# Letters to LR (July 1981) **URL:** **By** Various Authors **Published:** July 1, 1981 --- “It is impossible to take on, in the space of a letter, all the inaccuracies, idiocies, and illogic in Birmingham’s diatribe against Heinlein qua libertarian, and Heinlein has the right of first challenge anyway.” ## Bearish on California I see in your magazine that one of your writers \[Jeff Riggenbach, '_The Politics of Aquarius_,’ LR, March 1981\] believes that California is going to be the new intellectual leader of the nation — that California is already where the West looks for leadership. I beg to disagree. California is universally regarded as the home of the decadent, the shallow, and the vapid. Most look upon the state as a member of the Moral Majority looks at a porno theater: half-disgust and half-titillation. The self-centered petulance of the newest TV star symbolizes the personality of the Californian. The superannuated plots of ‘Fantasy Island’ typify its culture. The West has no leader. My town, Houston, is seemingly on its way to becoming the Boston of the South. So, the throne is open. Just don’t nominate the Bear State for it. That state cuts a pretty pitiful figure to all but the Californians themselves. PAUL D. BRENT Houston, TX ## Libertarian s.f. First Rode in Michael Grossberg to attack my novel, _Alongside Night_: \[LR, March 1980\] Then came Michael Dunn to go after L. Neil Smith’s _Probability Broach_. \[?\] Now we have Bill Birmingham attacking Heinlein’s libertarianism in _Number of the Beast_ and _Expanded Universe_ \[LR, March 1981\] — with gratuitous slams at Smith, F. Paul Wilson, myself, and libertarian science fiction in general. How many morons defending literature from libertarianism — and libertarianism from its own literature — are we going to have to put up with . . . and in libertarian publications, of all places? It is impossible to take on, in the space of a letter, all the inaccuracies, idiocies, and illogic in Birmingham’s diatribe against Heinlein _qua_ libertarian, and Heinlein has the right of first challenge anyway. But we already know how little Heinlein thinks of critics. At the convention near the end of _Number of the Beast_, Heinlein has reserved a special hell for critics; a suite where (without paper) they can write criticisms to each other throughout eternity. To escape all they must do is prove they can read. Obviously Birmingham doesn’t know how, or he would have picked up on this. . . . For those interested in Heinlein’s libertarian science fiction, I refer them to _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, _Revolt in 2100_, _Between Planets_, _Citizen of the Galaxy_, and _Farnham’s Freehold_. If Birmingham has been reading Heinlein since five, I don’t know how he missed these. Each is a masterpiece of science fiction with a libertarian theme. Which is what ‘libertarian science fiction’ is all about. It is not about preaching the dogma of ‘libertarian realism’ or demanding that literature adhere to any ideological standards. All fiction has a worldview; most of the time it isn’t noticed since it parallels the status quo. Libertarian science fiction is merely science fiction written by authors with a libertarian worldview. Period. If by having this worldview fiction promotes libertarian ideas, so much the better, but this is not its sole _raison d’etre_. If Birmingham and his kin would rather people read fiction that reinforces the statist mythos, fine. But I wish they’d get the hell out of the libertarian movement and leave those of us libertarians who write fiction alone. J. NEIL SCHULMAN Long Beach, CA ## The editors reply: Mr. Schulman must be, in part, mixing us up with some other magazine. The review we ran of L. Neil Smith’s _Probability Broach_ was by Victoria Varga \[LR, April 1980\], and it was so positive that Smith’s publisher quoted it on the jacket of his subsequent book. ## Increase or decrease? The editorial _'Treading Water'_ \[LR, April 1981\] was seriously misleading. The author, Lee Williams, claims that there are indications that President Reagan will increase government spending and interference rather than the reverse. But Williams fails to give those indications. Williams compares Reagan’s plans for government spending for 1982 with the actual level of government spending for 1981, which Reagan can do very little about, and finds an increase. But he fails to state 1982 spending in terms of 1981 dollars. If all of Reagan’s proposals were accepted, the 1982 budget would be $696 billion, a nominal increase of $33 billion over the 1981 budget, but a real decrease of 5 percent, or $36 billion, assuming an 11 percent rate of inflation. This would be the largest percent decrease in real federal spending since the end of the Korean War and the largest absolute decrease since the end of World War II. I am assuming, of course, that Williams’ figure for 1982 defense spending, $189 billion, and not Ravenal’s estimate of $222 billion (see Earl Ravenal, _'The Reagan Restoration,'_ same issue) is correct— Williams attempts to support his argument that Reagan would increase interference by pointing to interventions that Reagan would keep. But keeping ain’t increasing. He gives only one piece of evidence of a proposal for increased government interference, the Danforth-Bentsen quota to limit U. S. imports of Japanese cars, but Reagan has not yet even taken a position on that proposal. In any reckoning of whether Reagan will increase or decrease regulation, one would have to list Reagan’s proposals to reduce regulation. But Williams says not one word about Reagan’s plans to pare down Securities and Exchange restrictions that prevent small firms from going public, Department of Energy