Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect Murray Rothbard's legacy, analyzing his controversial 1990s "paleo strategy" of allying with paleoconservatives to slash taxes, abolish the IRS, and crush violent crime while clearing streets of homeless individuals. They contrast this populist approach with modern "Lolbertarian" absolutism, arguing that property owners must enforce exclusion rights without government gray areas. While acknowledging Rothbard's eventual isolation due to internal conflicts, the hosts conclude that adapting his core message of non-aggression and pro-market principles to address current riots and lockdowns remains essential for revitalizing the libertarian movement. [Automatically generated summary]
So when it turns off again, everyone's ready to go.
It just, this is starting to feel a lot like weapons of mass destruction.
The internet service seems to be fine.
I don't understand why we can't just declare victory and come home.
Well, that's, you know, what can I say?
You're weak on optimum.
I'm weak.
I am.
I'm not supporting the troops enough.
All right.
I mean, I guess I'll.
I mean, if you want to be pro-government monopolies that you can't have any other options and they don't have to offer you the resources you need, then sure, if you want to take that position, I see where you're coming from.
All right.
Now you're now you're speaking my type of war propaganda, libertarian war propaganda.
All right.
All right.
I guess we'll keep this mission going for a little longer.
I just, I'd like to see some successes on the ground, something.
Well, since I've started talking out, it's already flowing smoother.
I think they're feeling my wrath.
And so they're not shutting off my cable, my internet as often.
This is like when Dick Cheney used to say the fact that there's not another 9-11 proves that what we're doing is working.
So that's just like the fact that the internet hasn't been shut off.
You got to support these wars.
That's okay.
Interesting.
Good tactics.
Libertarian War Propaganda00:06:23
All right.
So I wanted to talk about something today that I think will be maybe one of the more controversial topics that we could get into.
And I always enjoy controversial topics.
So I'm excited to talk about this.
I wanted to talk about late Murray Rothbard and what we can learn from him and how that applies to today's situation.
Now, for people who don't know, of course, Murray Rothbard is the thinker who's had more influence on me than anybody else.
I consider myself a Rothbardian libertarian.
Murray Rothbard basically created the modern libertarian movement.
He coined the term anarcho-capitalism.
He wrote dozens of just great books, hundreds of amazing articles, essays, things like that.
He was truly a genius.
And I don't use that word lightly.
I mean, he was a brilliant economist, a brilliant historian, a brilliant political theorist.
I mean, he really covered, and it wasn't just like, as is the case today with most brilliant thinkers, it's not as if he had one specific area of expertise that he wrote on.
He wrote about everything.
He also like reviewed movies and plays and things like that.
Like he was just off-the-charts intellect.
And the stuff, some of the stuff that he did toward the end of his life was the most controversial and is the most hated amongst all types of libertarians who are, you know, like the Beltway libertarians, the left libertarians, the loser brigade libertarians, if you can even call them that.
They all despise late Murray Rothbard.
They hate him.
And he certainly, he did change his mind on immigration.
Oh, I thought he meant late, like dead.
You meant like his later works.
Yes, yes.
No, he hasn't, not new shit that's coming out now.
Which, by the way, I shouldn't even call myself Murray Rothbard really is the libertarian Tupac.
I think he's put out like two or three books since he's been dead.
They've just like shit they've found.
Like someone at the Mises Institute is just clearing out Rothbard's desk.
Murray Rothbard, oh my god.
Yeah, like, oh my God, this is fucking brilliant.
Look at this shit.
It's just like his doodles are fucking better than anything else anyone's ever put out.
But so what is between, I think it was 1992 and 1995, I believe Rothbard died in 95 or 96, but for a couple years there, he made what was known as the paleo strategy, what's referred to as the paleo strategy.
They started calling themselves paleo-libertarians for a little bit, and then they, Lou Rockwell and Murray Rothbard basically abandoned that term.
But they were working with the paleoconservative movement and figures like Pat Buchanan.
