NOTES

 

1. Lawrence R. Brown, The Might of the West (Washington, D.C.: Joseph J. Binns, 1963), p. 307. To this day, apologists of the Orthodox Church can be found who will whine and fume over the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, citing it as another of the enormities of Rome. Forgetfulness is among the most comforting of historical failings.

2. I am taking my view of the West as distinct from Classical and Levantine civilization from Brown's brilliant and systematic treatment — sociological and historical — of the nature of civilization and of Western civilization in particular. His view of the Church, however, differs substantively from my own.

3. "Gold and Economic Freedom," The Objectivist, July 1966, reprinted in Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: New American Library, 1966), pp. 89-95. I particularly like his observation in another essay in the same book ("The Assault on Integrity," pp. 112-16) that "there is nothing to guarantee the superior judgment, knowledge, and integrity of an inspector or a bureaucrat — and the deadly consequences of entrusting him with arbitrary power are obvious."