Carl Wells Books

Last week we began listing ways in which rich people may be able to help defend civilization. All of us can do our part, but rich people, precisely because they are rich, may be able to do a few things the rest of us cannot. For a bit more on the topic, consider reading my book Christianity for Rich People. I’ll sell you a copy cheap. Here are a few more things rich people could consider doing, if the suggestions seem useful to them.

5/This is a not-do rather than a do. Give zero money to politicians. Sure, if you can find a politician with the principles and thoughtfulness and ideas of Ron Paul, go ahead and contribute a small amount of money to that person. There are few such. For the most part, money given to politicians is a waste, or even worse than a waste.

6/Cultivate humility. Any kind of success encourages us to think more highly of ourselves than we really should. You became rich. Your automatic, instinctive feeling will be that it happened because you are smarter than other people. This is true–but only true in part. You are smarter at figuring out how to make money. That is a gift from God. It doesn’t mean you are smarter about everything in life. Think of some of the pathetic billionaire creeps who are trying to end civilization; we all know their names. They were smart at learning how to make money. They came up with an idea that was useful. It doesn’t mean they have even the faintest clue as to what they should be doing with their money. “And what do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7) You were given the gift of being able to be very productive and earn a lot of money. Beware ‘”the deceitfulness of riches”‘ (Matthew 13:22; Mark 4:19)). Riches can trick you into believing you are better and smarter than other people on every topic. It is simply not true. Humility is one of the key virtues. It will be your friend, if you cultivate it.

7/Consider hiring one person to work at cleaning up and trimming in your home town or home county. One person’s wages, one pickup truck, a few tools and supplies–donated by you as a gift to your community or county. Why? Why not? Grace was given to you to be able to become rich. Hopefully you were given grace even to become a Christian. Now you can display grace as you give this gift to your community. Don’t do this in order to get publicity for yourself; just do it if you think it is wise to do. People gradually will find out what you are doing, and it will make them think. You might even be able to turn this into a long-term money maker. As your worker drives around the county, doing the work you hire him to do, he might see property listed for sale that he thinks you might be interested in purchasing and reselling. He can write down the location of a promising property listed for sale, and tell you about it. It may be difficult to find someone willing actually to work, but developing a good worker would be part of the mission. It might take time. Talk to pastors until you find a young Christian man who might benefit from this job. If he works out, fine. If not, hire someone else. We need to think about our home community, our home people, first of all. Cultivate your home garden.

8/Hopefully you are tithing (see point #4). Now consider giving away another significant percentage of your money. If you are living comfortably but simply (see point #3), you have lots of extra money. By all means use some of it for other business ventures which seem to have potential. But also consider using some of it for charitable spending beyond a tithe. Begin relatively small, and move up your percentage of charitable giving year by year as you learn what giving is wise and what is foolish.

9/You may be able to come up with an idea for jobs for people with poor prospects. People who are not quite sure if they really want to work, but who might enjoy having a few extra bucks in their hands for doing menial work for a little while–or for longer. This suggestion is a long shot, admittedly. And you may have to pay less than the minimum wage–if you understand the battle this may cause with the civil authorities, and are willing to fight that battle. I am not good at coming up with ideas, but here’s one: hire people to pick up trash at $5.00 an hour. The principle is gleaning; the principle is borrowed from the Bible.

10/Consider sponsoring a monthly financial award to people who in some way promote the protection and advancement of civilization. The amount given need not be enormous. A gift of $5,000.00 is not huge, but is also considerably better than a poke in the eye with a hot stick, at least for most of us. Also, the public recognition of a job well done will mean a lot to the people who receive the award. A word of encouragement (not forgetting the $5,000.00) comes in handy for all of us. There are lots of people fighting a good fight to preserve civilization. They get a tiny little bit of encouragement, but not a lot most of the time. Twelve monthly awards of $5,000.00 each time, with a banquet at the end of the year honoring all twelve, would be relatively inexpensive ($100,000.00 total?), but would generate considerable interest in the freedom loving world. Even Main Sleaze Media might have to report on the twelve monthly winners. I can promise you that there are a lot more than twelve people a year who are deserving of this award. Of course you can consult lots of other people for names of potential winners. Also, a yearly posthumous award could be given to deceased friends of civilization, with the money going to their heirs.

