Rothbard: Concluding Remarks

This will be my final post reviewing the compilation of Murray Rothbard’s essays for the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, entitled “The Irrepressible Rothbard.”  This has been both an entertaining and enlightening read; further, it has provided a walk down memory lane – the national politics of the early 1990s.

Max Lerner

I begin with Rothbard’s examination of Max Lerner and his advice, described by Lerner as "the fusion of Wilsonian idealist ends with realistic Hamiltonian means."  This advice is offered within the context of the disintegrating Soviet Union:

And what does this fusion entail?  First, "heroic alliance measures" (English translation: massive subsidy and control) "to shore up the new Russian republics"…

What does Lerner mean by “shore up”?

Here it comes: "against plunging into a 'Russia first' ethnic and anti-Semitic nationalism." …Lerner has outlined for us with great clarity the neocon version of the New World Order: an order where not only any America First trend is stamped out, but also any "Russia first" or anyones else first movement everywhere in the world, in order to eradicate all nationalisms and "anti-Semitism."

Because stamping out the culture that is inherent in the national ushers in one world government.  Well, stamping out all but one:

All nationalisms must be stamped out, it seems, but one.  For Israel must be supported to the hilt and beyond.

Norman Podhoretz

Rothbard moves to Norman Podhoretz:

He also says that the paleos are "fanatical nativists," to whom "immigration from anywhere except Western Europe (or perhaps only England)" is a great threat to "the health and integrity of American Society.

Noting that Podhoretz doesn’t get this quite right, Rothbard suggests:

Paleos, including Pat Buchanan, have no quarrel with immigration from any section of Europe, West or East…. Paleos are all committed to a Euro-American culture as a vital groundwork of the American Republic.

Rothbard apparently agrees that a proper and specific culture is necessary for liberty to thrive.

Left-libertarians

Rothbard moves on to left-libertarians, and their view “that everyone must have some sort of "equal access" to government facilities…”

Forgive the following lengthy cite, but I find it tremendously valuable for many subjects in the libertarian political debate:

But why?  All of libertarian political thought follows from the non-aggression principle: that no one, including the government, can aggress against someone else's person or property.  Since according to libertarian theory, there should be no government property since it is all derived from coercion, how does any principle whatever of government property use follow from libertarian theory?  The answer is, it doesn't.  On the question of what to do about government property, libertarians, apart from calling for privatization, are set adrift, in short, with nothing but their common sense and their attunement to the real world, of which libertarians have always been in notoriously short supply.

I have written the same when it comes to libertarian theory and the question of state borders (including that “notoriously short supply” part) – libertarian theory does not offer an answer because it cannot offer an answer.

Conclusion

You can know a man by the friends he keeps.