That does not mean this book is without its faults. Page 2 greets the reader with a potential
brick wall that could have easily been smoothed down to a speed bump, or
less. “The new regime in welfare,
shepherded by Democratic President Bill Clinton, seemed tailor-made to answer
critiques by scholar Charles Murray in his influential 1984 book Losing Ground” is certainly an odd way
of describing the Welfare Reform battle.
How passage after TWO Clinton vetoes can be described as “shepherded” on
the part of the President only Doherty knows (I did write him about this
passage and received no reply).
Especially in light of the fact that Bill Clinton and his Party did not
want any work requirement for welfare recipients. Sarcastic quotes would have made the passage
pass even the most minimal libertarian or conservative test. If anybody was shepherding, it was Newt
Gingrich in one of the only “conservative” acts of his life.
The book continues with a fantastic array of names and
events that are told in a riveting way for anybody who is interested in a good
book about libertarian history, or those like me who want an interesting
reference book in addition to a libertarian history education. The mentions of Robert LeFevre were the ones
I anticipated the most. LeFevre did publish a thing or two and voiced a
strong objection to involving the government in protecting his copyright, as
can be seen in the copyright declaration in “This Bread is Mine”(1960): https://mises.org/books/thisbreadismine.pdf
THIS BREAD IS MINE is private property.
Readers are welcome to enter and browse to their content. It is regretted that the only way open to author or publisher to designate this book as private property is through the government copyright office. Essentially, the same chore could be performed by any good insurance firm or some other free market establishment. Since none such is in existence, and since it is deemed advisable to designate this book as private property, no choice exists for author or publisher. The book must be copyrighted, or it must be placed in that twilight realm where ownership is in doubt.
Perhaps in Some future and more enlightened time authors and publishers may find a way to designate their efforts as private property without invoking the taxing powers of the government and without calling upon the police powers to hold the world at bay with the threat of violence.
Another speed bump on page 446, the Carter administration is held up against the Reagan administration, with Carter “winning” in policy. Much of what is mentioned is not within Presidential powers anyway, it is Congressional action that was required to make it happen (and I will not engage in the “my list is better than your list” game). However, the book does not shape up as if it were ghostwritten by an MSNBC regular. One item faulted of Reagan was failing to propose an end to Selective Service, a measure instated by Congress at Carter’s request. Elimination of tax loopholes (again, by Congress and Congress is not mentioned by Doherty) at Reagan’s request, for some reason, is mentioned as a flaw. For the flat-tax crowd, elimination of loop holes is sort of key and we do inhabit libertarian circles just a bit.
Page 564 the reader is confronted with yet another ha-ha:
“On January 7, 1995, Rothbard collapsed and died of a heart attack while
visiting his optometrist in New York City.
His old friend and nemesis William Buckley wrote an ill-tempered attack
obituary, in which he repeated an unsupported canard that Rothbard stood in the
street and cheered Khrushchev during his 1959 visit to the United States.” How Doherty gets “stood in the street and
cheered Khrushchev” from what Buckley actually wrote is a puzzle: “Rothbard
physically applauded Khrushchev in his limousine as it passed by on the street.
He gave as his reason for this that, after all, Khrushchev had killed fewer
people than General Eisenhower, his host.” Not even writer’s license explains
it.
On a modesty note for Doherty, he mentions that Reason
magazine did not acknowledge Rothbard’s death.
Indeed, the Reason.Com archive reveals that the first mention was by
Doherty himself, in an interview of Dr. Milton Friedman in the June 1995 issue.
The End Notes and Bibliography are extensive. Anybody planning on writing anything on the topic of libertarianism would do well to have this book at hand, even if just for that aspect. The Index is another matter. Doherty would have done well to hire whomever Jonah Goldberg used to index "Liberal Fascism." In "Radicals," not even "copyright" appears. Finding who did what requires a bit of cross-referencing by the reader (I suggest reader-labeled sticky tabs).
The above items may sound like a lot, but in a book this thick,
they are not that big of a deal. The
effect is, “Did he really say that?” after one passage, followed by “Oh wow! I
did not know that about the Koch’s!” As
with many information-jammed books, if you don’t like something just turn the
page and something you never knew shows up.
Many of us came from the Left on our journey to the
Right (The Right being the opposite of
Stalinists, of course) be we libertarians, conservatives, or a mix between the
two. One of the ‘problems’ with some of
the literature is that the writers do not seem to have severed their Leftist
roots. In the case of the Reason branch of libertarianism, the history is
filled with ex-Communists, Maoists, and Marxists. Now that aspect alone makes this book worth
buying and I am not going to spoil it for you in this review.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anybody interested,
even in the slightest, about the history of libertarian thought and the people
who shaped it. Doherty has amassed a
library full of information and jammed it into one thick, well-written book.
This review was submitted to Amazon.Com - 26 December, 2012 and appears in an edited version here.
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