Lew Rockwell

He has no sense of proportion, nor balance. Instead, he marks out the most extreme positions on any given subject, and tries to make them sound, horrors!, reasonable. The latest example of this extremist nonsense ... is a horrendous little piece in which he has the temerity to call for the complete privatization of, would you believe it, electrical utilities ... Did Rockwell offer any of these constructive criticisms? To ask this question is to answer it; no, he did not. Instead, he said "What we need today is full, radical, complete, uncompromised deregulation and privatization. We need competition."

Thank you, Mr. Rockwell, for your most generous and gracious remarks ... Perhaps you will be interested to learn how this book, which you will all receive through the kindness of Mr. Rockwell, came into being ... [L]ast, but certainly not least, think of Lew Rockwell and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which in a very short time has attracted 14,000 contributors, begun an extensive teaching, fellowship, and publications program, held a very successful conference on the gold standard in Washington, DC, and become integrated with Auburn University.

Another critique is provided by Lew Rockwell ... In response to my claim that libertarianism must be about more than force, Rockwell in effect parrots John Cleese: "No it mustn't." But he does a bit more: he makes an argument from authority by citing Murray Rothbard ... "Libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory. Libertarianism does not offer a way of life." That's not an argument either, but of course the thick libertarianism that Rockwell is criticizing makes no such claim ... Rockwell then warns that thick libertarianism threatens to repeat a tragic episode in the history of classical liberalism ...

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. ... added, "It was Arthur Burns, the 800-pound gorilla in the Columbia University economics department who blocked Murray's dissertation. Burns demanded that Murray re-do all his work. It was only when Burns went to Washington, D.C. and headed [the] Council of Economic Advisors that Murray's unchanged dissertation was resubmitted and quickly approved." ... Rockwell, Jr. remarked that [Rothbard] worked "in a dingy, windowless office ..., surrounded by Marxists. He never once complained, except to wonder why an engineering school couldn't make the elevator work."

Fifteen glorious years without a central government in Somalia! It was typically described as a "power vacuum," as if the absence of a taxing, regulating, coercing junta is an unnatural state of affairs, one that cannot and should not last. Well, now this "vacuum" is being filled, with an Islamic militia claiming to be in control of the capital of Mogadishu ... So here is a good rule. When a government falls, don't call it a "power vacuum." Call it a zone of liberty and be done with it. If some group claims to be the government, the proper answer should be: "Yeah, and I'm the Duke of Windsor. Get a life."

Many states have enacted higher minimum wage laws than are imposed by the federal government. The federal minimum is $5.15 per hour, whereas in Washington State it will soon be $7.16. A proposal in Madison, Wisconsin, would raise it to $7.75. "Living wage" legislation in 110 local governments imposes wages as high as $10 ... If we care about reducing unemployment and retaining the conditions for future prosperity, we had better not make the mistake of increasing [the minimum wage]. If Congress had any economic sense, it would repeal all these laws forthwith.

When Mr. Bush went to war, he put little thought into financing it, which signifies fiscal irresponsibility. Under the framers' design, he is supposed to go to Congress to ask for the money, all the money, and if Congress doesn't have it, the war can't go on ... [Keynes] wrote in the introduction to the German edition of his book that the best system for implementing his policies required a total state on the scale that Germany was then creating. That alone should tell us something. It is not a barbarous relic. It is the monetary basis of the future of civilization and freedom.

Those of us who loathe Republicans, especially Republican presidents, have some hope against hope that the Democrats will nominate a candidate who can save us from the certain doom of eternal Republican rule. Sadly, it seems that Bill Clinton, as much as we hated him at the time, was the last of a kind ... [T]he core problem ... is ideological ... Uproot the underlying anti-liberal assumptions of the Democrats, make them Jeffersonian once again, and you would have a viable party. Until then, they will be hopelessly stuck in the mire at the national level, as depressing as that is to admit.

