Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
His Championship of Freedom Should Never Be Neglected, December 4, 2003
Long before there was such a thing as a libertarian movement, Frank Chodorov was one of the most genial defenders of freedom, of individual rights and sovereignty, and of properly-construed government (sole legitimate business, other than protecting her citizens from enemies abroad and predators - real predators, please, not mere vicemongers - at home: staying the hell out of your business, my business, every citizen's business, until or unless one citizen would abrogate a fellow citizen's equivalent rights) against the improperly consecrated State (which imposes itself upon every last shard of your business, though it be not competent nor Constitutionally sanctioned to do so). Across these forty-five essays, written with grace, wit, and gentility, you will get to know a clarity of thinking and of feeling uncommon in contemporary sociopolitical writing. You will also get to know a man who suffered neither fools nor collectivists left or right gladly, yet had the surety never to make it a personal or a venal rebuke. I could point to numerous examples of just how lyric, how embracing, was his way of enunciating all the reasons why we should be and remain suspicious of the encroachments of the State against the sovereignty of the individual, but perhaps this will do for an introduction, from his gentle rebuke to the militant wing of the anti-Communist movement, written at the threshold of the Smith Act trial of 1949, "How To Curb The Commies." Here is wisdom we would do wisely to heed even now, as only too many of our fellows seem sooner disposed to a curb upon our freedoms than a healthy defence thereof): "Heterodoxy is a necessary condition of a free society...Whenever I choose an idea and label it 'right,' I imply the prerogative of another to reject that idea and label it 'wrong.' To invalidate his right is to invalidate mine...The danger, to those who hold freedom as the highest good, is not the ideas the communists espouse but the power they aspire to. Let them rant their heads off - that is their right, which we cannot afford to infringe - but let us keep from them the political means of depriving everybody else of the same right." As unpretentious and as gently stylish in his way as was his great mentor Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov's championship of freedom should never be purged from what remains of our patrimony.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Any Thoughtful Man is a Fugitive, April 18, 2007
Frank Chodorov was anything but an "ivory towered professor" as these essays will attest. He was a self-made man, and he was not swayed by the political trends of his times. He had little patience with the naive leftests, and he separated himself from what Lawrence Dennis called "The Dumb Right."
Chodorov was opposed to socialism. He was obviously at odds with the True Believing Communists, but he also expressed criticism at the New Dealers whom he thought would inaugurate socialism under different labels. He shared many of the same criticisms that John T. Flynn had of the New Deal programs.
One of the themes that Chodorov emphasizes is the fact that the "Capitalists" did not do a good job of defending themselves in refuting their Marxist and socialists critics. Chodorov is clear that anyone looking to the professors for intellectual support against Marxist and socialist criticisms was wasting their time. Chodorov was also against supressing Free Speech and Free Press of the Marxists and socialists. He remarked that to do so was to emulate the Communists wherevever they held power that emulating the Communists' tactics lowered Americans to their level. Chodorov's solution was for men to refute the ideas of the Marxists. In other words, one should confront the buzz words and phrases and slogans of the Marxists and socialists such as surplus value, greed, etc.
While Chodorov disagreed with Big Communism, he was no supporter of the Conservatives dreams of the U.S. Military State. In fact Chodorov was disillusioned with many Conservatives who wanted to build a garrison state in the U.S. and match such as state with a police state. Chodorov stated that the Conservatives would split over Anti-Communism, and Chodorov had little patience with "The Dumb Right." In fact, he stated that if anyone ever called him a Conservative, he would punch that person in the nose.
Yet, Chodorov's criticism of Big Communism was more incisive than most Conservatives. One remark he made that was so true was the Big Communism would rise over the dead of the Capitalists AND the workers in The Workers' Paradise. Chodorove also accurately argued that Big Communism would collapse due to its disasterous economic policies. He knew that only because the West, including the U.S., subsidized Big Communism, Big Communism survived. In other words, Chodorov thought that Big Communism's collapse would result from ecomonic policy rather than fruitless wars.
Frank Chodorov's thinking and writing was similiar to that of Albert Jay Nock and other thoughtful men who valued liberty more than they hated "The Enemy" whoever the enemy was at any given time. This reviewer's only criticism of Chodorov is that he could have embellished his arguements against socialism and especially Big Communism by citing historical examples.
Frank Chodorov's writing is clear and thoughtful. Anyone who reads his work would learn not only clear thinking, but they would learn good writing from someone who did not clutter his work with quotes and useless phrases.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Champion of the People, September 1, 2008
American politics is comprised of three kinds of people: Those who wittingly support the state, those who unwittingly support the state, and those who support the people. Representing the third kind, Frank Chodorov was a relentless champion of the people. In a conversational style, Frank Chodorov wrote tirelessly on the threats to liberty (threats spearheaded by the state itself). He told us that an income tax was unAmerican and how it is a disguised confiscation of property. He told us that militarism was unAmerican and that political powers gained through war are never abdicated. He understood the game of dictators and he could see that America was in the game.
Why does it take men of Russian heritage, men like Chodorov, Soltzynizn, Dostoevsky, to tell Americans what freedom is? Because Americans have been duped into believing their leaders are gods. "The censorship of thought is a military necessity" wrote Chodorov. Familiar with the warning in George Orwell's 1984, Chodorov wrote, "if the war draws large chunks of our population to the land, an American state after the pattern of orwell's 1984 may be averted." It wasn't averted. Chodorov writes, "the direction of the American state will be toward the acquisition of power for war purposes...the tendency will be more and more toward totalitarianism. That is unavoidable."
Chodorov knew the game so well he could make predictions that were correct to the smallest detail. Anticipating the Cold War, he wrote, "We are again being told to be afraid. As it was before the two world wars so it is now: politicians talk in frightening terms, journalists invert scare lines, and even next-door neighbors are taking up the cry: the enemy is at the gates; we must gird for battle."
And so it was.
And so it was again when we went to Vietnam in 1964 and so it was again when we went to Iraq in 2003. The game of dictators. Chodorov was our leader, and no one has ever heard of him.
Frank Chodorov has been dead since 1966. Today, his invisible torch is carried by 2008 Presidential Candidate RON PAUL. These great men who represent the people are so few. The people are the victims of their own ignorance, their own apathy, their own dogmatism. And only when our national buildings and Interstates are stripped of their criminal identies such as Hoover, LBJ, and Bush, and replaced with those who stand for freedom, like Chodorov, Nock, Rothbard, and Paul, will the people know that these men made a difference. And that difference was liberty itself.
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by Albert J Nock
by Ludwig von Mises
by Ludwig von Mises
by Murray N. Rothbard
