African dictatorships worked in harmony with the Soviet Union to exploit the Yom Kippur War with the Israelis in a way that has drastically altered an ancient economic balance of power.
Bill Buckley does not say in so many words that the Afro-Asian bloc, edged along by the Communists, has been singularly successful in using the excuse of the Israeli war to defeat the whole West in a relatively bloodless battle. But the theme peeks out from the Buckley descriptions of such events as General Mobutu’s appearance before the General Assembly or Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador Baroody’s interminable incursions into what Buckley calls “pop history.” The diarist quotes and observes, setting down the minutiae. Buckley is here engaged in beautiful intaglio work. The broad-stroking can be left to those who use the diarist’s notations to substantiate the general conclusions of the historian and analyst.
Oil on Troubled Waters
What interests me as an analyst is that Bill has caught the UN at a period that is certainly destined to pass into history within short order. The rise of the Arab money power will surely cause great splits in what, to date, has been the Afro-Asian united front. The so-called Third World, which has been utilized by both the Soviet and the Chinese Communists to fight the “capitalists,” will soon be convulsed with arguments about disposition of the greatly enhanced income that is now accruing to hitherto “underdeveloped” countries such as Nigeria, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which have oil. The needs of India, which has little to pay for fertilizer, or of the sub-Saharan poverty zones, are no longer identical with the needs of the “have” nations in the Third World. And with capital flowing into their treasuries, the new Third World “haves” must face the truth that neither Moscow nor Peking offers an investment area that will pay nine per cent for the use of the money surplus that is now being conjured out of the possession of oil and other natural resources. People with funds to invest inevitably become capitalists.
Strange New Alliances
In the new power struggles that are even now shaping up, the UN is bound to see some strange new alliances. The old “colonial” powers — the United States, the nations of western Europe — will be using their technological and managerial advantages to bid for position. They still have something to use in a trade. The communists, who have shamelessly utilized what has been an Afro-Asian united bloc to further their own strategies, cannot talk about “recycling” possibilities to the new Third World “haves.” Starvation in the Third World “have-not” countries will pose special complications. So, too, will the disappearance of the Portuguese Empire. Israel, which has been the butt of history, may, curiously enough, find itself in a somewhat better position now that huge oil profits have satiated some of the Arab countries. With money to spend, the “have” Arabs must come to look upon future wars as unwelcome interruptions in more important business. Jamil Baroody may have to get some new speeches.
In the coming struggles for position at the UN, what will be the fate of the human rights which were Bill Buckley’s big concern when he accepted his UN assignment? No doubt the rhetoric will continue as usual. I suspect, however, that the fight for human rights must be won everywhere as a local struggle. The UN in its very nature remains Abba Eban’s “scene.”
AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIAN ECONOMICS by Gary North, The Craig Press, Nutley, New Jersey, 413 pp., $6.50, paper.
Reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz
The solid core of this excellent book — nearly half of it — consists of the brilliant articles contributed by North to The Freeman. They treat expertly of such matters as inflation, urban renewal, property taxes, money and banking, and even range afield into such delicate areas as women’s lib and the family. The writing has verve and wit.
Some potential readers of this book may be put off by the title. An “introduction” connotes an elementary treatment of a subject, and easy reading —which this book is not. The writing is clear, but it is in the nature of the subject matter treated here to make demands of the reader. Economics, and especially monetary theory, are tough going. The book, however, will repay the effort put into it.
The adjective “Christian” will, in the second place, mislead many of our contemporaries who have only the vaguest of notions of what the term means. North is clear on this point, and pretty hard nosed about his own commitment to Christianity and what this portends for economic theory. What he refers to as “the starting point for all economic analysis,” is the curse upon the earth recorded in the third chapter of Genesis, resulting in a scarcity of almost everything we need to survive. Because things are scarce, men must learn to cooperate with one another. (Something of a blessing, one would think!) And because the earth now does not yield up its fruits unless human effort is expended, labor is an unavoidable necessity. “If any would not work,” wrote St. Paul, “neither should he eat.” Impossible to square welfarist policies with the New Testament! Economics, then, is the human effort to mitigate the curse of scarcity, and its primary ethical mandate requires that every able-bodied person contribute his labor.
