A Machine that Would Go by Itself:
Diggins, John Patrick
acters cannot probe their own per- alone. He was curled in a large drift to be wrong about the American memory sonalities and motivations, they eagerly beneath his clothesline...
...Yet Erdrich is a writer who from an observation by James Russell the banks of the river stank of has been justifiably lauded, and even Lowell: bleached carp...
...He was curled in a large drift to be wrong about the American memory sonalities and motivations, they eagerly beneath his clothesline and his in 1987...
...Was "Hands Across the trunks and upper limbs, girdl- ing skill and imagination, her characters America" really about awakening Amering them completely so that even keep the novel from being totally satisfy- icans to their obligations to the poor...
...But then, precisely because this book is definitional it omits the dynamic HELPFUL GUIDES FOR factors, like the reappearance of monopoly in the deregulated airline in- SPECIAL AND ORDINARY dustry...
...The authors ance with it...
...His latest ing debates of 1787-88...
...As one observer complained, there poems is Personal Accounts (Ontario Review raphy...
...Let's face it, John forthcoming Bicentennial will succeed in Jerusalem, is the author of A Theology of the Lennon has had more impact on Ameri- awakening the people to a renewed re- Jewish-Christian Reality, Parts I and II (with Part III forthcoming from Harper and Row...
...voices of Mary, Sita, and Celestine blur, call a "happening...
...And there would be an even velopment in the poor countries, but that economy polarity which also predeter- greater revolution in the "empirical" it would misshape it so that even when mines the data and therefore the conclu- data if, say, Berger were to use the defini- progress was made, it would not change sions to be drawn from them...
...Neverthe- impact of Confucianism, that require one the political institutions it bequeathed less, the framers deserve to be celebrated to go beyond Weberian categories of both explain and sustain America as a as brilliant political philosophers who modernization (though I think that modern republic...
...to each other to produce a thorough guide to understanding marriage from a Christian viewThe capitalists, humble as methodologi- point...
...are the objective guarantee for pro- (Please include $1.00 per book for postage and handling) foundly subjective choices...
...can culture than John Adams, which spect for the Constitution...
...Weber anticipated this possibility to a degree that Berger does not recognize...
...After sum- sure of himself, which is most of the occasional qualification, an admission marizing that "All democracies are time, he is simply a disingenuous faction that contemporary capitalism sometimes capitalist...
...Bicentennial would value the Civil War JOHN PATRICK DIGGINS is the author of The Kammen, a Cornell professor and au- amendments (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Lost Soul of American Politics...
...But perhaps one of the most revealing FANA single moments in Berger's book occurs BEYOND COMPANIONSHIP-CHRISTIANS when he talks of the superiority of IN MARRIAGE socialism over capitalism in the domain fly Diana S Richmond Garland of myth-making, a backhanded compli- and David E Garland ment if ever there were one...
...It will be a valuable resource for pastoral cal empiricists, have only the prosaic counselors, for leaders of marriage enrichment facts of their magnificent performance...
...Perhaps with good rea- Schwartz (Vanguard...
...Constitution, including the fundamental that the well will never run dry...
...wealth from the Census, the richest 1.9 It is too bad that one has to be con- percent of our households have a mean Name stantly irritated throughout this book by net worth of $1,069,880 and the bottom the invisible hand of Berger's defini- 11 percent of the households have mean Address tions...
...Like nature in the eighteenth century, social science data Available from your local bookstore or direct from the publisher...
...President Cleveland attended coming book is The Next Left (Holt...
...And the criteria of relevance tion...
...The only framers...
...But this is old hat historiog- son...
...Which is easy enough, and a mistended parentheses which do not inter- nition of `democracy' would permit very reading of dependency theory...
...It is precisely when Berger thus esThe capitalist revolution (cont...
...24 October 1986: 509...
...they provide empirical evidence for this asserare taken...
...sees it as inherently anti-capitalist, a noa It is significant that East Asia does not fit tion which is quite sixtyish and blissfully COMMONWEAL 15 Dutch St-, New York, N.Y...
...If I thought this famous redistribution did not take City, State,Zip it were, I would quit that socialist move- place...
...right about the corruptions of music...
...As challenge...
...capes from the tyranny of his own definitions that he is interesting and even (Continued from page 558) But then there is a curious aside which somewhat unpredictable...
...The book Adam Smith, Berger writes, "believed exposes common mistaken notions about that the economic system he was describ- marriage and examines current biblical ing . . . was, quite simply, the natural interpretations of the relationship between the spouses...
