Never a Dull Moment

A Libertarian Look at the Sixties

By: Murray N Rothbard

Narrated by: Jim Vann

Length: 5 hrs

Publisher's summary

For Murray Rothbard, libertarianism wasn't an intellectual parlor game, nor was it a personal affectation: for him, it was a banner that was meant to be carried into battle. Ever the happy warrior, he sought to bring the radical libertarian perspective to bear on the events of the day, and it was a task he delighted in. From 1967 thru 1968, Rothbard churned out 58 columns for the Freedom Newspapers, addressing the campus revolt; the massive antiwar demonstrations; the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab powers; the Newark riots; the Vietnam War; the persecution of H. Rap Brown, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the abdication of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the rise of Richard Nixon - in those two crucial years there was, as they say, never a dull moment.

©2016 Ludwig von Mises Institute (P)2016 Ludwig von Mises Institute

The Libertarian Chomsky?

Having enjoyed The Progressive Era by Murray N. Rothbard, I've been slowly going through all things Rothbard on Audible. This audiobook is a collection of short columns from the late 60's and early 70's. During this time Rothbard seemed to have broken off with the more conservative and statist right, and found a seemingly promising new home with the more anarchist New Left. He lauded the 1968 student protests at Columbia University and railed against the Vietnam War and the draft.

Many of the pieces concern the war in Vietnam. Rothbard wanted the war to end immediately and thought already in 1969 that the US had lost the war. He was surely completely out of his depth in his analysis of the war's proceeding, even going so far as to contradict the opinions of generals. Rothbard's willingness to throw the Vietnamese under the bus to reach an ideological goal would eventually culminate in his deeply embarrassing piece The Death of a State, published in Reason magazine in 1975, where he celebrated the communist takeover in South Vietnam and Cambodia. The Death of a State is not included in this audiobook. Reminiscent of Chomsky, Rothbard seemed to justify his position by invoking "American imperialism." He got on his moral high horse and rained down thunder at those who had to deal with the actual reality on the ground.

There are other curious hot takes sprinkled into the mix. Rothbard tried to call the 1972 election and got it completely wrong. His rhetoric here was eerily similar to present day progressive political commentators, especially the way he talked of "the people" from his apparently quite lofty ivory tower. In another nugget of wisdom, Rothbard concluded that the US government didn't rule by consensus but by guns because the White House was being guarded with machine guns following the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination and the subsequent Washington, D.C. riots. In the next piece he mentioned that it's alright to defend youself with violence. Perhaps Rothbard didn't extend that right to government employees.

I ended up viewing Rothbard through the lens of Thomas Sowell's Vision of the Anointed. Rothbard was a Libertarian intellectual (by Sowell's definition someone whose work begins and ends with ideas). He was selling the libertarian vision as an abstract ideal, and would use it as a tool with which to measure reality. If a government action didn't measure up to his standard, the action would need to cease regardless of consequences. I'm now concerned whether this also colors his historical work.

Well worth listening to

Very instructive as to how the "left" and "right" have evolved. Hopefully more and more Americans will take the time to understand the little libertarian point of view.