Like Pinocchio, the more MichaelNovak writes, the longer his nose

becomes. As Lyndon LaRouche recentlywrote in an essay entitled “MichaelNovak, Calvinist?—‘Not by Market-place Alone!’ ” (Executive IntelligenceReview, July 4, 1997): “For both practicaland spiritual reasons, the most crucialaspect of the New Age corruptionwhich must be reversed, if the U.S.A isto assuredly outlive this century, is thekind of Manicheanism which MichaelNovak expresses by his gnostic’s relianceon ‘the magic of the marketplace.’ ”

In these two books, Novak attemptsto cloak his underlying Manicheanism byselective references to Pope John Paul II’sencyclical Centesimus Annus, while ignor-ing the Pope’s calls for debt forgivenessand reform of the international financialsystem; by extensive quotes from Alexan-der Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, andthe U.S. Constitution, which ignore thecentral role of the nation-state; and byreferences to the concept of man createdin the image of God, the Creator, whichat best render human creativity anempty construct, and at worse reduce itto piracy.

Embrace of Aristotle

The philosophical source of Novak’scorruption is his unabashed embrace ofAristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Poli-tics, from which he quotes extensively inboth books. What Novak fails to men-tion is, that in the Politics, Aristotleargues that slavery is natural, that abor-tion should be employed to limit popu-lation, and that productive labor is igno-ble and inimical to virtue. In his Ethics,Aristotle begins by rejecting Plato’s ideaof the Good, and therefore man’s capaci-ty to participate in the Good, a conceptessential to Christianity. Aristotle’s tenmoral virtues, discussed in the Ethics,not insignificantly omit justice, a con-cept Novak, like his mentor Friedrichvon Hayek, has trouble applying tosocial policy.

Central to Novak’s argument in both

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to educate future generations of Greeksculptors, and influenced the compositionof sculpture for millennia to come.

It is important to note, that most ofwhat remains of the works of the greatsculptors of mature Classical Period artare actually Hellenistic Greek or Romancopies. Appreciating these works istherefore much like trying to appreciatea great poem in translation. You get thegeneral sense of the structure, the themeand the metaphor, but much of themusic is gone, much of the beauty lack-ing. This is certainly the case with thiscopy of the “Doryphorus,” which isheavier and less graceful than theedescriptions by ancient chroniclers of theoriginal work.

Even in the copy, however, the“Doryphorus” demonstrates a mar-velous balance between the static kourosand the motion of the early ClassicalPeriod. The weight of the body rests onthe right leg, muscles tensed; the leftleg is placed perhaps in mid-step, noweight, muscles relaxed. The right armhangs relaxed and free, while the leftarm is raised, hand clenching a spear.The shoulders and hips are in harmon-ic counterposition, and the head isturned and slightly tilted down. Everyfeature of the “Doryphorus,” everymuscle, is simultaneously in motionand at rest.

Praxiteles: The Moment of Discovery

The years following Phidias, Myron,and Polykleitos mark a decline in theeconomic strength and political powerof the city-states of the Greek mainland.Unable to conquer the Hellenes byforce, agents of the Persian Empiremanipulated them into the fratricidalPeloponnesian Wars. Nonetheless, itwas in this period that Socrates wasteaching in the agora of Athens, fightingfor the principle of truth; thatXenophon marched across Asia Minor,perhaps writing his Anabasis; and thatPlato established the Academy atAthens, and set down The Republic, themost important work of political state-craft in human history. Philip II ofMacedonia ruled a Western Empire,which included Greece; the young

Alexander had not yet been born.It is fortunate that from this late

Classical Period, we have at least oneoriginal work from the hand of thegreat sculptor Praxiteles, the “Hermesand Dionysus” [SEE inside back cover,this issue]. This sculpture meets all therequirements of harmony and balanceof the Polykleitos Canon; for, despite theanatomical features being softer thanthose of Myron and Polykleitos, the ten-sion between motion and rest remains.The god Hermes tenderly holds hisinfant brother Dionysus, tempting himwith some object held high in his righthand. Yet, there is a kind of indifferencein the face of Hermes, as if he has dis-covered some new thought and is nolonger aware of his brother’s presence.Praxiteles has caught Hermes, not mere-ly in mid-motion, not just at a necessarypause in motion, but at a point of intel-lectual discovery.

We can see that same quality of “in-betweenness” of thought and discovery,in Praxiteles’ “Cnidian Aphrodite” [SEE

inside back cover, this issue]. Again, thefigure expresses all the beauty of thecounterbalance and harmony of Myronor Polykleitos. We see the Goddess justas she has dropped her robe to enter thebath. The eyes are set deeper than nor-mal, creating a darker, shadowed effect.It is as if Aphrodite had discovered, atthat moment, that she was beingobserved, is unconcerned about it, andperhaps a bit pleased. After all, she is thegoddess of Love.

