MISES,
MENCKEN, AND MURRAY
Even
though I read these essays when they were first published
– years ago, in the pages of the Rothbard-Rockwell
Report, Murray's monthly periodical put out by the Center
for Libertarian Studies – I had a ball re-reading
them, laughing out loud at least once a page, and wishing
(to no avail, alas) that Rothbard could be with us again,
if only for one day. He died in 1995, and those of us who
knew him have yet to recover – or to even believe that
he's really gone. With The
Irrepressible Rothbard, Murray is back –
his unique voice reverberates throughout these pages, merrily
debunking the shibboleths of ideological fashion and mocking
them so mercilessly, and with such uproarious humor, that
the reader can only sit back and give himself up to gales
of appreciative laughter. In the pages of the Rothbard-Rockwell
Report – or the Triple R, as it was known
– Rothbard dealt with practically every topic under the
sun, and then some, and the wide range of the excellent selections
made by editor and Ludwig von
Mises Institute President Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.,
reflects the broad scope of Rothbard's interests. From politics
to culture, from foreign policy to the ins-and-outs of a New
York City mayoralty race, from the Nationalities Question
behind the latest foreign crisis, to the latest movies and
the juicy details of the latest scandal – from the solemn
to the absurd – with every issue of the Triple R,
Rothbard took his readers on a walking tour inside the mind
of a man who combined both the depth of knowledge and gravitas
of a man like Ludwig von Mises with the zestfully ironic
spirit of an H. L. Mencken – to liken him to two of his
biggest heroes. Here is a man who could write Man,
Economy, and State, and the two-volumne History
of Economic Thought, and such scintillating
polemics as "PC Cinema: Psychobabble Gets Nasty," without
missing a beat.
HITLER
REDUX
Rothbard's
very personal form of journalism was a habit acquired early
in life, and indeed it was one of his chief joys. It was,
for him, a form of relaxation, a break from his real work
of constructing an integrated theory of liberty, from methodology
and ethics to economics and political economy – and his
sense of fun is combined, in these pages, with a passion for
liberty that illuminates every word of his prose. There are
many gems in this treasure trove, and here's one I especially
remembered, although I guffawed anew as I re-read it –
In examining the arguments put forth by the advocates of the
Gulf War, Rothbard obliterates the contention that Saddam
Hussein is "another Hitler":
"Oh,
come on, knock off the Hitler analogy already. What are you
saying, for God's sake? That if we don't stop him on the Euphrates,
we'll have to fight him in the streets of New York? Wouldn't
it be great, by the way, if everyone observed a moratorium
on Hitler for at least a year? No more "another Hitler" every
time someone starts a war someplace, no more bellyaching about
Hitler in general. There is more hysteria now, 45 years after
his death, than when he was still alive. Isn't this the only
case in history where the hysteria against the loser in a
war continues, not only unabated but intensified, 45 years
after the war is over? And consider too, the guy was only
in power for 12 years! In a sense, Hitler will achieve his
'1000-year Reich' after all, because it looks as if we'll
be hearing about him for another 900 years or so."
IN
SEARCH OF ENEMIES
How
fearlessly true. The barrage of propaganda continues unabated
since Rothbard's death, and it seems the endless search for
a new Hitler has picked up speed and urgency of late, with
candidates ranging from Robert Mugabe to Milosevic to Vlad
"the impaler" Putin. Yet Rothbard, far from making us despair
of the current state of affairs, lets us laugh at the foibles
of our rulers, whose schemes he exposes so trenchantly and
with such style. In an incisive analysis of "The Post-Cold
War World," written in April 1990, he foresaw the escalating
"war on drugs" that would lead us down the slippery slope
of intervention in Colombia. For now that the cold war is
over, and the Soviets are no longer a threat, the War Party
will have to find some fresh approaches, some new way to justify
the large military expenditures and our foreign policy of
global policing, and various candidates for the position of
Global Threat to Democracy have been proposed:
"One
of them is 'international narco-terrorism.' As long as the
drug hysteria holds up, this menace is useful in justifying
any and all invasions of third World countries, since there
are usually drugs grown and traded somewhere in each of these
nations. The phrase is useful, too, since it combines fear
of dark, bearded Terrorists . . . with the drug menace. It
is doubtful, however, that narco-terrorism can justify all
those super-expensive missiles and nuclear weaponry, since
one hopes, at least, that the US government is not contemplating
H-bombing Colombia or Peru out of existence."
OH
WHAT A LOVELY WAR!