There are some things no Christian economist will spend a moment’s time on, the author points out. He will, for instance, spend no time trying to devise ingenious ways of inflating the money supply, nor will he try to provide a rationale for fractional reserve banking. To the contrary, he will denounce the immorality of inflation and work toward sound banking practices and the use of real money, gold and silver.
A significant portion of this book deals with monetary theory, so the author felt called upon to devote a lengthy chapter to the funny money people, by whom some conservatives are led astray. The Social Credit scheme associated with the name of C. H. Douglas has gained many disciples, and so have the monetary panaceas of Frederick Soddy and Silvio Gesell. These ideas come together in the writings of one Gertrude Coogan, and it is her two books which North dissects and disposes of.
Gary North offers interesting discussions of usury, the limited liability corporation, education and the schools, philanthropy, and even a little handbook of economic survival when and if the crunch comes. There is a freshness of approach to these various topics that makes this book recommended reading for even the well-schooled libertarian or conservative. The author’s earlier work, Marx’s Religion of Revolution, has here a worthy successor.
ECONOMIC GROWTH AND STABILITY: An Analysis of Economic Change and Policies by Gottfried Haberler (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1974) 291 pp., $10.
Reviewed by Tommy W. Rogers
Dr. Haberler’s work is the eighth volume in the Principles of Freedom series, sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies, Inc., of Menlo Park, California. The purpose of this study is to identify the public policies and the monetary and financial instruments that are best suited to achieve the two economic objectives of stability and growth, grounded in what Haberler considers the more basic objective of personal freedom. In other words, the economic objectives of stability and growth must be restricted to those which preserve the personal freedom of the individual and are consistent with the modus operandi of the free enterprise system.
… freedom of consumer choice, freedom of choosing one’s residence and occupation, and free enterprise are values and policy objectives more important than those of growth and stability. Their preservation requires free markets and absence of price controls. Fortunately, these freedoms, far from being in conflict with the goals of growth and stability, are conducive to bringing about rapid growth and stability. These freedoms, thus, are means and ends at the same time.
In a chapter on “Growth and Growth Policy,” Haberler deals with the meaning and measurement of growth, determinants of growth, the influence of government policies in promoting or retarding growth, and a discussion of recent popular attitudes toward economic growth. “Policies for Stabilization” looks at business cycle and anti-depression policies, the effects of “fine tuning” discretionary measures, the “monetarist position” of Milton Friedman and others, the Keynesian position of “functional finance,” and the argument of “monetary” vs. “fiscalist” policy. In other chapters, Haberler identifies the inflationary practices followed by various mature industrial nations as well as the governmental attempts to set “wage guideposts” and “incomes policies” and other forms of protectionism, as distinguished from free markets and international free trade. The ideal of the gold standard is discussed, along with the Bretton Woods or “adjustable peg” system, and the propensity to impose controls under a system of fixed rates.
The concepts, principles, and instruments are clearly defined to give the reader a history of the application of different approaches to economic stability and growth. The compilation will be of interest and value to more advanced students of economics as well as to intelligent citizens with no formal training in the subject.
ROOTS OF THE NEW REPUBLIC: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON EARLY AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM by George Dargo. (New York: Praeger Books, 1974), 187 pp. $8.00
Reviewed by Allan C. Brownfeld
At a time when the Constitutional processes have been severely tested, it is proper that we recall the beginnings of the nation and gain some perspective on where we’ve been and where we’re headed.
Professor George Dargo of the City University of New York examines the foundations of American constitutionalism in a broad survey of government, legal rights, church-state relations, the press, and political life in the colonial period. Unlike a number of earlier studies which have stressed legal doctrines, ideological constructs, and social attitudes, Professor Dargo’s book is concerned primarily with the historical reality underlying the accepted notions about the period. “What is extraordinary about American colonial history is the degree to which a new society, beset by enormous physical problems and located on the edge of a hostile wilderness, succeeded in generating institutions that, in retrospect, represented significant breakthroughs and advances in the evolution of Western constitutionalism.”
While the 18th century saw the entire thrust of English policy as one toward centralization and subordination, either to the will of the Parliament or to that of the Crown, the author believes that, “Precisely the reverse was the theory of the American federal union. The evolution of territories into states was to be an evolution from dependency to autonomy.”
