Books in Brief: Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence

Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence, by David Rothman, et al. (Pantheon, 171 pp., $8.95). The four essayists in this small but instructive book are looking very hard for a culprit. Unlike the naive idealists of an earlier day, these writers know that something is amiss; they know that government power, used by liberals to implement their compassion, is more exploitative than caring. That the authors fail in the end to acknowledge the true villain only proves that no sheriff ever arrested himself. Dr. Willard Gaylin, a psychiatrist who can write, almost crosses the boundary of self-recognition: “Man is not, technically speaking, an individual; a social structure is a part of his biology and a necessary part of his functioning: we are a social animal not by election but by nature.” Gaylin criticizes the “concept of individualism,” which would emasculate man by stripping him of social supports— family, church, neighborhood, private organizations—leaving him in what Peter Berger has called an “anomic precariousness.” The liberals then compound the error by introducing government as the new parent and the only religion. Gaylin is onto something here. David Rothman and Steven Marcus pick up Gaylin’s trail in the middle essays with two historical vignettes. The failures of the British Poor Laws and of U.S. Progressivism are demonstrable, yet neither writer will conclude that perhaps it is liberalism itself which was to blame; Rothman traces Progressivism’s failure to the functionaries—the nurses, bureaucrats, and teachers—which is like holding G. Gordon Liddy responsible for Watergate. Ira Glasser’s concluding polemic is more insulting than disappointing. Executive Director of the New York branch of the ACLU, Glasser speaks the language of rights, cold and raw in its Hobbesian tone. To a victim of government’s depredations, Glasser would grant a lawyer and some cash to pay the legal fees. His programmatic solutions are trivial compared to the sincere concerns of the other three writers and to the genuine danger presented by the state as paternal benefactor. Glasser’s ideology is the real culprit.

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Paul Gigot

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Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence, by David Rothman, et al. (Pantheon, 171 pp., $8.95). The four essayists in this small but instructive book are looking very hard for a culprit. Unlike the naive idealists of an earlier day, these writers know that something is amiss; they know that government power, used by liberals to implement their compassion, is more exploitative than caring. That the authors fail in the end to acknowledge the true villain only proves that no sheriff ever arrested himself. Dr. Willard Gaylin, a psychiatrist who can write, almost crosses the boundary of self-recognition: “Man is not, technically speaking, an individual; a social structure is a part of his biology and a necessary part of his functioning: we are a social animal not by election but by nature.” Gaylin criticizes the “concept of individualism,” which would emasculate man by stripping him of social supports— family, church, neighborhood, private organizations—leaving him in what Peter Berger has called an “anomic precariousness.” The liberals then compound the error by introducing government as the new parent and the only religion. Gaylin is onto something here. David Rothman and Steven Marcus pick up Gaylin’s trail in the middle essays with two historical vignettes. The failures of the British Poor Laws and of U.S. Progressivism are demonstrable, yet neither writer will conclude that perhaps it is liberalism itself which was to blame; Rothman traces Progressivism’s failure to the functionaries—the nurses, bureaucrats, and teachers—which is like holding G. Gordon Liddy responsible for Watergate. Ira Glasser’s concluding polemic is more insulting than disappointing. Executive Director of the New York branch of the ACLU, Glasser speaks the language of rights, cold and raw in its Hobbesian tone. To a victim of government’s depredations, Glasser would grant a lawyer and some cash to pay the legal fees. His programmatic solutions are trivial compared to the sincere concerns of the other three writers and to the genuine danger presented by the state as paternal benefactor. Glasser’s ideology is the real culprit.