Rothbard's
March 1991 take on the "Nintendo War" is prescient in its
focus on the question of Iraqi civilian casualties, in contrast
to the televised hi-tech pyrotechnics put out by CNN and the
Pentagon (or do I repeat myself?):
"And
yet, every once in a great while, some bit of truth manages
to peek through the facade: Iraqi refugees in Jordan note
that blood is running in the streets in residential neighborhoods
in Baghdad; and Ramsey Clark reports that in the major Southern
Iraqi city of Basra civilians are being targeted and killed
in great numbers. Concerned that more of these reports might
shake the 'Nobody Dies' theme, the Pentagon has issued a preemptive
strike against such revelations by assuring us that we never,
ever, target civilians, that our pilots have gone out of their
way and even sacrificed themselves to avoid hitting civilians,
but that sometimes – even with 'smart' precision bombs – there
is unavoidable 'collateral damage' (sort of like 'side effect'
in medicine?) to civilians, and anyway it's all that evil
Saddam Hussein's fault for putting military targets near civilian
areas."
DON'T
LET THEM SURRENDER
I
thought of Rothbard's phrase, "the 'Nobody Dies' theme," during
the Kosovo war, and again after reading Seymour Hersh's stunning
revelation of "drug czar" Gen.
Barry McCaffrey's war crimes in the Gulf conflict. "Nobody
dies" – yeah, right: in the wars of the future,
nothing will die but the truth. This will never happen,
however, as long as a single copy of The Irrepressible
Rothbard is to be found. As the War Party celebrated their
non-victory over Iraq, Rothbard enumerated seven tongue-firmly-in
cheek "Lessons of the Gulf War," including at the top of the
list: "War is Wonderful," followed close on by:
 "Don't
let them surrender. Too many times Americans have won
a splendid war only to lose the peace. One problem is the
end game, the whole problem of surrender, who we accept surrender
from, on what terms, etc. during the Gulf War, we approached
perfection by not letting them surrender. First, we set the
goal of 'unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.' When
Iraq accepted these terms, we complained that they didn't
accept reparations, they weren't clear about coming out with
their hands up, and besides, we wanted to hear it from Saddam
himself. When Saddam himself complied, we raised all the above
objections, and we kept bombing, or 'pounding.' (Hey guys,
how about coming up with a synonym for 'pound'? If I had a
dime for every time the media used 'pound,' I'd be a very
rich man)."
HE
SAW IT COMING
The
imagery evoked by Hersh's exposure of McCaffrey's Massacre
– half-starved Iraqi soldiers mowed down while trying
to surrender – was conjured in Rothbard's prescient prose
almost before the smoke cleared, in April of 1991. While commentators
on the left as well as the Bushian Right were hailing the
Anglo-American "rescue" of poor little Kuwait, Rothbard was
zeroing in on the grisly truth – exposed in all its ugliness
nearly a decade later. For students of the Gulf War –
the first of a long line of wars waged on behalf of the so-called
New World Order – I would direct your attention to "Why
the War? – The Kuwait Connection," in which the author
combines his detailed knowledge of economic history with a
libertarian class analysis of the economic and political actors
in the Gulf War drama. But the best stuff, from my own viewpoint
and interests, in the section entitled "War" is the material
dealing with the Balkans. With stunning accuracy, Rothbard
– who died years before our "humanitarian" conquest of
Kosovo – saw it all coming, and what's more, he saw why
and how it would come. . . .
TURNAROUND
In
"US, Keep Out of Bosnia!" Rothbard noted the complete turnaround
of the New World Order crowd and in Social Democratic circles
on the Serbian Question: these guys were all for keeping
Yugoslavia intact before the fall of the Soviet Union, and
it was the poor Croats who suffered the ignominy of being
the regional "Nazis." But suddenly the leftists, notably the
Clinton-Gore campaign team, discovered that the Serbs, too,
were "Nazis," and attacked the Bush camp for not – at
a minimum – launching immediate air-strikes. If war comes,
Rothbard predicted, then it will be in large part a war made
by the media:
"The
problem is that increasingly we have government by TV clip.
All the media have to do is to send some newsmen to a war-torn
area, show pictures of torture or detention camps or starvation,
and the sentimental fools who constitute Western public opinion,
especially in the US, where sentiment and demagogy have long
replaced thought, will pressure the US government to 'do something'
to set everything right. As usual, it is the fat-cat civilians,
the 'experts' and media elite sitting in their plush, air-conditioned
offices and bars, that are thirsting for blood, and the youth
of the armed forces and the taxpayers who are supposed to
supply it."