Government was not a positive good, the early Americans believed, but a necessary evil. The most important thing was to severely limit and circumscribe it. Recalling the “Body of Liberties” adopted in 1641 in Massachusetts, an early “Bill of Rights,” the author states that it was “the first modern code of the Western world, designed to limit the discretion of legislators and magistrates to fixed principles—an idea that was to reach fulfillment and conceptual clarity only in the constitutional period and the latter part of the 18th century.”
The early Americans wanted written guarantees and did not wish to trust their liberties to the benevolence of the men who happened to be their rulers. Dr. Dargo writes that, “… by the end of the 17th century, the American constitutional experience—as reflected in royal charters and concessions handed down by the Crown or by the proprietors of royal grants as well as in legislation initiated from below by the people’s deputies—recognized the central importance of legal guarantees of personal liberty secured by some kind of written enactment whose authority was beyond ordinary statutory control.”
While Americans at this time reject the idea of a property test for voting, Dr. Dargo reports that such a test was widely used in the colonial period, and for reasons quite different from those we might suppose. He reports that, “The property restriction was a device—originally a liberal reform — for preventing local men of wealth, power, and influence, from controlling the outcome of elections. Given that most voting was oral and that a man’s choice was public knowledge, it was necessary to insulate the voter as much as possible from social pressure. A tenant was not very likely to risk his lease by voting against the known inclination of his landlord; nor would an apprentice or bound servant vote against his master or a debtor against his creditor. The theory was that tenants and servants, like women, slaves and children, did not have’wills of their own,’ and only a man with a minimum of property was sufficiently self-possessed to exercise a free choice… it was believed that in the absence of a property qualification the rich and powerful would be able to march to the polls at the head of a parade of dependents prepared to vote at their dictation.”
Professor Dargo is not happy with those historians and critics who have seen fit, in recent years, to denigrate the American past. To argue against calling the early American experiments with government “constitutional” because they “did not promote tasks that we, more than two centuries later, consider central, is to distort colonial America’s real achievement and its primary contribution to the betterment of man.”
Reflecting upon our current period and the abuse of power which we have witnessed, Professor Dargo recalls the lessons we should be busy learning from our colonial experience. He concludes that, “Constitutionalism is our best and safest foundation for dealing with the social ills that beset us. It is, after all, primarily out of our constitutional tradition that the notions of social justice and equality that we as a people profess have emerged. Constitutionalism supplied to colonial Americans the values, the tools, and the assurance that enabled them to respond to tyranny when they perceived it. We, too, draw upon that rich legacy when we respond to threats to liberty in our time—threats that the early Americans would have understood, and which they taught us how to meet.”
PAGANS IN THE PULPIT by Richard S. Wheeler (Arlington House, 81 Centre Ave., New Rochelle, N.Y. 10801, 1974, 137 pp., $7.95)
Reviewed by Norman S. Ream
This book is better than its title. The alliteration may attract attention but it is not an accurate designation of most of those about whom the author writes. A socialistic, left-wing position in political and economic thought does not forsooth make one a pagan. One cannot argue the fact that many clergymen are oriented toward increased government control of the economy. Some may indeed be pagans, but a great majority are misguided idealists whose education in economics and experience in the business world have been terribly neglected.
It is about these persons, charged with being our religious and moral leaders, that Richard S. Wheeler writes well. He concludes that they “suffer under the most terrible theological delusion of our age, the delusion that substitutes welfare for charity, the state for God, bureaucracy for mercy and equality for justice.” If indeed these religious leaders are so terribly misled then perhaps the kindest thing we can do is to pray, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Unfortunately that commendable moral position will not undo the vast harm they have done during the past three or four decades.
The author makes a strong point in demonstrating that it is not a mere difference in means that divides the liberal clergy from their more conservative counterparts who believe in the limited government, private property, free-enterprise tradition of our American heritage. It is not true that our goals are the same and only our projected means are different. “Christianity and socialism are not cousins, but enemies. The one is a secular political enterprise that employs government coercion as its motor. The other is a religion, concerned above all with the relationship of persons, of souls, with God.” The end of one is freedom; the end of the other is totalitarianism. Mr. Wheeler makes his point with force and clarity while discussing from a Biblical basis the problems of suffering, egalitarianism, women’s rights, civil disobedience and peace. This reviewer, a clergyman, found his Biblical exegesis to be thoughtfully and carefully done. Here is a book that will be helpful and supportive in demonstrating that socialism is neither Christian nor moral.