restrictions, and OSHA restrictions, nor about his proposals to reduce the size of the enforcement arms of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the IRS. Nor does Williams mention the fact that Reagan has already rescinded the humiliating restriction that prevented us from having our office buildings at the temperature that we, rather than Jimmy Carter, wanted. He says nothing about the fact that Reagan abolished the Council on Wage and Price Stabiilty, the agency that was enforcing Carter’s ‘voluntary’ wage and price guidelines and in all likelihood would have enforced future price controls. _Libertarian Review_ should be radical and should call proudly for eliminating whole agencies and programs. But they should also be able to distinguish an increase from a decrease. ## Williams replies: Dr. Henderson assumes an 11 percent rate of inflation for 1982 in answering my charges about the Reagan budget. Yet Reagan himself assumes an inflation rate of between 7 and 8 percent, and further predicates his proposed budget on sharply reduced unemployment and interest rates. Obviously these two predictions offer a discrepancy, and no one can say which is more accurate. But since Dr. Henderson accepts Reagan’s numbers in the overall budget — despite the fact that budget revisions upward are by now a commonplace — he ought to accept his assumptions, as well. If we assume, as Reagan does, an inflation rate of 7 percent, then the Reagan budget does indeed represent a cut in real terms—of some 2 percent, rather than the 5 percent Henderson claims. If inflation is closer to Henderson’s assumption, then Reagan is likely to go back to Congress and request more money. In either case, when one recalls Reagan’s oft-proclaimed motto, ‘Government is the problem, not the solution,’ it would seem that the President’s proposed budget is a dismal failure. Looking at it another way, the ‘Reagan revolution’ addresses only 2 percent of the problem. In fact, it is that part of the President’s budget which offers taxpayers absolutely no return of goods or services — arms and the military—which Reagan has increased drastically. Reagan’s proud boast is that ‘defense’ spending will increase even more over the next few years, and that he will spend more than $1.5 trillion on this boondoggle. Lately, however, conservatives and liberals alike have begun to suggest that it may increase even more, particularly if Reagan has underestimated price increases in military-related areas, which many experts believe to be the case. In real terms, then, Reagan is offering us a reduction in domestic spending, and a drastic increase in defense spending. And if defense spending in fact harms the economy more than spending for social programs, the Reagan budget, despite the supposed 2 percent real reduction, may actually be worse for the economy in many ways than the proposed Carter 1982 budget. Dr. Henderson would have me list more examples of government ‘interference’ in the economy. Yet the entire federal budget is one gargantuan example of government intervention. Every dollar seized from the private sector means less productivity and a lower standard of living. Whittling away at the budget is not enough. If Reagan intends to differentiate himself in a positive way from past Presidents, then he must propose substantive cuts in government spending, including spending for the military. Until then he is just ‘treading water’ and should be exposed as doing such. ## A few pluses Many thanks for Roy Childs’ excellent article on El Salvador in the April _Libertarian Review_. Newspaper articles on foreign affairs are unreliable at best, so I depend on LR for much of my information concerning international developments. I look forward to many more such articles in the future. I must commend Vern Hansen for his outstanding article on Robert LeFevre \[LR, April 1981\]. His piece was my introduction to LeFevre and his steadfast contributions to liberty over the years. I only regret missing the opportunity to have attended one of LeFevre’s seminars before he retired. Our present course of political thinking is eroding all hope for a better, more prosperous, and peaceful future. LeFevre’s answer to the dilemma of our overpowering government is the example he has given us with his life’s work. Enjoyed, maybe That’s not the right word, was enlightened by your piece on the IRS. \[_'Preaching at the Juggernaut,'_ by Joan Kennedy Taylor, LR, April 1981\] But should we be surprised that the courts have ruled as they have? I think not. There is an unwritten Catch-22 type clause in the U. S. Constitution, which had it been written might well be something like this: ‘Nothing in the Constitution of the United States shall be so construed as to put in question the very existence of the federal government.’ If the Founders did not write any such clause, it was only because they didn’t think they had to, they thought it was self-evident. Their purpose was to found a government, primarily to make the (physical) country safe for property and business enterprise. For that same reason, they wanted to limit the powers of that government. But the last thing in the world they intended or would have countenanced was someone finding some tricky way of interpreting the Constitution which would in effect do away with the government. I am a little surprised that none of the courts, defending the powers of the IRS, have made this obvious comment, saying, ‘The first principle of the Constitution, overriding all others, is that the life and existence of the United States Government shall not be threatened.’ I have only now read (part of) my first issues of _Libertarian Review_, and what I have seen interests me very much.☐