Books in Brief

In Defense of Property, by Gottfried Dietze (Regnery, $6.50). “Torment,” says Prof. Dietze, was-the price of his decision to write this book, for he feared that he, the emigrant from Nazi Germany, the immigrant to America, might be accused of ingratitude for writing an indictment of the decline of American freedom. We owe him not torment but thanks. His thesis is that property, personal property, private untrammeled enjoyment and disposition of property, is an essential condition of human freedom; and he proves it positively by showing the concomitance of liberty and respect for property in the major Western lands, and negatively by describing the decline in the public esteem for property as the public clamor for “civil” rights under unlimited democracy begins to overshadow the legal regard for “personal” rights. He urges that the right of property is co-equal with other liberal (in Continental parlance) rights, and suggests the original thesis that the demand for civil order may properly infringe on personal rights only as long as the co-equality of the various rights is maintained. That is, if we are to restrict property, then let us restrict speech, and assembly; or if utter freedom is to be granted here, then it must be granted there. A remarkable and necessary work. Caution: the reference to John Adams, footnote, page 210, is misinterpreted: Adams was being sardonic, he was not prophesying an American nation of saints forever. Not old John!

w. f. Rickenbacker

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In Defense of Property, by Gottfried Dietze (Regnery, $6.50). “Torment,” says Prof. Dietze, was-the price of his decision to write this book, for he feared that he, the emigrant from Nazi Germany, the immigrant to America, might be accused of ingratitude for writing an indictment of the decline of American freedom. We owe him not torment but thanks. His thesis is that property, personal property, private untrammeled enjoyment and disposition of property, is an essential condition of human freedom; and he proves it positively by showing the concomitance of liberty and respect for property in the major Western lands, and negatively by describing the decline in the public esteem for property as the public clamor for “civil” rights under unlimited democracy begins to overshadow the legal regard for “personal” rights. He urges that the right of property is co-equal with other liberal (in Continental parlance) rights, and suggests the original thesis that the demand for civil order may properly infringe on personal rights only as long as the co-equality of the various rights is maintained. That is, if we are to restrict property, then let us restrict speech, and assembly; or if utter freedom is to be granted here, then it must be granted there. A remarkable and necessary work. Caution: the reference to John Adams, footnote, page 210, is misinterpreted: Adams was being sardonic, he was not prophesying an American nation of saints forever. Not old John!

w. f. Rickenbacker