11/Truth is our very great friend. “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.” (Russian proverb) Also: ‘”you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”‘ (John 8:32). Jesus Christ claimed our allegiance because He was ‘”the way, and the truth, and the life”‘ (John 14:6). Truth is one of our most precious resources. But we all know that it tends to be in short supply. So my suggestion here is that you consider sponsoring intellectual projects that bring forth some truth that does not get much publicity. There are scholars out there who would be glad to do the research and the writing, if they had partial financial support. I’ll give three examples of topics which are deserving of book-length treatment. 1/How did medical expenses and medical insurance get so high? (Hint: possibly because of government intervention in the market.) 2/How did the Fire-Eaters entice the South into a foolish war? The South clearly had a right to secede, but their manner of leaving was foolish and cost them a lost war and many deaths, and ended the republic for all time. 3/Did the Articles of Confederation really deserve to be trashed by the people at the Constitutional Convention? Perhaps the Articles were doing fine, and should have been left alone or only gently refined. There may be useful books already on all these topics. Good. But we can also use new scholarship and new books, because these topics don’t get a lot of consideration. The three examples are examples only. There are dozens of worthwhile projects crying out for a word of truth. You, as a rich person, have the leverage to support the advancement of truth. You might even be able to recover part of your investment. The book which the scholar brings forth might sell enough copies to partially reimburse the money you advanced.

Whatever you do, don’t find scholars through some formal application. Scout around among some of today’s leading thinkers. Some of them eventually will talk to you, when they see that you really want to help advance truth in the world with your financial support. You will find the thinkers you need, through the grapevine. If you support two good projects a year, and live another twenty years, that adds up to forty words of truth. One word of truth outweighs the whole world. Imagine the benefit to all of us of forty words of truth added to us. Truth will help us defeat evil.

Well, that concludes my two-part series on what rich people can do to help. The Christian pastor and thinker James Henley Thornwell (b. 1812-d. 1862) envisioned a world in which every Christian did something to advance the kingdom of God. “The rich would bring their wealth, the wise their learning, the great their power, the poor their prayers; all would bring something to testify their zeal for God and their sympathy for man.” (Collected Writings, Volume 2, p. 440)

Well said, Dr. Thornwell.

A few years ago a rich Christian family donated a large fortune to a certain school in a university. The donation was so large that the school was named after the family. So it became the [Censored] School of {Censored]. (Names are redacted to protect the guilty.)

The sad fact was, the university to which the family donated money was a hardcore humanist organization. The university’s very existence is a stab wound to Christian civilization. Yet this family, professing Christians, gave a huge amount of money to the enemies of us all, and especially enemies of their own Christian faith.

Why did they do this? Well, they could be professing Christians only, but not really regenerated and converted. But assume they really were Christians. Then why? Perhaps it happened partly because the ability to think logically is so small in so many of us, including in so many Christians. Were there no Christian brothers alongside them to warn that what they were doing was a bad idea? Well, it is difficult to speak truth to power. Rich people have power. You gonna try to counsel such people in your own church, to encourage them not to give their money away so foolishly? What happens if they are angered and as a result leave your church? No more large donations in the collection plate. So the rich Christian family was financially rich, but intellectually poverty-stricken, and they had no one to help them think through what they were doing. Then too, we all like public recognition. The family name on a well-known university school forever, is a lot of recognition. Such recognition is difficult to resist. Of course such giving is a reminder of Matthew 6:1-3. Like the hypocrites, the [Censored] family were giving alms, sounding a trumpet so that everyone knew what they were doing. As Scripture says, such people have no reward with God, but rather “have their reward in full” when they get the public recognition.

The [Censored] family giving away a fortune to the [Censored] School of [Censored] was a sad episode in Christian history. Perhaps one appropriate word to the whole episode is: yuck.

This whole episode causes me to ask: what can rich people do to help build up civilization? Can they do anything? Is there anything they can do, that you and I can’t do? Maybe they are as helpless as the rest of us. (Of course we are not really helpless; one person can accomplish a huge amount of good. Ask Paul, ask Jeremiah, ask Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.)

I have thought about this off and on for some years, and I am optimistic that wealthy people really can help build up civilization. Their wealth gives them certain advantages. They can throw away their advantages, as did the [Censored] family, but they need not throw away such advantages. So here are a few suggestions as to how rich people can help build civilization. These are suggestions only. Do what you want with your own. I don’t want to force you to do things with your money, that you don’t want to do. I want to leave other people alone, even the [Censored] family. I reserve the right to think that they are childish idiots, but I fully grant them the right to do what they want with their own.

Assume you are wealthy and you want to build up civilization rather than tear it down. Now what?