Last month, news of an E. coli infection that originated in a bag of fresh spinach packaged by Natural Selections Foods, kicked off a nationwide frenzy. More than 180 people became sick from eating spinach, 97 of whom were hospitalized. One person died. The company in question is in total meltdown ... We are being conditioned to believe that for every problem, there is a government answer, and nothing lies outside its purview and expertise ... Well, when it comes to the choice between a totalitarian state and the possibility of some rotten spinach, I'll take the latter.

As Microsoft prepares for the new release of the new version of its browser, Google is grousing about one of Microsoft's marketing strategies. Internet Explorer IE7 will likely have a little search bar in the upper right hand corner of the browser, just as Safari and Firefox do now. With it you will be able to access a number of search engines ... No pundit can do Google's thinking, but what about a small link on Google's homepage that says: "Make Google your default search engine"–and so clicking it overrides MS's defaults? That's the way to compete peacefully.

So there's this guy named Ray Simon. He's director of the Arkansas Department of Education, and he's got a complaint about the boom in home schooling. The way he sees it, this trend is a threat to our, or at least his, way of life. "A third of our support for [government] schools comes from property taxes," Ray tells ... Time ... Time only seems to have one complaint against [homeschoolers]: "Home schooling may turn out better students, but does it create better citizens?" ... [I]n translation: do home-schooled students care more about supporting a failed government system than anything else?

Two hundred years ago, when the United States was a modest commercial republic, the president could take a walk down Pennsylvania Avenue—by himself—and talk to anyone who approached him. If he wasn't on a walk outdoors, he was most likely at home, and you could speak to him by knocking on the door of the White House ... Bonner and Wiggin teach us the lessons of empire, with ... wisdom, and irony. "A great empire," they note, "is to the world of geopolitics what a great bubble is to the world of economics. It's attractive at the outset but a catastrophe eventually. We know of no exceptions."

The more time you spend with Austrian economists or libertarian intellectuals, the more you realize that Murray Rothbard's influence has been underestimated. No, his name is not a household word but his influence is felt in another way: those who read him experience what amounts to the intellectual challenge of their lives ... As Raimondo concludes: "Whether it is exercised upon the minds of this generation, or the next, the liberating force of Rothbard's ideas is gathering momentum. He built a monument to liberty, a mighty edifice that towers over the horizon and cannot be ignored—... an inspiration to the revolutionaries of tomorrow."

The Christmas season makes us unusually conscious that we live in times of relentless innovation. It's true that we can be overwhelmed by it all, but would we have it any other way? Unfortunately, some would. They oppose the free-market process that makes improvement possible ... People have been led to believe that shutting down entrepreneurship and the marketplace will improve the world ... [T]hat way lies barbarism ... Do your part to reverse the damage they have already caused, by celebrating entrepreneurs and the system of economics that enables their dreams to become our social reality.

Ron Paul has always believed that foreign and domestic policy should be conducted according to the same principles. Government should be restrained from intervening at home or abroad because its actions fail to achieve their stated aims, create more harm than good, shrink the liberty of the people, and violate rights ... May this treatise stand as an example of how to fight for what is right even when everyone else is silent ... May public and intellectual opinion someday rise to its level of intellectual sophistication and moral valor.

Americans can only be mystified by the protests that rocked France and led to a cave in by the government. A small economic reform that would have meant the start of much-need liberalization has been repealed. The change in labor law would have permitted employers to fire workers, age 25 years or younger, in the first two years of employment ... In short, France is in the bind that Eastern Europe and Russia found themselves in in the late 1980s. If young workers were thinking like true progressives, they would topple the statues of Rousseau and Robespierre and put up some to Turgot and Bastiat.

How sad to hear the news that Harry Browne (born June 17, 1933), author and long-time spokesman for libertarian causes, died March 1, 2006. He was a man of great principle who courageously and consistently stood up for liberty even when his position clashed with mainstream political culture and public opinion ... Harry Browne emerges as a giant. He was talented, dignified, sincere, and dedicated, and he showed genuine courage in the face of fantastic pressure to get him to cave in. All lovers of liberty should be grateful for him, his life, his writings, and his legacy. We will all miss you terribly, Harry.

