Dark Horses

Only rarely do I dissent from learned judgments provided elsewhere in these pages, but Ferdinand Mount’s assessment of The Future That Doesn’t Work (edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.; Doubleday, $6.95) requires, I think, a brief response.

In the course of an immense review two issues back, Mr. Mount opined that the Tyrrell book goes “off the rails” in its conspectus of the British welfare state because it attributes to “social democracy” failings that should be laid to socialism proper. It is a fine distinction, though for all I know a correct one (we would need a better definition of “social democracy” to find out), and I would readily concede that the drawing of such conclusions is a job for Englishmen and not Americans.

MS

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M. Stanton Evans

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British Labour Party

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Only rarely do I dissent from learned judgments provided elsewhere in these pages, but Ferdinand Mount’s assessment of The Future That Doesn’t Work (edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.; Doubleday, $6.95) requires, I think, a brief response.

In the course of an immense review two issues back, Mr. Mount opined that the Tyrrell book goes “off the rails” in its conspectus of the British welfare state because it attributes to “social democracy” failings that should be laid to socialism proper. It is a fine distinction, though for all I know a correct one (we would need a better definition of “social democracy” to find out), and I would readily concede that the drawing of such conclusions is a job for Englishmen and not Americans.