So when Pat Buchanan ran for president in 1992, Rothbard and Lou Rockwell enthusiastically supported him.
And it should, you know, I guess to understand where they were coming from, Rothbard was a huge fan of the old right, what he called the old right, the pre-neoconservative, pre-Cold Warrior right wing in America, who were basically, you know, largely non-interventionist, opposed the New Deal in America.
They basically liked American capitalism and didn't want to go fight wars overseas.
And you could understand why someone like Murray Rothbard would think that that was a much better movement.
And after World War II, the right wing really got taken over by Cold Warriors who wanted to go fight the Soviet Union, you know, in Korea and Vietnam and like all over the world.
And he just hated all of that.
And Murray Rothbard rightfully thought that actually like the New Deal and big government programs at home were a much bigger threat to Americans than whether the communists won in Korea or in Vietnam.
And so he was completely opposed to these wars.
And during the Vietnam War, he actually went and allied with a bunch of people on the left who were hardcore socialists because they were the anti-war group at the time.
So he was always kind of down to ally with whoever the anti-war group was.
And in 1991, something really remarkable happened, which is that the Soviet Union collapsed and communism was gone.
And the idea of having to fight a Cold War, like this justification for the military-industrial complex had been taken away from the right.
The whole justification for why we were fighting these wars was gone.
And then there was Pat Buchanan, this guy who came along and was like, okay, that's it.
I was a cold warrior too, but now we don't have to fight wars anymore.
Let's bring all the troops home.
Let's be a republic and not an empire.
And then, you know, there was the George H.W. Bush wing of the Republicans who were like, well, yeah, I hear what you're saying, but we got to go see about this Saddam Hussein guy.
And we got to go see.
And Pat Buchanan opposed all these wars.
And Rothbard thought that this was a good group to try to work with.
So that's kind of the backdrop of what was happening there.
Now, this becomes a very controversial part of Murray Rothbard's legacy because, you know, Beltway libertarians and, you know, left libertarians will say he started courting racists.
And this was, you know, his plan, which I think is the least generous, most cynical interpretation of what he was doing.
I think a much more reasonable interpretation is to actually look at his work, treat it generously, and look at the points he's making and see what you can, you know, if there's any merit to them, which I think there actually is quite a bit of.
So I just wanted to put that out in the backdrop.
Investing In Gold And Crypto00:03:00
And I'm excited because I know you haven't read a lot of this stuff, Rob, and I'm curious to see what your reaction is to it.
So Rothbard says this, and I'm paraphrasing, but this is pretty much the gist of his argument.
Rothbard gets into strategy, what the strategy for libertarians should be now.
And this is coming from a perspective in the 90s, the early 90s.
Okay.
And to me, strategy is always an interesting topic amongst libertarians.
Like that's, you know, you basically get to a place where you believe in capitalism and you're against war.
And, you know, you're a libertarian.
And you can say, oh, we can make the moral arguments for why this is correct.
You can make the consequentialist arguments for why we should have free markets and all that stuff.
And that's great.
But the question that starts to, you know, hang over your head is, okay, so what do we do about it?
Like, what's the plan?
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Convincing Intellectuals With Strategy00:15:23
So we want to get from a non-libertarian situation to a libertarian society.
How might we go about doing that?
And there's been different strategies that have been floated out throughout the years.
And Rothbard takes on these other, the major other two strategies.
So F.A. Hayek.
I don't know if you've ever read any Hayek, Rob?
I'm going to go with no.
Okay.
Yeah, he wrote a, I mean, he was a very, he studied under Mises.
He was a brilliant economist, not by any stretch an ANCAP, not the best libertarian, but wrote some good things, very smart books.
The road to serfdom is probably his biggest, which is like half of it's a great book and half of it sucks.
But it's, you know, it's worth reading.
So Hayek's strategy was to convince the intellectuals.
This was his strategy.
And I'm somewhat sympathetic to it, even though I think it was wrong and a miserable failure.
But his strategy was basically like fairly straightforward.
It was like, well, we have the superior ideas, right?