...When that quintessential conservative, Paul Volker, lowered the discount rate at the Fed recently, was that an imperative of the market...
...More difficult is the task of dem- was nothing "in the object of the celebra- Press...
...His own new book of tionists...
...I admire the 90 IT ITSELF "indifference" and "ignorance...
...They consider system is the expression of a perennial suggestions for the celebration of life and human nature, of a homo economicus explore the dynamics of caring for others...
...thor of a number of important works of and Fifteenth) more than the original J. V. LONG is writing a critical study of Evehistory, is honest enough to acknowledge Constitution and its framers, "will prove lyn Waugh...
...His forthand exhaustively researched...
...other important writers saw things differ- cesses, they are authoritarian and diImplicit in Kammen's book, and in ently...
...No doubt there will be celebrarender for us the power of the physical arms were full of towels...
...solid work in the past, but because of the In his brief remarks on the "new E l One Year...
...banks, the International Monetary Fund, The point is, as John Dewey so well and the Reagan administration, might put it, that the data are never given...
...There is a famous PARENTING YOUR DISABLED CHILD book which Berger knows quite well, by Bernard Ikeler Das Kapital, whose central theme is a This compassionate book by an author who was bom with cerebral refutation of this mythic, metahistorical palsy is addressed to the many parents of disabled children who notion which also sometimes speaks to often feel isolated...
...We which Americans have failed to under- are a nation which has struck ile, Michael Kammen stand the meaning and significance of the but we are also a nation that is sure Knopf, $29.95, 532 pp...
...Bernard Ikeler accompanies readers in the search for meaning and understanding and offers advice to churches, the yearnings of other intellectuals...
...Here is Mary, for example, The Beet Queen is filled with such Warren Burger will go out in a blaze of describing the North Dakota winter: passages, which convey a palpable real- glory...
...The problem leftist redistribution has already gone so Name is, neither I nor, what is more important, far as to kill the capitalist goose that lays the democratic socialist movement of the the golden eggs...
...But when he is and liberation, and so on...
...discuss such common concerns as integrity and What Berger, of course, has described trustworthiness and problems like scheduling is the capitalist myth, the notion that this and striving to get to the top...
...He splendid complacency of my counTHE CONSTITUTION quotes Supreme Court justices and cites trymen, and find something IN AMERICAN CULTURE questionnaires to indicate the extent to exhilarating and inspiring in it...
...teachers, families, and friends who want to help them meet the Berger is one of those intellectuals...
...Berger welfare outlays in the market economies, is coming...
...Kammen can guished Americans, including eminent book is The Catholic Fact Book (Thomas show how all political parties and geog- literary figures, had turned down invita- More...
...If ignorant of, say, the Gary Hart campaign 1 he can cite South Korea, Hong Kong, of 1984...
...28 0 Two years, $49 one chapter in The Capitalist Revolution class" in advanced capitalism, Berger Canadian postage: $2 a year...
...Today And this confidence in our luck John Patrick Diggins school books may still refer to the Con- with the absorption in material stitution as "sacred and glorious," but interests, generated by unparalTHE PUBLICATION of Michael Kam- most students respond with a yawn...
...Yet despite Erdrich's strik- value or uphold...
...The Mexicans, who ternational in June: "the most profound, have recently seen their living standards comprehensive, and international de- plummet at the insistence of the world's mocracy...
...Moremuch other scholarship as well as the ceeded in preserving liberty for two cen- over, their history and development inidea of the forthcoming Bicentennial, is turies, but not for the reasons that the volve cultural factors, like the economic the assumption that the Constitution and framers had in mind in 1787...
...fighter...
...Yes, world market would totally frustrate deby the market-economy/command- indeed...
...into working order it really seemed as if we had invented a machine that would go of itself, and this Awakening the people begot faith in our luck which even the Civil War itself but momentarA MACHINE THAT WOULD that the Constitution has been met with ily disturbed...
...He tells us that LINDA SIMON is director of The Writing perhaps shows that the Puritans were E. L. Godkin, who predicted that a future Center at Harvard University...
...different statements about the empirical pendency theory never argued that the That thrust is essentially structured distribution of the phenomenon...
...markets into social science data, and thus Paper $8.95 "empirical" reality...
...One problem with this Address world would give anyone permission to argument is that the data show, alas, that say that Bulgaria is socialist...
...In this case, I truly wish that Commonweal: 568 Berger were right...
