House of Horrors

The big news is that these two books, these two clinical analyses of federal complexity and elephantiasis, were written not by that kind of conservative in whom Professor Willmore Kendall descries a “near-neurosis about governmental power” —but by two men of the Establishment: Duscha, a former Nieman Fellow and for some time now a member of the national news staff of the Washington Post; and Stern, former campaign aide to Adlai Stevenson, legislative aide to Senator Paul Douglas, research director to the Democratic National Committee, and perennial contributor to the zombie press (Harper’s, Time Magazine, Reporter, New Republic, Progressive).

Each goes after his target for all he’s worth, Duscha tackling the Agriculture Department and Stern the federal income tax. The criticism each makes of his subject will be familiar to conservatives, because it is the conservatives who have always made the point generically, whether it’s Tocqueville describing how a meddlesome administration puts the squeeze on individual liberty, or Mises and Hayek and Hazlitt asserting the inefficiency of governmental intervention in free markets, or Acton wedding corruption indissolubly to power. Neither Duscha nor Stern has been willing to make a general statement of that order; but let’s give them some time. For one thing, if they read each other’s book, they may be struck with the similarity of their findings.

WR

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William F. Rickenbacker

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The big news is that these two books, these two clinical analyses of federal complexity and elephantiasis, were written not by that kind of conservative in whom Professor Willmore Kendall descries a “near-neurosis about governmental power” —but by two men of the Establishment: Duscha, a former Nieman Fellow and for some time now a member of the national news staff of the Washington Post; and Stern, former campaign aide to Adlai Stevenson, legislative aide to Senator Paul Douglas, research director to the Democratic National Committee, and perennial contributor to the zombie press (Harper’s, Time Magazine, Reporter, New Republic, Progressive).

Each goes after his target for all he’s worth, Duscha tackling the Agriculture Department and Stern the federal income tax. The criticism each makes of his subject will be familiar to conservatives, because it is the conservatives who have always made the point generically, whether it’s Tocqueville describing how a meddlesome administration puts the squeeze on individual liberty, or Mises and Hayek and Hazlitt asserting the inefficiency of governmental intervention in free markets, or Acton wedding corruption indissolubly to power. Neither Duscha nor Stern has been willing to make a general statement of that order; but let’s give them some time. For one thing, if they read each other’s book, they may be struck with the similarity of their findings.