And the intellectuals are really what guide society and move it along.
It's not like you're at, you know, some dude with like an 80 IQ who fucking, you know, like whatever is like, you know, works at, you know, flips burgers or something like that.
He's not like changing the course of society.
It's the intellectuals who are changing the course of society.
And intellectuals are concerned with ideas and we have better ideas.
So what we need to do is convince all of the intellectuals that this is the way to go.
And then they will convince all of society that libertarianism is the way to go and that you don't want government intervening in the market.
Okay, so this is more or less his strategy.
And Rothbard, in his typical Rothbard scathing, you know, style, just blows this out of the water.
And first of all, he's like, well, look at what a failure this has been.
We've been right about all of these ideas for decades and decades.
You're not convincing these intellectuals.
And in addition to that, it's a very flawed strategy because it's assuming that all intellectuals care about is the truth when obviously they're incentivized to not want to support libertarianism.
And so they don't.
And of course, you can see this all around us.
I mean, how much do intellectuals, let's say on college campuses, change just within what's popular decade to decade?
You know, I mean, like they, this is, they're obviously incentivized in other ways.
And this top-down approach is never going to lead to a libertarian society.
So I think Rothbard's right to reject that strategy.
And then the other strategy that Rothbard rejects is the Koch brothers, Ed Crane, Cato Institute, Reason Magazine strategy, which is basically to try to cozy up to the corridors of power and work, you know, become the Beltway libertarians.
Well, let's go establish a think tank in Washington, D.C. Let's invite politicians and the chairman of the Fed to our cocktail parties.
Let's hang out with them.
We'll tone down all of the rhetoric.
We're not going to call you war criminals.
We're just going to say, hey, you know, maybe we should fight less war or this.
We'll kind of get into the seats of power and then slowly, incrementally try to get them to move toward a more libertarian society.
And Rothbard has nothing but contempt for this strategy.
He says the idea that you're going to, all you do is defang libertarianism.
You take out our sharpest punches, our most important points, and then you never even accomplish anything.
And he goes, it's pretty good if you just want to enrich yourself or get yourself a seat within the power structure, but this isn't doing anything for actually transforming us to a libertarian society.
And on top of that, Rothbard says the incrementalist approach that has worked for, say, Marxists who then abandon Marxism, get into government, and just try to get a little bit more of a welfare state, a little bit more, a little bit more.
He goes, that might work for them, but it'll never work for us because they're getting into the corridors of power and going with the flow, whereas we're trying to get in and go against the flow.
It's easy to go into the state apparatus and convince them to seize a little bit more power, a little bit more power, a little bit more power.
But that's a completely different thing than going in and convincing them to give up power little by little by little.
So this never works.
It's a doomed strategy.
It can't possibly work.
And the proof is in the pudding.
You know, like the proof is all we've had libertarian intellectuals.
We've had libertarian think tanks in Washington, D.C. for much more than my entire life.
And what has this done for us?
Nothing.
You know, it's the government gets bigger and bigger every year.
It doesn't matter how many good policy papers the Cato Institute puts out.
None of this is going to work.
So just on that issue, does that make sense to you and seem reasonable?
I don't know.
There's a lot to think about there.
It's just tough.
I don't know the full scope of what Reason Magazine or Cato does.
And I also understand this is almost similar to what Nancy Pelosi just said about Trump or what we said about Iran, which is you can't negotiate with them because it legitimizes them.
And that's not too dissimilar from this Rothbard argument that even if we sit down with them and so we shelve our biggest ideas like, hey, all war is evil, it starts to give them a little bit of the legitimacy that like we're not totally opposing what they have to say.
So is that the better outcome than at least trying to have a conversation with them and seeing if some of the ideas creep in?
So I don't know if like within that framework, if I totally agree with the, we shouldn't even be sitting down with them.
There's nothing that we can compromise on.
But I certainly understand what he's saying, that you do have the fear of somewhat legitimize what they're doing when you're creating literature that, you know, I guess somewhat supports what they're doing, but I don't know the full scale of what these institutions do.