It is by capturing the irony, the “in-betweenness” of mid-motion accompa-nying the moment of thought, thatPraxiteles offers us a glimpse of beautyas a reflection of the eternal. For thepower of the beautiful, as Socratesinstructs Phaedrus in Plato’s dialogue,is “. . . the fourth kind of madness,with which a man is inspired whenev-er, by the sight of beauty in this lowerworld, the true beauty of the worldabove is so brought to his remembrance. . . that he longs to soar aloft; but thepower failing him, gazes upward like abird and becomes heedless of all basermatters.”

—Ted Andromidas

BOOK S

There Is Fraud in

Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 1997

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books is his complete distortion of thehistory of the American System of polit-ical economy. The choice in economicpolicy is not between socialism andThatcherism, as Novak lies. Contrary toNovak, the American System of politi-cal economy does not derive from AdamSmith. The American System ofAlexander Hamilton, Mathew Carey,Henry C. Carey, Friedrich List, andAbraham Lincoln, is distinct from theBritish system of free trade. It derivesfrom the Renaissance creation of thesovereign nation-state, beginning in theFrance of Louis XI following the Coun-cil of Florence. It was developed furtherby Colbert and by the work of G.W.Leibniz.

In attacking the nation-state as hedoes, Novak is serving his British mas-ters. In The Fire of Invention, Novakmakes the following statement: “It [theBusiness Corporation] has been far moreopen, more creative, and infinitely lessdestructive than the nation-state, partic-ularly the totalitarian state.” The realityis, that the sovereign nation-state is thegreatest invention of the last 550 years,without which industrial capitalism, asdistinct from British imperialism, wouldnever have developed.

In Business as a Calling, Novak citesArticle I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitu-tion, to argue that the Founding Fathers“looked to the private business corpora-tion for the advancement of the arts andpractical sciences”; but, in so doing, heneglects to mention that Article I, Sec-tion 8 invests in the Congress, i.e., thegovernment, the power to promote thearts and useful sciences.

Similarly, he quotes Lincoln oninvention, but fails to tell the wholetruth, which is that Lincoln opposedfree trade, and advocated protective tar-iffs and a national bank.

In The Fire of Invention, Novakargues that business corporations “mustbe allowed to execute,” whereas “wisepersons do not want governments to actuntil they are carried forward, like rhi-

noceroses rising slowly from the mud,by the hydraulic force of a very largedurable consensus.” In making thisargument, Novak turns a passage fromAlexander Hamilton on its head.Hamilton wrote, as Novak states in afootnote, that “Energy in the executive isthe leading character in the definition ofgood government. It is essential to theprotection of the community against for-eign attacks; it is not less essential to thesteady administration of the laws; to theprotection of property against thoseirregular and highhanded combinations

which sometimes interrupt the ordinarycause of justice; to the security of libertyagainst the enterprises and assaults ofambition, of faction, and of anarchy.”Novak, however, applies this necessarycharacteristic of good government to thebusiness corporation, and denies it to thestate.

Man Is Not a Beast

Although Novak pays lip service to cre-ativity as the source of wealth, he clearlyhas no idea of what either creativity orwealth is. He may make reference to thefact that man is created in the image ofGod (imago Dei), but his actual conceptof man, derived from Aristotle andshared with Mandeville, Hobbes, andLocke, is that “human beings are moralanimals.” In reality, he does not make adistinction between man and the beast—to Novak, man is but another animal.

In contrast to Lyndon LaRouche,who has developed the science of phys-ical economy, based on the concept ofpotential relative population-density,Novak has no concept of the role ofcreativity in transforming the physicaluniverse on behalf of humanity. It isfor this reason that he, like his fellowManichean, Richard Neuhaus, defendsMichael Milken and other “corporateraiders.” As he writes: “Disapprove ofthem or not, we owe these ‘pirates’ adebt.” For the same reason he defendsthe “so-called robber barons of the lateNineteenth century.” And even morerevealing, he favorably cites the com-ment of one investor, to whom thestock market was “like a beautifulwoman, endlessly fascinating, endlesslycomplex, always changing, alwaysmystifying.”

Is it any wonder that Novak wouldsupport the privatization of social secu-rity? In The Fire of Invention, he lies: “Ifin the near future social security is priva-tized, pouring multiple billions of dol-lars of new funds into productive invest-ment, the independence of individualfamilies will be mightily fortified.”

