I am going to say something mildy blasphemous here. Rothbard was not as super-duper incredibly knowledgeable on almost everything under the sun as he is often thought to have been and as you could conclude from the apparant firmness of his stances on so many different things. On certain issues he wrote on in his daily articles (not in books and more serious stuff, those are solid) he expressed opinions stronger than he could really back with solid knowledge.
He was able to easily get away with it because he was a very good writter, always radical and absolutely outrageous. Also he churned out so much material that no one person could really keep up with it all. But if you know loads of stuff on something that he would touch on in his articles he can come off as not quite that well informed. For example I read what I could find of his 1990s articles on Bosnia and the Balkans and while what he is arguing for he is of course right, in places where he provides background information and local history he is always painting with a too broad a brush, is almost always often overly simplistic and sometimes plain wrong.
Of course… he should have spent countless more hours expanding in minute detail, about events that goes beyond adding any considerable weight to his argument. He should have been more of a historian… than a political philosopher or economist. Why waste time on economics and establishing a coherent theory of objective ethics for Liberty… when you can elaborate on minute historical points that don’t add any considerable weight to your arguments, nor in the grand scheme of things the majority of people care about, and don’t add anything worthy to the edifice of liberty? [8-)]
If you are ignorant about a topic, you should just not, if you plan to attempt to put forth an argument, publicly write about it.
Marko did not criticize that Rothbard did not “spen[d] countless more hours expanding in minute detail”. For he did not criticize that Rothbard was too brief, he criticized that Rothbard was, whatever the length, sometimes irresponsible and thereby incorrect!
Conza you are too much of a knee-jerk. Your sarcasm and eye rolling is redundant in the face of the fact that I have no less respect for Rothbard than you do. I am not even talking so much about his writtings, but about the reputation he had as the guy who basicaly knows all this great details about just about everything.
It has nothing to do with the failure to establish “minute historical points”. It has to do with putting down pen to paper to write down stuff you do not actually know about, evident from the fact that they are simply not true. And then doing it in such a flamboyant manner as if you were an authority on the subject.
Of course as I said, Rothbard can be forgiven for it easier than someone else becuase he is fun to read. It is easier to exonerate someone compromising between factuallity and style than someone compromising between factuallity and purposeful propaganda.
EDIT: I.Ryan gave a better response than I did. I should have refreshed the topic before clicking reply.
“1. If you are ignorant about a topic, you should just not, if you plan to attempt to put forth an argument, publicly write about it.”
This presumes that one can know everything there is to know about anything and possibly everything, which is not the case. If we wait for our ignorance to dissipate completely, no one would write anything. And if someone did write something on a topic, there would never be any reason to write on that topic again. Progress and forward movement in the world of ideas presumes the persistence of some degree of ignorance. Hayek is correct on this point.
The stark obvious implication… go into more detail. That’s how I interpreted it. When someone is criticizing someone for being correct, but writing too broadly on a subject.. what other conclusion do you expect me to come to?
The difference is I see absolutely no value in this thread, yet you do. Why do I see no value in it? …
If we are talking about Lew Rockwell articles or Mises Daily articles then perhaps you expect too much. These are topographical articles meant to give a laymen information on a given topic. Such is the reason why they are dispersed to a large audience. If you are looking for detail then might I suggest academic journals which can be anywhere from 30 to 50 pages long. I’d be happy to link you to an archive of all the journals the Mises institute publishes and some older ones with Hazlitt. They are in torrent form so you can download the whole archive and read to your hearts content. The archive actually includes “Left and Right” & “Libertarian Forum” which were both established by Rothbard himself so obviously he had a great deal to write about like you said beforehand.
In your response quoted above, you imply that he meant that the argument, X, was correct but that it, X, was often too broad. But, instead, he meant, I think, atleast, that the argument, X, was correct but that some of its alleged proof, Y, was often too broad and thereby sometimes incorrect.
I was not talking about detail. I do not mind Rothbard not providing detail, on the contrary. I am talking about instances where he seemingly provides background information, but of the sort that is misleading, either because it is a cartoon-like take on reality or because it is counter-factual. I am saying it would have been better if he ommited attempts at presenting background information on local realities he apparently did not know a great deal about rather than risk causing additional confusion and simply stuck to his overall (non-interventionist) message. Specifically I noticed this in his flamboyant Yugoslavia themed The Rothbard-Rockwell Report articles.
It is post-worthy to point out that he could be “irresponsible” in this sense, because it was pieces like that that resulted in him having a reputation (that I do not know how many here are aware of) of something of a know-it-all type of guy.
Now I am sure that some have already noticed what I speak of on their own and will give a nod, while some of the others - perhaps perceiving their hero as under attack - have already reacted by slapping a one star to the topic which I see as rather childish.
@Laughing Man, do link to the torrent please. I am interested in all the material I can get my hands on.
@Conza, seeing how you are the person who some weeks ago backed-up your inerpretation of the privatization in 1990s Russia with a quote by an elderly German-born Austrian economist that was counter-factual in its content, it is rather ironic that you should be raising objections here. It seems to me you are the first who could profit from the topic at hand if for no other reason than to avoid a similar scenario where you tommorow tell me something erronous about Yugoslavia and back it up with a Rothbard quote from a Triple R article.
I think I found the article (YUGOSLAVIAN BREAKUP, June 1991), and it’s 100% accurate. So I don’t know what you’re talking about, unless you can provide specific examples.
Well so far I have seen that you don’t think that Rothbard is wrong [ paraphrasing ], you just don’t seem to like his writing style which is really just a preference so why continue to discuss this? There are certainly authors who have writing styles I dislike however I don’t think we should confuse what we perceive as faulty writing style with something like intellectual irresponsibility.
I am not really interested in a polemic about Yugoslavia here, esspecialy as I suspect that you have an axe to grind seeing how your interest was raised at the mention of the word.
I thought the word “counter-factual” was strong enough. He states as fact things which are empathically not fact. That is not a matter of writting style.
For the Bosnian Muslims were once the hated Bogomil heretics, a Manichaean heresy with horrifying implications, and there is much evidence that the Muslims still practice their Bogomil rites in secret, engraving its symbols on their tombstones.
Another great article by Rothbard, but this quote, at least to my knowledge, is incorrect. The Bosnian Muslims I know (and also Montenegrin Muslims) are quite religious and devoted to Islam. But the rest of the article is spot on (though I’m no authority on the matter). A lot of the anti-Serb rhetoric during the so-called genocides in Bosnia and Kosovo were grossly exaggerated by Americans who don’t know shit about the history of the Balkans. The “liberal’s” like to involve themselves in matters they completely misunderstand.