Well, here, so here's where Rothbard goes with that.
He says, here's the strategy and here's what we need to do that's going to work.
And his answer is populism.
He says, what we don't need to convince intellectuals.
We don't need to suck up to the government.
What we need to do is create a movement that is bottom up, talk to the average person and convince them that these people are screwing you over, that this whole system is rigged against you and you should be outraged about it.
We basically need, he says this without coining the term that later came around, but he basically says we need a libertarian movement and that's what we have to do.
And so this to me, now this part of it is, I think, what has basically been the blueprint for everything.
All of these things kind of flow in tandem because at the end of the day, without Rothbard being an intellectual, trying to motivate some sort of a populist movement.
So you can't say, hey, we're going to do this without any intellectuals.
You also can't do it without any politicians.
I mean, we sell for a Ron Paul.
So it's like, I don't know, you can just focus on any one thing and go.
But just to be clear, just to be clear, that's not, Rothbard is not saying, obviously, Rothbard is saying, yes, and the intellectuals need to keep pushing this movement, this populist movement, in a libertarian direction.
And he's all for political figures.
In fact, this is when he's supporting Pat Buchanan, and he supported Ron Paul in 88.
And he later supports, well, I guess he was dead by the time Ron Paul ran, but he was always a big supporter of Ron Paul and people like that.
So it's not that he's saying we don't need politicians.
It's not that he's saying we don't need intellectuals.
It's that he's saying this is what the politicians and intellectuals should be focused on.
They should be focused on working people up, spreading these ideas to regular people, and directing all of this energy to being aware that the government is screwing you over.
So that's more or less his argument on the whole thing.
Which, by the way, I think what happens more or less is that this alliance, this paleo con libertarian alliance, ends up failing.
But you know, I mean, what hasn't failed if you're a libertarian.
And so basically, it was ridiculed by the Cato reason types.
However, then Ron Paul comes around, who, you know, certainly these a lot of these types would consider to be a paleo-libertarian, and he ends up, you know, inspiring this huge libertarian movement.
So in many ways, Rothbard was proven right.
Not in all of his ways, but in many ways, he certainly was.
Now, except you might, I mean, you have to get a little granular here, but if in some way Ron Paul was influenced because of other people's work in academia and Ron Paul was motivated by something he read, then you could actually say that the opposite strategy works better, where if you keep focusing on academia, you can get your one hero to read these ideas and then actually go out and be a dynamic leader in change.
Right.
But just to be clear, that's what Rothbard's proposing: that we should have these ideas.
He's not against the philosophers.
He is a philosopher.
He's saying that the route to actually get to a libertarian society is to have someone who can talk to people and convince people.
In other words, Ron Paul's main.
I mean, Ron Paul was trying to convince everyone he can, but Ron Paul's main strategy was to try to convince people that this is what they want in their system, not to go into Lockheed Martin and try to convince Lockheed Martin that they really don't want to be selling so many weapons to the federal government.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I could see that.
Okay.
So now what Rothbard said, and let me just say this: I don't think that we should be following Rothbard's 1992 strategy.
I don't even think we should necessarily just follow Ron Paul's 2008 strategy.
I think if you have the same strategy in 2020 that you had in 1992, then you're missing something because the world has changed drastically and you have to adjust to that.
I mean, number one, we have the internet.
We don't need to worry so much about focusing on one group versus the other.
We can kind of talk to as many people as we want to.
We can employ all of these strategies at once.
And of course, we have learned a lot from the Ron Paul movement of what the best way to approach people is.
Now, of course, that's going to have to change.
I mean, the country's changed drastically in the eight years from 2012 to 2020.
But I think there's still a lot that we can learn from the Ron Paul days.
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All right, let's get back into it.
Okay, so what Rothbard says is that right-wing populism is the way to go.
That this is, that basically the country is ripe for a right-wing populist.
He says that's what we should embrace.