1/Consider becoming a Christian. Becoming a Christian is no guarantee that you will be able to think clearly afterwards–witness the [Censored] family–but I think Christianity is the only solid intellectual foundation on which to rest your thinking over the long haul. I am not saying that non-Christians can not contribute good ideas. I could spend all day listing non-Christians who have contributed greatly to defending civilization. Here are a few, in alphabetical order: Theodore Dalrymple, Paul Gottfried, Ludwig von Mises, Justin Raimondo, Murray Rothbard, Thomas Sowell.

I am simply saying that Christ is the solid rock which can never be washed away (Matthew 7:24-27), and that emphatically includes having a sound foundation for how you think. Don’t settle for less.

2/Keep producing wealth! You have been given a gift from God–a gift to be much more economically productive than most of us are. That gift was given to you to be used. It has proven helpful to you, in allowing you to become rich, but it is also helpful to other people. What you do helps other people have jobs that allow them to earn a living. This is not a small thing. Keep on getting more rich, and get even better at it. Of course it should go without saying that you need to play the game within the rules God sets down in the Bible. A biblical ethic will help you consider what you should do in your business dealings. God doesn’t approve of shortcuts and dishonesty, whether you are rich or poor.

3/Enjoy your wealth, but live simply. There is no need to spend all or most of your money on conspicuous consumption. Remember, you are trying to defend civilization and build it up. You have bigger fish to fry than living in a mansion and driving six expensive cars.

4/If you have become a Christian, don’t forget to tithe to the church. The tithe is central to Bible-believing Christianity. (Malachi 3:7-12; Matthew 23:23) We have tried to pretend otherwise–American Christians give 2.5% as opposed to the biblical 10% (see emptytomb.org)–but we are lying to ourselves. As a result we have devastated the church and our nation. Don’t fall into that trap.

A word of humongous warning: how you give your tithe is going to be challenging and cost you some thought and prayer. You are rich, so the tithe on your increase may come to a lot of money. So if you are earning $1,000,000.00 a year (simply as an example), a tithe would be $100,000.00. I earn peanuts (well, peanut shells, at least), so my tithe doesn’t amount to a hill of beans (peanut shells). Your tithe is qualitatively different. I don’t know any churches I would trust with $100,000.00 of my dollars in one calendar year. After much prayer and after consultation with mature Christians, you may decide that you cannot in good conscience give $100,000.00 in one year to one church. You are going to have to think this through, and a perfect solution probably won’t arise quickly, or ever. Pray often for guidance from God.

Well, that is a start of my unasked for advice to rich people. But I have quite a bit more to say, so I will wrap this up with a part II next week, Lord willing.

Murray Rothbard was an American libertarian/anarchist economist and thinker. He was born March 2, 1926, and died January 7, 1995, just short of his 69th birthday. He is revered by many libertarians as one of the great geniuses of our era.

Rothbard was born into a Jewish family, but in his mature years he considered himself a ‘”mixture of an agnostic and a Reform Jew.”‘ (Wikipedia) His marriage was to a woman who self-identified as Christian, and they had a loving relationship; there were no children. Clearly she was a strong emotional support to him, permitting him to pursue his deep reading and prolific writing from a position of peace of mind. He called her “the indispensable framework” (dedication to one of his books).

Rothbard is most famous as an economist, with Man, Economy, and State being his magnum opus. Also highly regarded is his America’s Great Depression (first published in 1963). I read the latter book many decades ago, and it made a good impression on me. It is accessible to non-economists (such as moi), but those with an economist’s mind will probably consider themselves as having found the high clover. We have been fed wrongheaded notions about the causes of the Great Depression, and Rothbard’s book is a very strong part of the cure.

However, Rothbard’s interests were far-ranging, and included a lot more than economics. Recently I read his The Betrayal of the American Right. The book has a curious history. Most of the original manuscript was written in 1971. He revised his text in 1973. By 1991 he still had not published the book, and he gave it a further revision in that year. But still no publication. So did the durned thing ever appear? Yes, but only in 2007, long after Rothbard’s death in 1995. Even then, it seems that there is final chapter that remains lost to this day (Introduction by Thomas Woods, p. xviii).

The title tells us a lot about what the book covers. Rothbard’s thesis is that the American Right was betrayed, largely by those who should have been its defenders but weren’t. The Old Right was non-interventionist, and rather strongly free market oriented. Here are a few sentences from the early part of Murray Rothbard’s text. They give us a notion of the kind of thinking that moves him:

“But the thesis of the book is that those who wonder what happened to the good old cause must not stop with the neocons: that the rot started long before with the founding in 1955 of National Review [magazine title italicized] and its rapid rise to dominance of the conservative movement.” (p. xxi)

The rot began long before the neoconservatives brought their brand of snake oil into the conservative movement. Rothbard gives the details of how it happened, and when. Of central interest is how much of conservatism has become very strongly in favor of many foreign interventions. Rothbard shows that there have always been at least a few men on the Right with a more humble and wise foreign policy.

