B.W.'s Book Report: preview

If you recognize the quotes I've been tossing out of late, you know what I got for Christmas and what I've been reading since a few days after Christmas. I'm just shy of the halfway point.

The last three months or so have sent me through Murray Rothbard's The Betrayal of the American Right, Frank Chodorov's Out of Step, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and now this. It has been educational.

It would not be accurate to say that these books have shaken me to the very core. That phrase implies a rattling of my beliefs, an upsetting of the apple cart. Rather, this gives me the sensation of having been previously upset, being a bit lost, perhaps treading water for a very long time, and finally finding land under my feet, a foundation, a grounding, a confirmation of my beliefs.

These books did not shake me to the core, but they have touched my core. More importantly, I am not drinking Kool-Aid here. I do not blindly embrace every concept these three writers have tossed in my direction, but they have put words to thoughts that hovered in my consciousness waiting for the words.

More than three years ago now, something happened in my business life that did shake me to the very core. In many ways I have been drifting in an extended state of shock ever since. These authors have taken me by the shoulders and steadied me. A year after the initial shock, I started this blog. It has kept me sane. Here and there I caught glimpses of what needed to be done; unleashing The Imaginary Bomb in podcast form was the first of a handful of steps in that direction, but I was still shaking. My friends here — you know who you are — patiently helped prepare me to settle down. Rothbard, Chodorov and Rand have settled me down.

And now what? That's a very good question. I have some ideas. I hope to be ready to share such as I can on Jan. 16.

Bracing myself

I said last week that exposing myself to a triple-whammy of Rothbard, Chodorov and Rand would no doubt change things. The change is still percolating ... stay tuned to this Bat-channel, some Bat-time soon ...

A dose of Chodorov

We would be told, most emphatically, that by not voting we would be turning the reins of government over to "rascals." Probably so; but do we not regularly vote "rascals" out? And, after we have ousted one set, are we not called upon to oust another crew at the next election? It seems that rascality is endemic to government.

Our balloting system has been defined as a battle of opposing forces, each armed with proposals for the public good, for a grant of power. As far as it goes, this definition is correct. But when the successful contestant acquires the grant of power, toward what end does he use it – not theoretically but practically?

Does he not, with an eye to the next election, go in for purchasing support, with the taxpayers' money, so that he might enjoy another period of power? The over-the-barrel method of seizing and maintaining political power is standard practice, and such is the nature of the "rascality."

This is not, however, an indictment of our election system. It is rather a rejection of the institution of the State; our election system is merely one way of adjusting ourselves to that institution.

The State is a product of conquest. As far back as we have any knowledge of the beginnings of this institution, it originated when a band of freebooting nomads swooped down on some peaceful group of agriculturists and picked up a number of slaves; slavery is the first form of economic exploitation.

Repeated visititations of this sort left the victims breathless, if not lifeless and propertyless to boot. So, as people do when they have no other choice, they made a compromise with necessity; the peaceful communities hired one set of marauders to protect them from other thieving bands, for a price. In time, this tribute was regularized and called taxation.

- Frank Chodorov, from Out of Step

B.W.'s Book Report: Out of Step (Part 1)

When I first hinted that I was reading Out of Step by Frank Chodorov, Wally Conger posted the comment:

"One of the most wonderful things about the author you reference - I will not name him so as not to spoil your upcoming review [Oh, it wasn't that big a secret, Wal] - is that he was a fantastic stylist. IMHO, he is one of the most quotable writers in the freedom authors pantheon."

And Wally's right - for this book report, I could just fill a post with quotes from the book and be done with it. Chodorov's classic essay "Taxation is Robbery" is in here, and it's the most succinct explanation of the robber state I think I've ever seen. A short sample, detailing the hidden costs of taxation:

Taxes of all kinds discourage production. Man works to satisfy his desires, not to support the State. When the results of his labors are taken from him, whether by brigands or organized society, his inclination is to limit his production to the amount he can keep and enjoy. During the war, when the payroll deduction was introduced, workers got to figuring their "take home" pay, and to laying off when this net, after taxes, showed no increase comparable to the extra work it would cost; leisure is also a satisfaction. A prize fighter refuses another lucrative engagement because the additional revenue would bring his income for the year into a higher tax bracket. In like manner, every business man must take into consideration, when weighing the risk and the possibility of gain in a new enterprise, the certainty of a tax-offset in the event of success, and too often he is discouraged from going ahead. In all the data on national progress the items that can never be reported are: the volume of business choked off by income taxes, and the size of capital accumulations aborted by inheritance taxes.

