I’ve always favored liberty, but never knew how to articulate it: what my views were, my philosophy etc. One day my dad told me that the best book he had ever read was an essay by John Stuart Mill called “On Liberty.” So, he bought it for me and I read it. That essay hooked me into politics and liberty: the essay was such an influence that when I was in high school, I would title my essays “On (Insert Subject)” All of them sounded like some educated thesis based pamphlet handed out in the streets in the nineteenth century. To me, they all sounded pretty BA.
The one thing that I couldn’t get was how people divided themselves. Liberals, to me, seemed to seek liberty for social matters but heavy regulators on the economy; Conservatives, to me, seemed to seek a liberated market and a regulated social sphere. This made NO sense to me at all. I thought “One can’t come without the other.” So I decided then that I must be all regulation or all freedom. I chose the latter.
I heard argument all day every day, but had no base. Inspired by Mill, I decided that I had to get brushed up on the classics before I could even hope to focus on what happens today, much less understand it. So, here goes:
Politically, my family was pretty conservative. Our favorite was Dubya. I got really mixed up however when he started his spending and the media was relentless on him. My Dad used to listen to a guy named Mark Levin in his car and I thought he knew what he was talking about (after all, he is a Constitutional Lawyer..). I really liked how he’d tear into people who had no idea what they were saying, plus he was pretty good on economics for the most part. So, I started listening to him. After a while, I bought his book “Liberty and Tyranny” and read it. I thought it was so good, I started copying it in a notebook (the original was a library rental and, in retrospect, screw IP). I read the Federalist Papers, The Anti-Federalist Papers, Leviathan, Two Treatises on Civil Government, Common Sense, Democracy in America and got my base in politics: ultimately, freedom makes for shiny, happy people. Something didn’t sit right though. I didn’t like his views on foreign policy, and grew out of his rants over time. Over some time, I found a congressman named Ron Paul who seemed to know a thing or two about a thing or two. He explained his constitutional voting record, his laissez-faire economic views, and liberty for the individual. So, Paul was the first politician that I was actually enthusiastic about. He’s old and a weak speaker but he seemed very bright and in line with my views; IMO he’s gotten to be a better speaker and his age doesn’t bother me at all. Mark Levin hates him. I thought “How could a Constitution praiser like Mark hate Ron Paul so much?” I stopped listening to Levin and kept listening to Paul. However, I still maintain that Levin’s good once in a while. I don’t listen to Levin as religiously as I used to (rarely ever), but if there’s nothing better on and I’m in the car, I’ll turn it to Levin for a bit at least just to see what’s on his mind. So, with my political philosophy set, I’m comfortable labeling my views as libertarian.
When the downturn started, I got interested in economics. Something was wrong and I wanted to know why. I looked up all I could on economics on Youtube. This one guy kept coming up named Milton Friedman. he made so much sense philosophically: naturally looking towards freedom, stressing the importance of the individual, standing up to question from college students, plus many pro-govt trolls in the comments section picked at him so I naturally thought he was a good guy. I found out that he had a tv series called “Free to Choose” which I promptly sought and watched it entirely. I saw that there was a book written by him, same title, and that’s where I’d say it really got rolling. I would come home from school and start watching/reading. How do ya like that: Kids my age on Fridays were getting smashed, partying or worse and there I was studying Economics, watching Milton debate the principles behind helmet laws and reading his examples of the futility of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Something that really didn’t sit right was Friedman’s views on how the Depression should have been handled. When I read that the Federal Reserve should have stepped in to create more money, I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. It felt like Friedman was admitting defeat. After all this appraisal of the free market, and the individual, it turns out that the government needed to step in to save the day. Then I learned that Friedman was a Monetarist and what that meant- Keynes’ cousin. I felt pretty bad for a while. For a while I kept watching videos and found a commenter who really seemed to know his stuff. I friended him, and saw that his “School(s)” was filled out as “Austrian (for those who get that)”. I didn’t- not that I cared at the time. But I kept in contact with this guy and asked him for a reading list. He recommended “That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen” by some cat named Bastiat, and Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. Those ae still some of the best writings that I’ve ever read. I read those books and looked them up on Youtube and saw some speakers from something called the Mises Institute (anyone else heard of it?). One of them was such a good speaker and seemed really bright, and funny. He was the first to piece together the Austrian Business Cycle Theory. After watching a few times, I started reading articles from this site. Tom was such a good speaker, I bought the book he was advertising throughout the speech- Meltdown (interestingly, from a dude with a ponytail who was not shy to share that he was libertarian! He told me that Meltdown was an excellent book). I consumed the book in a couple of weeks, mostly because I didn’t understand how great it was when I bought it (had I known, I wouldn’t have put it off and would have read it in a night)- That was when I knew I was Austrian.
Since then I’ve read Murphy, Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, Rothbard, Sowell, Bastiat, Friedman, Woods, Read, Tucker, Rothbard, Smith, Ricardo, Cantillon, Menger, Bohm-Bawerk and I hope to add many, many more.
Politically: Not much opinion–> “Bush Republican”–> Mark Levin conservative → libertarian
Economically: Not much opinion–> “Surely, there’s gotta be some regulation”–> Milton Friedman laissez-faire–> Austrian
I don’t know if it makes sense to put myself in two categories or just call my self a Classical Liberal, but, it is what it is.