If you want to know where American supporters of free markets learned economics, take a look at Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. A brilliant and pithy work first published in 1946, at a time of rampant statism at home and abroad, it taught millions the bad consequences of putting government in charge of economic life ... The great voice of Henry Hazlitt ... is now stilled. But he will not be forgotten. In a time dominated by prevaricators and planners, and a nation threatened once again by statism, Hazlitt's written legacy will continue to inspire writers and scholars.

The US Population just passed an important demographic marker this year. It finally reached 300 million. The reactions to the news were predictable. Many on the Left celebrated the growing diversity of the population, while many on the Right came to the defense of rising population ... This country and this world need a voice that addresses the questions that others ... fail to ask ... Academia is in desperate need of thinkers who understand what liberty means. The human population needs liberty in order to continue to grow in numbers and well-being, and liberty needs champions to make it so.

The lessons of Iraq pose challenges for our understanding of the state. Consider the gap that separates the Bush administration's original theory with the reality on the ground today. The idea was that the Iraqi government would be "decapitated," and that once Saddam and his few henchmen were crushed, the country could breathe free and get on with the business of building a great society ... So long as the US insists that Iraq be a single nation under one government, it will inspire chaos and killing. Bush was wrong, ... not in overthrowing the state but in hoping to create and control a new one.

Washington, DC, in the 1980s was called the "murder capital of the world," but that designation now belongs to Baghdad, where the number of people killed since the end of the war is approaching 42,000 ... War promotes the view that only suckers fall for moral precepts, that human life is neither here nor there, that private property is nothing more than what you can grab and keep. This is what makes the claim so absurd that the US invaded in order to bring about freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. The war taught the advantages of all the opposite values.

The political and ideological forces that gave rise to Bolshevism at the turn of the century are similarly inspiring the movement that looted and burned last month in Genoa, and, before that in Quebec City, Davos, and Seattle. The experience of both causes shows how violent fanatics can gain a political stronghold, and influence the course of history, provided they choose their issues carefully ... The New Bolsheviks, already entrenched in academia and NGOs, are a growing force in world politics. Civilization is fragile, and if the protestors get their way, we will find out just how fragile.

Events such as the massacre at Virginia Tech set off national discussions on the problem of evil. There are two aspects to this: moral and social. Another way to put it is: how does such an impulse come to reside in a particular person and unleash itself in ghastly ways? ... We do not have to side with either liberals or conservatives. We only need to say that whatever is the intrinsic nature of man, the market will find the best possible means to deal with it, and whatever the outcome of that market process, it cannot be made better by involving the state.

It's political season again, and what a show it is. Politicians specialize in this. They affect a know-it-all posture and carry a bag of solutions to every problem, natural, human, and divine. They work to perfect the ability to fob off their solutions as sound reasoning even when they are snake oil or sheer poison. ... If Alabama really wants to convert itself into a haven for prosperity and worker well-being, it would — as a start — repeal any and all wage legislation, and nullify all federal legislation when it is proposed. To support the minimum wage is to wear your economic ignorance on your sleeve.

Murray Rothbard, in his life, was known as Mr. Libertarian. We can make a solid case that the title now belongs to Walter Block, a student of Rothbard's whose own vita is as thick as a big-city phonebook, and as diverse as Wikipedia. ... There is one final trait of Block that might be overlooked: his humility. In a world of academics with inflated egos and selfish ambitions, Block displays constant sincerity, even a kind of naïveté in believing that the truth demonstrated with patience and logic should be enough to carry the day.

We've just completed another successful Mises University, the summer instructional seminar for students hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Interest in Austrian economics continues to grow: we could accept fewer than one-third of qualified applicants ...
Let me conclude with a couple more titles, neither of which requires prior knowledge, and which people interested in American history may find especially valuable ... Don’t forget, too, the Rothbard archive at LRC. A tremendous intellectual experience awaits you. Enjoy!