Chodorov died in 1966, but many of the observations he makes about the rise of collectivism remain contemporary. His optimism in the face of the growing state is contagious, however. Although he identifies the challenges with a great writer's precision, and he says "only time will tell" whether the tide will turn, this reader at least detects Chodorov held an underlying confidence that the flame of individual rights can never be extinguished. By clearly explaining the nature of the state beast – politicians who accumulate power by promising to protect freedom and offering constituents something for nothing – he whets the appetite for something different, something more accommodating to the free individuals we really are.

The only choices individualist writers had in Chodorov's time were to struggle to get published in increasingly statist journals or to publish their own magazines and newsletters. In the Murray Rothbard tribute I linked to the other day, Chodorov referred to his 1940s broadsheet analysis as "the one time in my life I could write what I really believed" - again, an optimistic recollection of a period when his views were being suppressed the most.

Opportunities in the Internet era are infinitely greater and much more cost-effective. The soapbox on the street corner has been expanded to encompass the world. Montag and hundreds of far better Web sites are carrying the kinds of thought that Chodorov invested in analysis. As dark as this era is, these candles of freedom are being carried by so many individuals that even the modern state won't be able to extinguish them all. Chodorov's life is a shining example.

Prelude to B.W.'s Book Report: Out of Step

Ray Bradbury wrote a wonderful metaphor in my favorite of his books, Zen in The Art of Writing (Only he called it a simile. Maybe he's right. Whatever): "Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together."

Having now completed Out of Step by Frank Chodorov, I feel as if my brain has exploded and I may well spend the rest of my life putting the pieces together. Either that or I'm adjusting to having the pieces finally assembled in their proper order. All I know is my image of the world is different from what it was when I started reading. Or perhaps the image is the same, only in sharper focus.

Two thoughts occurred to me at random as I was racing through the final pages, trying not to race but racing nonetheless. I will have to keep this book close at hand for a while, rereading and assimilating the thoughts.

First thought: One of the defining political speeches of my generation features the applause line, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Both questions are meaningless and irrelevant. They depend upon the assumption that humanity is a collective, a hive, rather than an interaction of individuals, and that members have a responsibility to the hive and vice versa. There is a third question that sounds selfish but is closer to the core of existence: Ask what you can do for you.

Second thought: The Star Trek trilogy – The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home – is in one small way an important contribution to the cause of individualism. The first story features a heroic sacrifice by a man who believes "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one," but after the character undergoes a literal resurrection, the viewer is asked to consider whether sometimes it is logical that "the good of the one" should take precedence. That this shift is portrayed positively is a sign that individualism is not a lost philosophy.

Third thought: I have not wrapped my mind around these two thoughts well enough that I feel confident they made any sense to you at all, dear reader. I beg your indulgence while I run my fingers over the keyboard in coming days trying to clean up the landmine that is me.

Oh, and if you have never read Chodorov or Out of Step, get busy on obtaining a copy. Buy here. Download the .pdf here. And click here to keep up with someone whose brain exploded long before mine.

Way cool Book Report coming

My current reading is extremely eye-opening, even more so than Rothbard's The Betrayal of the American Right. After that epiphany, I figured it was time to see why my best-friend-I've-never-met named his blog after this particular book.

Holy guacamole! The scales are falling from my eyes, the long-hazy thoughts are crystallizing, and everything I've suspected is confirmed and verbalized and explained.

These two books have the potential to change my life. I fear that if next I finally buckle down to read a little von Mises, I'll have passed the point of no return - assuming I didn't pass that some years ago!