This is why I can't get behind Reason or Cato

Miscellaneous General
1

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/024658.html

A little background: when I started the Mises Institute (an organization unmentioned by Time) 26 years ago, the head of the Koch Family Foundation angrily pledged to destroy me if I went ahead. “We have worked too hard to rid Austrian economics of Mises,” he said. Hayek, he claimed, was their man, though, of course, he was far better than that, and a good supporter of the Institute. But the real problem turned out to be Murray Rothbard. It was the greatest of the Misesians and the founder of modern libertarianism whom the Koch World Empire longed to smash, and still does. Murray, founder of Cato, was the one man in the ambit to say no when the Kochs decided to jettison Mises for reasons of DC preferment. Otherwise, they felt, it would be harder to curry favor with the Fed and the Republican party. Hayek’s views on central banking, gold, conservatism, and competitive currencies are no more DC-friendly than Mises’s and Rothbard’s, but they are ignored, and just his name invoked.

Over more than 40 years, I have had the honor to work with such giants of economics and liberty as Mises, Hazlitt, Hayek, and especially Rothbard. Indeed, Hazlitt told me that my “greatest achievement was to give Rothbard a platform,” and I think I have also helped support the Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard tradition, and some of the many important scholars working in it. That’s why such Koch mouthpieces as Reason will say anything on orders. The Kochs also oppose the great Austro-libertarian statesman, Ron Paul, for his refusal to endorse the Fed when he was head of one of their organizations. None of us, however, is backing down. Among young people, in fact, we’ve already won. Mises held that ideas can beat back the state. Ideas can also triumph over billions of oil dollars, and the establishment’s antique media.

It hit me tonight. Some people are Misesians. Some people are Paulians, Rothbardians.

I think I am a Rockwellian.

2

I’m a bad man. lol

3

lol That was a good one. Well at least it might help redirect some truly curious capitalists into the right direction, no?

Thank you for whatever service that might turn out to be.

4

That’s the plan Stan.

No thanks necessary. If 10 of us did this twice a month, we could bring hundreds of people to Mises.org and expose them to the truth. I dropped a letter at Salon as well tonight, but they didn’t keep my hyperlinks. Which sucks. But then, Salon sucks period. Slowest website ever.

5

I would call myself a Rothbardian. I’m new, I’ve been lurking and reading this website and post on the blog sometimes under my real name.

Nice to be here.

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Welcome! [:)]

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Now that sounds like some New Year’s Resolution, here’s my monthly quota: here and here.

9

Wow, great job! Maybe we should make a game/challenge/log of this.

10

I would hope that one’s reason for disliking these institutions isn’t simply about personalized conflicts between The Mises Institute and them. I would hope that it’s actually about principles.

11

Hope and dream, or just hope?

Sure. They don’t have any. These are pro-state, pro-Republican institutions. They are bought and paid for by big time right wing fanatics. And neither of them takes a principled stand against government money monopoly and it’s counterfeiting operation.

12

I agree.

13

I’ll just call myself a Misesian of the Hoppean (thus Rothbardian) strand, with influences from Long (and thus Rand/Aristotle) and Reisman. Cato sometimes does good research, and Reason sometimes has good articles. Rarely, though.

14

I smell an internet quiz in the near future to help clear this up, for myself at least (Which insert names Are You most Like? etc.). Would certainly be a useful tool for newbies as well, I think.

15

hey at least they didn’t use ‘loopier’ and ‘anarchist’ in the same sentence

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I’d call myself a Hoppean.

17

Rothbardian here. I don’t believe I have ever read anything by Murray I can say I disagree with, but then again, I haven’t read every single thing he has written.

I really like a lot of what Hoppe, Long, and Block have said as well.

18

A small victory.

From LRC this morning…

The Usefulness of ‘Libertarians’

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You have to wonder if serving on a revenue (theft) board for the state disqaulifies one from being a libertarian.

20

I find myself agreeing the most with the Hoppe strand of libertarian thought. I think it is my love of history and what Western Civilization has wrought. Rothbard is often accused of being more “conservative” in his later years, but I think it was less about statism and more about preserving the Western Civilization that gave rise to libertarian and anarchist thought.

The CATO institute is one of those “conservative” organizations that try to appeal to the dying aspect of Western Civilization and will in the end lead to America’s own demise through government intervention of society and the economy.