One need not find himself agreeing with every judgment Rothbard makes, in order to find great value in this work. For one thing, it could be a superb bibliographic source for those looking for further reading. He names writers who deserve not to be forgotten, among them Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garrett, H. L. Mencken, Frank Chodorov, and a very large handful of others. Anybody, Christian or non-Christian, who has sympathy with the freedom movement, and who despises totalitarianism soft or hard, will find plenty of rabbit trails to follow when reading this book. Our history is lost only if we don’t follow those rabbit trails! If Murray Rothbard can read extensively, why can’t we?

In its value to those who love historical truth, The Betrayal reminds me of another recently published book. I’m thinking of Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism, by still living American treasure Bill Kauffman (2008). I reviewed it on this blog on Dec. 1, 2016.

There is a fascinating quote from Wikipedia’s long article on Murray Rothbard. Here it is:

‘Rothbard emphasizes that all punishment must be proportional, stating that “the criminal, or invader, loses his rights to the extent that he deprived another man of his”. Applying his retributive theory, Rothbard states that a thief “must pay double the extent of theft”. Rothbard gives the example of a thief who stole $15,000 and says he not only would have to return the stolen money, but also provide the victim an additional $15,000, money to which the thief has forfeited his right. The thief would be “put in a [temporary–Wikipedia] state of enslavement to his victim” if he is unable to pay him immediately.’

Agnostic or Reform Jew? The passage above indicates a man with a biblical sense of justice. Exodus 22:1-9 prescribes various rates of repayment for theft (including double in some cases, vv. 7 and 9), and other places in Scripture back up the need for restitution payments to be made. We can guess that Rothbard had at least read the Scriptures, and that they had influenced his thinking to a large extent, consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously.

The same Wikipedia passage went on to say that in some cases Rothbard approved of both physical punishment and torture for criminals. The former is biblical, the latter is not. Rothbard might have been well advised to pursue a fully Christian ethic, but as an agnostic that was not open to him. We Christians seldom pursue a fully Christian ethic, so it is no great shock that the agnostic Rothbard also failed to do so.

Rothbard’s influence continues to grow. He is probably much more famous now than when he died. His writings, right or wrong, and his life as a whole, have been given a just assessment by God. May Murray Rothbard rest in peace by the blood of Jesus Christ, as I hope for the same for myself. We honor the good that he gave us; we can throw out what is not good. I hope God will do the same.

The Betrayal of the American Right, a valuable book of 231 pages, can be obtained on the Internet. It is not exactly inexpensive. I paid $11.85 for my hardcover copy about three months ago. I checked today, and Amazon, Alibris, and eBay offer copies in the $18.00 range, but AbeBooks has by far the best two prices, one at $11.68 (total) and one about three dollars higher.

If we’re still breathing, we’ve heard at least a little bit about Billy the Kid. He was a western gunfighter (or something like that) who killed a lot of men and died very young. In fact he died at age 21, and legend has credited him with 21 killings–one for every year of his life.

Legend, as legend sometimes will, has stretched the truth on the number of men Billy killed. The more realistic total was four certain killings, with another half dozen or so in which he was very likely involved if not the sole operator. Still, four to ten killings is a number not to be sneezed at, and Billy will not lose his legendary status just because some early biographers got carried away in adding up the number of dead bodies.

Recently I read Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life by Robert M. Utley. Mr. Utley is a well-known and respected historian, and having read Billy the Kid it is easy to see why. His book is very well written. He has done tons of research. His judgments are restrained and thoughtful and fair. The book was published in 1989, but has a fresh feel and is likely forever to remain a key resource for anyone wanting to learn about Billy the Kid.

Mr. Utley is still living at age 89. I am happy to report that he has a strong connection to Indiana. He went to high school in the northwest part of our state, took a bachelor’s degree at Purdue University, and a master’s degree at Indiana University. He has written sixteen books.

William Bonney’s origins are “shrouded in mystery” (p. 1). We are not sure of his date of birth, although we are pretty confident of the year (1859), and the location (somewhere in a Manhattan or Brooklyn Irish slum). But he gained his fame in the West, chiefly in New Mexico.

Billy the Kid was a young man of the frontier–and the frontier was a rough place. One of the great benefits of Mr. Utley’s book is that we get a feel for a different time and place in our country’s history.

