The Way It Wasn’t
Restoring the American Dream.
by Robert I. Ringer.
QED, Harper & Row. 306 pp. $12.50.
Avery great deal of publicity and praise has welcomed Robert Ringer’s new book. Full-page ads in the New York Times offer testimony to the importance of Restoring the American Dream. Richard Ney, author of The Wall Street Jungle, calls the book “persuasive and powerful”; former NBC president Jack Thayer says it is “exciting reading” and “an eye-opening, mind-boggling expose”; the conservative economist Henry Hazlitt regards it as “eloquent, persuasive, and powerful.” Strong as these statements are, well-known conservative intellectuals have made even grander claims. On the basis of the book, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., editor of the American Spectator, has recommended Ringer for a Congressional Medal of Honor (an award which would not exist, for lack of a sponsoring body, if Ringer’s advice were followed); the editor of Reason, Manuel Klausner, says that Restoring the American Dream “is one of the most powerful statements for individual liberty since the Declaration of Independence”; and strongest of all, the philosopher John Hospers believes that “the very survival of our country may well depend on how much the public takes to heart the message of Mr. Ringer’s book.” On the strength of these, and other testimonials updated weekly in ads in major newspapers, and of the apparent appeal of Ringer’s thesis, Restoring the American Dream has found itself near the top of the best-seller list.
What is it that Ringer says to have brought forward such a windstorm of praise and accolade? He presents a chain of straightforward and indubitable propositions which make up the logical core of the American Dream. Among the propositions are the following: there is Natural Law and it posits “total freedom” for man; that is, “each man owns his own life and has the right to do anything he wishes with that life” so long as he doesn’t commit aggression—“aggression is force or fraud or the threat of force or fraud.” Natural Law dictates, again self-evidently, that individual liberty is higher than all other objectives. From these few but simple truths, certain conclusions follow, most of them about government, the book’s target. Among them: nothing the government says is true; “a man’s freedom to do what he wishes can never be compromised”; “the difference between Natural Law and government law is that Natural Law demands freedom, while government law demands that certain men obey other men”; government is a freedom-robbing conspiracy of “industrious individualists” (who made a mistake in agreeing to the necessity of government) and those who want power over others; “all governments are totalitarian and authoritarian” (the Soviet Union is only extreme totalitarianism); majority rule is a violation of Natural Law (“The most important person in the country is you. In your life you are the majority”); and the now-familiar idea, the System works for those in power.
Certain other beliefs, although not indubitable propositions, are friendly to the axioms of Natural Law and render groundless any “liberal” criticism of The American Dream. Ringer asserts, for example, that government restraint really is not necessary because “most men and women are basically good” and would not prey on their fellows if government disappeared. He says that unlike such terms as “Natural Law” and “liberty,” whose meanings are crystal clear, terms like “the common good,” “duty,” “decent,” “fair,” “needs,” “price gouging,” and “greed” are all “subjective” and do not mean anything at all. It follows that there is no logical authority or legitimacy behind regulation of pornography, water purity, education, homosexuality, the use of property, and, of course, the conduct of business or corporate affairs.
Since the American Dream belongs to the American people, Ringer calls upon his readers to “take back America” and restore a government-less harmony. But this taking back (which is a restoration) requires of the individual, as Buddhism does, a certain series of acts of self-purification, necessary to return oneself to the rational rule of Natural Law. One must “wage a personal battle against any traces of envy that have a hold on you”; “never go out of your way to cooperate with government”; “make an unwavering commitment to become fiercely independent and individualistic”; and “not think of yourself as part of a group” (“grouping is irrational and degrading”). Ringer closes with his own personal vision of a “restored” America: “I do not want to relate to you as a competitor. . . . I want to relate to you as a neighbor.”