ROTHBARD'S
TRIBUTE TO THE SERBIAN PEOPLE
He
didn't live to see the bombs fall on Belgrade – he was
spared that, at least – but he saw it in his mind's eye
as clear as if it were happening in the summer of 1993. The
endless loops of tearful Kosovars, the phony charges of tens
of thousands supposedly slaughtered by the Serbs, the self-righteous
braying of our laptop bombardiers in the media – he saw
it all coming, not too far down the road. In "Hands Off the
Serbs." a magnificent paean to the just demands and defiant
heroism of the Serbian people, Rothbard predicted that none
of the methods traditionally applied by the War Party would
work on this brave people, because, as he put it:
"The
Serbs are a magnificently gutsy people, a 'primitive' folk
who don't give a tinker's damn for 'world opinion' the 'respect
of the international community,' and all the rest of the pretentious
cant that so impresses readers of the New York Times.
What do the Serbs want? It's very clear what they want, and
there is no need for the sort of eternal kvetching that Freud
indulged in about 'what do women want?' The Serbs want all
the Serbs in former Yugoslavia to be part of a new Greater
Serbia being carved out of the ethnic mess in the Balkans.
They want a Serb nation, and they don't give a rap for any
of the considerations that so intensely motivate Establishment
World Opinion, and God bless them for that. World Opinion,
in turn, doesn't give a rap for a Serb nation. But why should
World Opinion hold sway anywhere?"
THE
COMING OF THE "GOOD" WAR
Why,
indeed. Why, to enforce political correctness and "anti-racism"
on a global scale, the raison d'etre of the so-called
Clinton Doctrine – and naturally the Left jumped on board
and signed on to this prescription for perpetual war. As I
have often pointed out in this column, the leftist embrace
of Clinton's war was practically unanimous. Not since World
War II and the bygone days of the "anti-fascist united front"
had so many socialists, lefties, and outright Commies donned
battle gear and marched off to fight a "good" war – and
Rothbard nailed them in advance and by name: the sainted Noam
Chomsky, Israeli Hegelian political theorist Shlomo Avineri,
social butterfly and Vanity Fair writer Christopher
Hitchens, Michael Lerner of the "pro-peace" Tikkun magazine;
Michael Foot, "dotty guru of the left-wing of the British
Labor Party"; left-wing financier Peter Weiss; Edward
Said, "Chilean pest Ariel Dorfman," Todd Gitlin, and various
smalltime Trotskyists of the "Third" Camp variety. All signed
a whiny letter to In These Times [April 19-May 2, 1993]
calling for arming the Bosnian Muslims against Serbian "aggression."
This was the beginning of the pro-war sentiment on the Left,
and in summing up his opinion of these early cheerleaders
for "humanitarian intervention" – most of whom were in
the leftist vanguard of the War Party six years later –
Rothbard declared: "May they all wind up in Srebenicia as
the Serbs come marching in!" Go, Murray, go – let 'em
have it with both barrels! I could go on quoting from
just this one section of the book for quite a while, but let
me just add one final note. . . .
A
FINAL SOLUTION
The
essay entitled "Invade the World" is alone worth the price
of this volume. When the suppression of Hate Crime on a global
scale becomes the chief "national interest" of the US, there's
only one thing left to do . . .
A
GODSEND
For
antiwar activists, for whom the logic and consistency of the
anti-imperialist position is a matter of high importance,
at least one essay in this volume is an indispensable godsend:
"The Nationalities Question" is an exhaustive and illuminating
survey of the post-cold war explosion of ethnic tensions from
Bosnia to Burundi to the former Soviet bloc nations; against
the centralizing Lincolnian principle of preserving national
boundaries at any cost, Rothbard held up the radical decentralist
principle of secession, defining the right to national self-determination
in libertarian terms. Libertarians will be particularly interested
to read his critique of what he calls the "modal libertarian"
anti-cultural (and anti-religious) hostility to all nationalism
(p. 233). His analysis of the breakup of Yugoslavia, the meaning
of Slovenia's successful road to nationhood, his take on "The
Cyprus Question" – a separate Northern Cyprus Republic
for the Turks, and the rest to Greece – and his fascinating
sorting out of the turmoil in the Caucasus – here are
plenty of reasons for readers of this column to click on the
order form and buy this book online right now.
CALL
HIM IRREPRESSIBLE
The
Irrepressible Rothbard – a volume well-named –
is the kind of intellectual ammunition that the antiwar movement
cannot afford to be without. Here, in effervescent prose,
is a master polemicist at work – one whose dedication
to the cause of peace and liberty was total and unequivocal,
and whose knowledge of history was encyclopedic. Lew Rockwell's
perceptive Introduction does an excellent job of setting the
broader context of Rothbard the social theorist, and giving
us a sense of his charmingly unique personality. I envy you,
because you're in for a treat: you get to read this stuff
for the first time. But you'd better hurry, because
this book is flying off the shelves fast . . .
|