A key to Billy’s life was his involvement in the Lincoln County War of 1878. It was a “mixed up and splendid” affair, as Huck or Jim might say. If I were to reread the book seven times and supplement that with six or eight other books on the topic, I doubt if I would understand it much better than I do now. Suffice it to say that both groups claimed to be on the side of the angels, while claiming that the other group was on the side of Satan. Reading Mr. Utley’s account, it is pretty clear at least that neither group was strictly angelic. Some of the men Billy killed were killed in that “war.”

Billy only gradually came to become a major figure in public consciousness. While he was always brave, he was young and at first didn’t stand out from his companions. Mr. Utley traces his rise from a relative unknown, to his final place of prominence.

Billy ‘”spoke Spanish like a native,” added [Dr.] Hoyt, “and although only a beardless boy, was nevertheless a natural leader of men.”‘ (p. 109) He was very popular with the fair sex. You will be shocked, shocked to learn that his was not a life of constant uncompromised chastity. It is possible that he fathered two daughters out of wedlock, but if so they died in a fire at a very early age.

‘”The Kid” well described Billy. Not until his final months did anyone know him as Billy the Kid. Whatever his name or alias at the moment, people always called him Kid. He was not only younger than most but also looked it. With a boyish face, medium stature, and slight build, he prompted the label as soon as he started running with men.

‘Yet the label could be misleading. He boasted strength and endurance, lithe and swift movement, and a suddenness of physical response that revealed an unusual quickness of mind. His intellect rested on a solid grammar-school education that made him literate though not literary, and it drew on a native intelligence that in resourcefulness, ingenuity, cunning, and mental agility and acuity lifted him above his peers.’ (p. 202)

He had a bright exterior, but that could be deceptive.

‘With a disarming smile, he could pursue devious or deadly aims with a fixity of purpose that one resisted at peril. “When he was rough,” observed John Meadows, “he was as rough as men ever get to be . . . too awful rough at times, but everything in the country was rough about then.” Gradually many in his wide circle of admirers came to recognize the anomaly and to fear the inner Kid as much as they prized the outer Kid.” (p. 203; ellipsis is Mr. Utley’s)

He excelled in gunmanship, and practiced constantly with both six-shooter and rifle. (p. 203)

“Except in that last fatal encounter with Pat Garrett, the Kid took other men’s lives with instinctive suddenness and untroubled abandon. This casual attitude toward violent death, however, was not unique. The Kid reflected the values of the frontier society that nurtured him. Nearly everyone carried firearms, and few shrank from using them when they thought someone needed killing. In a milieu full of suffering and death, the extinction of a life aroused only fleeting compassion or sorrow. Usually the killer went free, uncondemned and often excused by his peers, rarely brought to trial, even more rarely convicted by the crude system of frontier justice.” (p. 204)

Not surprisingly, one constant aspect of Billy’s character was that he was “adept at self-justification” (pp. 179, 203). That showed up well in his final successful escape just prior to his being hunted down and killed by Pat Garrett. In that dramatic escape, Billy was under the armed guard of two men who were escorting him to the proper authorities. One had been a man who had made it a goal to torment him. The other, however, was a man who had been very kind to him. Billy told the dead body of the latter, ‘”I’m sorry I had to kill you,” he said, “but I couldn’t help it.”‘ (p. 182) He couldn’t help it because his own escape was more important to him than the innocent life of another man. For most of us, it is never our own fault when something goes wrong. Billy had his full human share of that attitude.

Mr. Utley believes Billy the Kid leaves a powerful and disturbing legacy.

“The twin specters of corruption and violence remained embedded in American culture, periodically to surface separately or in tandem. Whether originating in the frontier experience or in some dark stain in the American character, they continue to find ambiguous expression in the legend of the youth who lived both. More than a century after his death, Billy the Kid still rides boldly across America’s mental landscape, symbolizing an enduring national ambivalence toward corruption and violence.” (p. 207)

Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life is an informative and thought-provoking book. The author has given us careful research and careful evaluations of source materials. He never throws out the baby with the bathwater. He understands that at times the bathwater can be pretty grimy, but that there can still be a valuable baby in there somewhere. He also has given us lots to think about, in terms of how we should make moral judgments on all this. Thank you, Mr. Utley, for a lovely book.

I’m glad to report that Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life is readily available on the Internet at a reasonable price. It can be found at both Amazon and Alibris, but as usual (if not always) the best price is at AbeBooks. Today I found a dozen or so copies available for $3.79 through $3.99 (total cost including shipping).