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Putting aside for the moment the issue of the appeal of all this to many people, the first thing that must be said is that whatever dream Ringer aims to restore, it is not the American one. In one sentence from Federalist No. 10, the difference between the Ringer version and the American version is made clear: “The regulation of various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government.” Thus the architects of the American system take regulation, government, “grouping,” and self-interest to be the facts of life within which the American Dream is to be sought. There is no naiveté about “the basic goodness of man” or about “Natural Law.” Moreover, since in the Founders’ view “liberty is to faction what air is to fire” and liberty is to be protected, there is no hope that neighborliness will replace competition.
The American Dream as envisioned by the Founding Fathers (whom Ringer wishes to call to his side) knows nothing of a simple harmony, man to man, in the past or the future, in a rule of Natural Law. Federalist No. 6, anticipating Ringer, calls such a notion a dream indeed—not the American Dream, however, but “the deceitful dream of a golden age.” Rejecting such “idle theory,” the Founders’ version values liberty highly, is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, and insists that government has a significant role in the nurture and protection of these and other values—among them majority rule with attention to the rights of minorities and the necessary adjustment and regulation by government of competing interests.
A simple check of the index to Ringer’s book can save the reader the trouble of wondering whose dream this really is. There is only one reference to James Madison, but it is not only of no help to Ringer—it is disastrous to his thesis. Madison is quoted from Federalist No. 51: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” So eager is he to get to what comes after the semicolon that Ringer ignores what lies in front of it. And Madison aside, there are no references to Jefferson, Adams, Franklin. But there are six references to Murray Rothbard, six to Ayn Rand, and seven to someone named Sy Leon. Clearly, it is more toward certain right-wing orthodoxies of the mid-20th century than to the visions of the era of 1776-87 that the restoration is aimed.
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If Ringer’s is not the American Dream and his title is fraudulent, is it yet plausible that his is a better dream than the American one? If not, and if there is nothing to be said for it, how are we to account for its popularity and the proclamations made in its behalf? Several points can be made about these related questions. First, the book’s popularity with the general public will prove to be evanescent. The book has yet to be critically examined. When it is examined, its illiterate utopianism will be revealed and rejected by all but true believers. Second, it is the sort of book that is handed out to the faithful by the faithful, and the strongest words of praise for it, praise for its libertarian philosophy, come principally from libertarians and camp followers. This is not surprising; every anthropologist loves his tribe, and when one of the boys learns how to sing, however badly, the chiefs and the anthropologists will applaud. Third, the book begins with and cashes in on a widespread and understandable dissatisfaction with government; it does seem at present that in some areas government can neither “control the governed” nor “control itself.” Perceived accurately enough as the source of some unhappiness and inefficiency, government is here made the source of all unhappiness in a venerable though unsuccessful scapegoating argument. (Consider: since women sometimes make men unhappy, men should have nothing to do with women.) Fourth, the book has appeal because it says that selfishness and greed are subjective terms and cannot be used to distinguish among men or to make judgments about their actions. The book tells people they have no obligations of charity or of consideration to others, and this, among some people, is always a sound view.
Finally, to “intellectuals,” the book’s theorems hail from that currently appealing, never-never, cloud-cuckoo land of modern philosophy. Whereas in other, more sober periods an audience of readers would simply put the book down after reading the first of its Indubitable Axioms from Natural Law, properly judging them to be “idle theories,” today’s audience is softened to this sort of thing by the au courant style of modern philosophy, with its large assortment of Ringeroid trappings: Original Positions, Fundamental Axioms, and the like.
What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If the Left can posit absurd perspectives from which to criticize the practice of liberal democracy, so too, as we now discover, can the Right. Once our visionary philosophers have opened the way to the criticism of reality with an intellectual fulcrum located somewhere in outer space, then anyone can play and anything goes. In a game of nonsense on stilts, whatever turns you on can be called Natural Law and whatever you would like to have you can call the true American Dream; what gets in the way you can define out of existence, simply by saying it is “subjective.” Thus, if nothing else, Ringer can claim, with the German artist whose work never found success: “At least I am a contemporary.” Indeed. And unlike his mirror-image counterparts on the Left, he has done it without a Ph.D.