If you haven't seen this, it is really an outrage. It is a plan for dealing with the Iraqi fiasco that involves gradual withdrawal of troops from Iraq only to station the troops in Turkey, Bahrain, Egypt, and Oman, followed by new foreign aid to Iraq (at "substantial cost to the American taxpayers") ... To be confident in the miracle of human liberty means having the courage to call for the government to ... go away ... [T]he government's fear of public opinion ... is the best restraint on power. Is it asking too much that the LP be part of the radical opposition, rather than aspire to be part of the inner circle of power?

Sometime in the 1960s, when the left was crushing the right in public opinion polls and politics, the right came to believe that it needed to do a better sales job. But there are good and bad ways to sell ideas. In the good way, you can work to make your ideological product more appealing to various market segments, from academics to regular voters ... Only those who demand no privileges from government, and who desire only that society be left alone, can make the claim to impartiality. I'll end with this strong reminder from Mises about the difference between liberalism and antiliberalism ...

Maybe the authors of the Federalist Papers were liars. Maybe they were just engaged in political propaganda in order to shove through the Constitution. In secret, perhaps, they were plotting a Leviathan state with a president who can do all that the Bush administration claims he can, which pretty much amounts to whatever Bush wants to do ... the advocates of executive rule ... are saying things that if they had been said to that founding generation ... would have prevented the Constitution from ever being passed. ... let's live up to the Constitution, and stop the dissembling, especially in the name of "conservatism."

It's not enough that the Transportation Security Administration wastes hours upon endless hours of time. It's not enough that they confiscate our Chapstick and toothpaste and claim that it is for our own protection. It's not enough that we must fork over our ID at five different checkpoints before boarding a plane ... This is how it must be because the bureaucracy exists and thrives outside of society and at society's expense. If you don't like it, and if you believe that the most suspicious persons of all work for the TSA, you had better furrow your brow in private. A public display might result in detention.

With the Democrats taking charge in Congress, we will surely hear talk of mandatory national health insurance, more spending for health care for the poor and elderly, and more taxes on individuals and business to pay for the whole scheme. This is admi-ttedly not that different from ... Republicans ... We need to rethink the meaning of medical insurance, which, if it exists at all, should only apply to catastrophic cases ... The path for progress here, as in every aspect of economics and civilization, lies with privatization, the elimination of restrictions and welfare, and freedom itself.

Since Labor Day, the Wall Street Journal has been running an online poll asking readers for their predictions of a Clinton-Gore "October Surprise," that is, a trumped-up event requiring executive intervention to make the president and his party look good, and thus boost Gore's election chances ... America was born in love of liberty and opposition to a standing army. The two go together ... But if Clinton does pull a military stunt to put Gore in office, the remnants of militant internationalism within the Republican party won't survive.

People tell me that Saddam Hussein is a very bad man. Probably he is. Ok, really he is. He is egregiously immoral and ghastly. Should he be put on trial? Can such a trial be fair? This is where it gets complicated. If all heads of state who commit violent acts were to be tried as criminals, we would live in a very different world. It would be a world without governments as we know them ... Many people think Bush is the worse president ever ... And let's not be naïve: many, many people in the US and around the world would love to see him in the dock. As it is, we will have to settle for history as the judge.

There is something morally creepy about the way the White House responded to the news ... that the 2,500th American soldier has died in Iraq. "It's a number," said White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. Yes, and so is 5,000, and 10,000, and 15,000. Is there no amount of American bloodshed that would trigger a reassessment of the ideological fantasy ...? ... Yes, we've all heard the clichés about the greater good. I've never met a serial killer, a sniper, or the leader of a suicide cult. But I'm willing to bet that they too believe that they served a greater good.

More than three years ago, George Bush unleashed the dogs of war on Iraq, perhaps hoping that he would take his place among the "great" war presidents. It's strange how these guys imagine themselves written about in history books in the manner of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR ... The state in all its forms is the enemy, and both parties are part of the problem. You think it can't happen? That there are too many interest groups dedicated to the permanence of power and planning? The election of 2006 shows that short-term economic interests alone do not always dictate the political future.

