"Book Review Review: Libertarian Bashing?"

Published 15 June 2001

(word count 756)

I’ve always wanted to write a book review, but the big put-off has always been the fact that you actually have to read a book.  It’s a rule.  Fortunately, I think I’ve discovered a journalistic niche just begging to be filled and I have the Loose Cannonballs to fill it.  In today’s hectic world nobody has the time to read a book review, much less a book, so as a public service I’m offering what I believe to be the Fourth Estate’s first book review review.

Love & Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work -- By Jennifer Roback Morse

Since I believe in both laissez-faire and in families, the very title of this book made me ask “why not?”  That’s what a good title is supposed to do, right?  So I browsed on over to barnesandnoble.com and began reviewing the publisher-supplied blurb for the book (which, you may argue, technically makes this a blurb review rather than a book review review).

Halfway into the blurb I found the hook on which to hang my review: “Most Americans, whatever their politics, share the libertarian view of personal liberty as the right to do as one pleases.”  That’s a direct, complete, unadulterated quote.

As reviewers everywhere are wont to sputter, Pshaw!  Libertarians do not believe in the right to do as one pleases.  We don’t believe in the right to steal, the right to murder or the right to dump our old papaya skins in our neighbor’s yard just because it might please us to do so.  This definition of libertarianism is a trite and thoroughly debunked cliché.  Could this be the false premise on which the entire book is based?  Anyone who has ever poked a nose even slightly beyond skin deep into the concept of libertarianism rejects the characterization of “the right to do as one pleases.”  The principle of libertarianism encompasses both freedom and responsibility.  In another groundbreaking service, and because I’m too lazy to write something new, I offer this edited quote from a quick review of a previous Loose Cannon Libertarian column: “With freedom comes responsibility.  It has two sides, like a Morgan dollar … and if you try to separate one from the other you end up with a pile of shavings and two useless pieces.”

Amputating responsibility from freedom falsely disqualifies all libertarians from the ability to establish “a safe and loving familial environment.”  Can that really be Ms. Morse’s intent, or is she just engaging in libertarian bashing to sell books?  Remember, I’m reviewing her publisher’s blurb here, not the actual tome.

Then there’s another problem.  A Hoover Fellows news release hyping the book magically appeared in my cyber inbox (which means that I’m now pioneering the vocation of news release reviews).  The “laissez-faire family” is herein defined as a family “in which each member pursues his own self-interest rather than the good of the others.”  This definition echoes the earlier bogus definition of libertarian, suggesting that the terms “libertarian” and “laissez-faire” are being used interchangeably.  Another uninformed cliché.  Papaya may be food but not all food is papaya.  Libertarians may believe in laissez-faire but not all believers in laissez-faire are libertarians.  Many a traditional clenched-anal conservative will profess his fidelity to laissez-faire right alongside his stubbornly anti-libertarian positions of pro drug war, anti same-sex marriage and demand for public school prayer.  Laissez-faire alone does not a libertarian make.  These words are not synonyms.

Here (finally!) is my actual book review review: Joseph R. Stromberg wrote a typical dry as dinosaur bones scholarly type review on the Mises Institute web site.  I think he actually read the book.  (It’s a rule.)  He had nice things to say.  Pointed points, insightful insights, “thoughtful and timely,” stuff like that.  But even he took a swipe at the author, in a typical dry as dinosaur bones scholarly type of way: “My only real problem is the use of the term ‘laissez faire’ to refer to the anti-family values and policies under attack.  By using the term as loosely as Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw (two noneconomists of note) would, Morse (or whoever wrote the subtitle) creates a fundamentally misleading impression.”

Axiom: if a premise is wrong the conclusions based on that premise will be wrong.  Not exactly an inspiration to actually read the book.  Ms. Morse, or her publisher, or the Hoover Fellows press release, or whoever’s responsible for these words, ironically warns us against “misapplying libertarian economic and political principles to the family.”

Somebody is guilty of misapplying libertarian principles – period.

- by Garry Reed