Is it any wonder that Novak explicit-ly embraces the evil concept of socialresponsibility advocated by MiltonFriedman? Novak quotes Friedman as

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The Fire of Invention: Civil Society and the Future

of the Corporationby Michael Novak

Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md., 1997

168 pages, hardcover, $19.95

Business As a Calling: Work and the Examined Life

by Michael NovakThe Free Press, New York, 1996246 pages, hardbound, $22.50

What He Offers

The Long Affair is a long-windedattack on America’s third Presi-

dent, Thomas Jefferson, for what authorConor Cruise O’Brien claims to havebeen Jefferson’s support for some of thebloodiest events in the 1789 French Rev-olution. At one point, the author goes sofar as to compare Jefferson to Cambodi-a’s genocidal Pol Pot.

While many of the facts presented byO’Brien are in themselves credible, whatabsolutely strains credibility, is to believethat O’Brien is so opposed as he pur-ports to be, to “revolutionary excesses,”or, for that matter, to Pol Pot. O’Brienhimself is one of the chief conceptualarchitects of the current destruction ofthe African nation of Zaire, and the riseto power of Laurent Kabila.

Surely, there is another agendabehind this anti-Jefferson enterprise.British agent O’Brien exploits the con-troversy over Jefferson’s role in history,to promote processes in the UnitedStates that will lead to the destruction ofthe American Republic.

Jefferson was certainly a compro-mised figure, with significant weakness-es, as documented in “The ConfederateLegacy of Thomas Jefferson,” byRichard Freeman (Fidelio, Spring 1997,Vol. VI, No. 1). But, O’Brien distorts theoverall picture, and transforms the Jef-ferson controversy into a scenario forhow the United States might bedrowned in civil strife, in the years tocome.

Falsifying History

Jefferson was a flawed individual; but,he was also a complex man. He washighly educated, and when under theinfluence of positive figures like Platon-ist George Wythe, or BenjaminFranklin, his better instincts could come

to the fore. Hence, the first thing onemust do, if one wants to create a carica-tured and misleading portrait of him, isto destroy Franklin.

O’Brien’s depiction of Franklin isnauseating. The entirety of Franklin’srich experience in France, is encapsulat-ed in one dubious account of his sup-posed public embrace of the Enlighten-ment degenerate Voltaire.

Having done this, O’Brien must nextcreate a highly simplistic account of theFrench Revolution, which draws exten-sively on the views of Edmund Burke,the Eighteenth-century Irish defenderof the British Empire. While Burkeranted against the French Revolution inhis Reflections on the Revolution inFrance, his ravings sidestepped the factthat several of the key dramatis personaewere British agents with the assignmentto destroy France from within.

By the same token, O’Brien retailsthe Big Lie that the cause of the FrenchRevolution, was France’s earlier supportfor the American Revolution, and thesupposedly damaging effect this had onFrench finances.

The worst travesty stems fromO’Brien’s account of the impact of theFrench Revolution inside the UnitedStates. While exaggerating the impor-tance of the issue in the United States,he also commits a willful fraud, that fitsinto the Anglophile, “neo-conservative”agenda in the U.S. today.

In his depiction, the battle-lines aredrawn between Jefferson and his allies,on the one hand, against the Federalists,on the other—Alexander Hamiltonabove all, and by extension, GeorgeWashington. In this fight, Jefferson is,of course, pro-French, while Hamiltonis falsely portrayed not only as strategi-cally an Anglophile, but also as support-

ing “free trade.”The truth is, Hamilton was a com-

mitted anti-British protectionist, opposedto the “free trade” doctrine of AdamSmith’s Wealth of Nations. It was Hamil-ton who created the first U.S. NationalBank, to channel government credits toproductive investments in industry,agriculture, and infrastructure; hence,the term “Hamiltonian banking.”

Jefferson and the Enlightenment

It was on the issue of the NationalBank, and Hamilton’s promotion ofstate-backed infrastructural projects,technological progress, and urbaniza-tion, that the real splits occurredbetween Hamilton, on the one side, andJefferson et al., with their agrarian bias-es that led into the Southern Confedera-cy, on the other.

O’Brien is repeating the British Intel-ligence game of playing the “mercan-tilist” North against the “anti-mercan-tilist” South, in order to split the Repub-lic in two.

Where matters get most devious is on

100

The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the

French Revolution, 1785-1800by Conor Cruise O’Brien

University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 1996

367 pages, hardbound, $29.95

The British ‘Anti-Jefferson’ Agenda

follows: “It is the responsibility of therest of us to establish a framework oflaw such that an individual in pursuinghis own interest is, to quote AdamSmith again, ‘led by an invisible hand topromote an end which was no part ofhis intention. Nor is it always the worse

for the society that it was no part of it.’ ”Novak admits that in determining

his own calling, he had the advantage of“an outside pyschotherapist to help mesort things out.”

If there is one factor preventing theCatholic Church from truly pursuing its

mission as we approach the Third Mil-lennium, it is the toleration and, evenworse, the promotion, of MichaelNovak, propagandist for the moneychangers, whom Christ would drive outof the Temple.

—William F. Wertz, Jr.