Thinking back to the scandals of the Clinton years, when all of America was supposedly shocked and horrified at the thought of the president and the intern, the 1990s seem to be the Age of Innocence. The Oval Office was relatively unstained as compared with the torture-sex scenes from a Bush administration-run prison in Iraq ... The Bush administration still has time to apologize to the world. The US could seek friendship and reconciliation and trade, and genuinely mean it and stick to it. We could become again the country that the founders wanted us to be. Now that's an ideal.

Ludwig von Mises said that the great accomplishment of economists was to draw attention to the extreme limits on the power of government. His point was not merely that government should be limited, but that it is limited by the very structure of reality. It cannot make all people rich by its own initiative ... We must regain our confidence in our capacity for self-governance ... Even if the public sector cannot and will not prepare for a future of liberty, we can. Let us look for and work toward the triumph of liberty unencumbered by leviathan and its wars.

As the war drags on and the state expands its reach in nearly every area of life, I'm detecting another moment of despair sweeping through libertarian ranks. Why aren't all our efforts making a difference? What are we doing wrong? Are we just wasting our time with our publications, conferences, ... recruitments of thousands of young people? ... The angel Clarence says in It's a Wonderful Life that "Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?" It's something for anyone who advocates liberty to think about before he bails out.

Imagine that you are blindfolded and told that the food you are about to eat is ice cream. It turns out to be chicken liver. Or imagine that you think you are diving into warm water but instead it turns out to be near-freezing. This is pretty much what it is like to be governed by Republicans ... Republicans ... live intellectually in a world long past, a world of warring states and societies made up of fixed classes that fought over ever-dwindling resources, a world unleavened by enterprise and individual initiative. They ... gladly fuel the basest of human instincts: nationalism, jingoism, and hate.

In 1957, a businessman and radio personality named Robert LeFevre (1911-1986) founded a very special institution in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In his private studies, he had discovered the libertarian intellectual tradition. He noted the dire need for an institution that would educate people from all walks of life in the philosophy of freedom ... Though he was concerned with political topics, his hope was a world without politics, which to him meant a world without the coercion inherent in all collective action. It was his own creative interpretation of the message of his intellectual mentors, among which he counted Ludwig von Mises.

MOYERS: Welcome to NOW. If you're thinking about money, bills, the job and your pension and not just the war you belong to the largest party in America, the party of angst ... With me now to talk about all this is Lew Rockwell. Mr. Rockwell is a libertarian free market conservative and President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. That's the organization he founded to advocate and promote the philosophy that the solution to our fiscal and social woes begins with smaller government. Mr. Rockwell has been a congressional aid, a book editor, a magazine editor, and is now the editor of his own web site.

Johnsson: Do you consider yourself a libertarian?
Rockwell: Most certainly. What are the choices? Conservative is obviously out, even though the media describe us this way. The term's heritage dates to the Tory party in Britain, the very mercantilist-landowners who resisted change ...
Johnsson: Do you agree with Ron Paul that we should go by the Constitution and that's it?
Rockwell: ... [T]he one that really deserves more attention is the Declaration of Independence. Now here is an inspiring document that shows us where we should go in the future!

KUSKOWSKI: Your site, LewRockwell.com, is greatly popular ... What has your experience shown you to be the most important for a growing movement ...?
ROCKWELL: The movement is growing beyond belief, in all sectors of society and in nearly all countries, so far as I can tell ... Libertarians have always believed that getting the ideas out there is the most important step we can take ...
ROCKWELL: The biggest strategic error is collaborating with the powers that be, as if the people in charge ... can be convinced by libertarian arguments ... We need to come to terms with the fact that we are ultimately a revolutionary movement.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president and founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama and editor of LewRockwell.com. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was a major economist and thinker whose historic treatises include Human Action and Socialism. The mission of the Ludwig von Mises Institute is "to restore a high place for theory in the social sciences, encourage a revival of critical historical research, draw attention to neglected traditions in Western philosophy, and promote the free and enterprising commonwealth."