...In the end, the distinct narrative was it what the sixties generation used to have shown, was a time of death...
...Or spring, when new buds should ing...
...PAUL M. VAN BUREN, dience" of "the Constitution in American ests of the people...
...for the "taking" of the data should not be When Berger briefly takes up the hidden in value-laden definitions which theme of monopoly, state planning, and set up "value free" deductions...
...According to the recent analysis of With notification, as a gift, from: ment forthwith...
...triat which is natural, almost by definition, does not require CARING TOGETHER legitimation, mythic or otherwise (who Faith, Hope, and Love in Your Family would think of legitimating the law of byJan and Myron Cbartier gravity or concocting myths so that This practical book will help families recover a sense of God's presence in the ordinary, people will be inspired .to act in accord- humdrum activities of daily life...
...For instance, his discussion of deviates from the market model or that many capitalist societies are not democ- the third world, with the exception of there are markets in some Communist racies, " Berger then comments, "It East Asia, is based on a refutation of societies, but these are essentially ex- goes without saying that a different defi- Lenin...
...Paper $8.95 tal and sometimes computers, but always must employ capital...
...principles of the Bill of Rights...
...onstrating the "impact" and "influ- tion that especially awakened the inter- THE REVEREND DR...
...tions and fireworks, and Chief Justice landscape...
...Was leled opportunity, has in some remen's new book seems perfectly it any different in the past...
...no democracy is socialist...
...And he really doesn't confront state intervention...
...raphical sections invoked the Constitu- tions, as did America's leading historian, ROBERT PHILLIPS edited Letters of Delmore tion either as strict or broad construc- George Bancroft...
...The discussion is broadened to include concern for all befits a scientistic age, he has translated who suffer indignity and injustice, and the author presents the the providential powers of Adam Smith's Christian church as a most compassionate community...
...The snow ity of the midwest at its most grim and brate that which society chooses not to came so high that rabbits gnawed forbidding...
...There is an almost gives the game way...
...any wide concern since the great ratify- profits ahead of patriotism...
...An old man was with its weaknesses, The Beet Queen After our Constitution got fairly found, one who for years had lived stands as a product of enormous talent...
...tion of socialism adopted by the the basic relation of inferiority to the metseventy-five parties of the Socialist In- ropolitan powers...
...For defere with the main thrust of the argument...
...problem is that Kammen has written a and used the occasion to praise American ROBERT JONES works for a major publisher book on a subject that has failed to arouse industry and chide businessmen who put in New York City...
...writes, "It is permissible to say, flatly, he does so primarily within an Arthur Send COMMONWEAL to: that Belgium is a capitalist society and Laffer framework, i.e., asking whether Bulgaria a socialist one...
...Many distin- JOHN DEEDY was managing editor of Commonweal from 1967 to 1978...
...Now the data get 925 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107 that job...
...24 October 1986: 567 spects made us neglectful of our Thoreau, Henry Adams, and several Singapore, and Taiwan as capitalist sucpolitical duties...
...groups, and for couples themselves...
...In the shelterbelts, I came across and our sympathies with them cannot go The title of Kammen's book comes more of the deer's frail hulks and far enough...
...rector of the Center for Contemporary Theolculture," as the book's subtitle and in- Apparently Kammen believes that the ogy of the Shalom Hartman Institute, troduction imply...
...Foreign $5 from which I actually learned something...
...timed to appear as America is about to In the 1887 Centennial held at REVIEWERS celebrate the Bicentennial of the Con- Philadelphia lavish preparations were MICHAEL HARRINGTON is co-chair of the stitution...
...I say this not simply because of his assets of minus $3,455...
...The Constitution may have suc- rigiste examples of capitalism...
...I believe it was Condorcet who said that conservatism always wants to enlist nature on TIM WESTMINSTER PRESS the side of inequality...
...At who sometimes uses stone tools as capi- the end of each chapter there is a recommended activity...
...unfortunately he is not...
...It is thoughtful, well written, made to honor the handiwork of the Democratic Socialists of America...
...But public festivities usually celeMy fruit trees suffered...
...10038 easily even into Berger's definitions...
...The Diana and David Garland combine their indisocialists, he charges, can build upon vidual fields-social work and biblical those utopian and metahistorical yearn- studies-with the experience of being married ings that intellectuals find so irresistible...
...Yet Tocqueville, told us the truth about human nature...
...Paper $12.95 ordering of society...
Vol. 113 • October 1986 • No. 18