He says, he argues that the Beltway libertarian types have completely embraced left-wing social values, which is stupid and there's no reason to support that.
And that libertarians should be or can be socially conservative and embrace things like family values, make your peace with religion, things like that.
And that we're better off to ally ourselves with that group because they're going to be more receptive to the ideas of freedom, capitalism, free markets, things like that.
So that's his idea.
And he goes through.
Let me see if I have this article up here.
So this is an article which I recommend people read.
I believe that, what is the title of it?
Is it right-wing populism, a strategy for a paleo movement by Murray Rothbard?
And this is one of the more controversial pieces he ever wrote.
And he was talking about David Duke, who basically was, you know, he was running for governor in Louisiana and he was doing very well for a little bit.
And then there was a huge media campaign to ruin him and he got destroyed.
And Rothbard basically makes the point that David Duke was a Klansman when he was younger and he was a radical, but that he had basically dropped that and started promoting nonviolence.
And he says, here, let me read from the piece.
This was his argument.
Because everyone says that he's basically that he was apologizing for David Duke or that he was supporting him or something, but it's a little inaccurate.
And let me just read from what Rothbard wrote.
He says, he says, David Duke stopped advocating violence, took off the Klan robes, and started working within the system.
He goes, and his point is that this is what they used to say to the left-wing, like violent radicals.
They'd be like, stop being violent and work within the system.
And he's saying David Duke did that.
If it was okay to be a commie or a weatherman or whatever in your wild youth, why isn't it okay to have been a Klansman?
Or to put it more precisely, if it's okay for the revered Justice Hugo Black or the Lion of the Senate, Robert Byrd, to have been a Klansman, why not David Duke?
The answer is obvious.
Black and Byrd became members of the liberal elite of the establishment, whereas David Duke continued to be a right-wing populist and therefore anti-establishment, this time even more dangerous because within the system.
So he's making the point that what they care about isn't actually that David Duke used to be a Klansman, because look at Robert Byrd.
He used to be a Klansman too.
He's a senator.
He was good.
He was great friends with Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton.
They were at his funeral.
They've always like sung his praises.
And he used to be a Klansman.
So that's not actually their issue.
Their issue is that this guy is a threat to the establishment.
Abolishing Group Privileges00:09:16
And this is what Rothbard writes.
He said, it is fascinating.
Okay, so he's not saying this is like just listen to the actual words and treat it with somewhat of a generous interpretation.
He says it's fascinating that there was nothing in Duke's current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by a paleo-libertarian.
Lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including whites.
What's wrong with any of that?
And that's so that's Rothbard's point essentially: is that, look, they're slandering this guy, they're ruining this guy.
Maybe slander isn't even the right word, but they're smearing this guy.
But really, if you look at what he's running on, there's nothing that a libertarian would really object to about that.
He's not running on violence or hatred of other racial groups.
He's running on all of these things that are kind of in line with what we think.
That more or less was Rothbard's take.
And of course, he kind of felt similarly with Pat Buchanan, who, of course, didn't have all of the baggage of being a Klansman in the past.
Now, also, listen, I'll be honest, I don't know much about David Duke.
My understanding is that he went way more radical again after this period in time.
But just to be clear, Rothbard's talking about his 90s campaign and what he ran on at that time.
And I think that, like, feel however you feel about this.
Maybe you think it's too ugly for Rothbard to associate with David Duke or something like that.
But you have to kind of acknowledge that Rothbard saw something in the early 90s that really ended up like he had his finger on something.
And I think that the Ron Paul campaigns and the election of Donald Trump really show you that there was something ripe for the picking in like a right-wing populist movement.
Like he saw a lot of people responding to these guys.
And I just find that to be really interesting and like kind of prophetic in a way.
Like he saw that you could actually win with this strategy of right-wing populism.
Anyway, so let me go a little bit further down in that same article.
And I wanted to get, because this is where Rothbard lays out.
And of course, the reason I'm talking about this is because I think it's really interesting to relate to a lot of the topics that we've been talking about lately, which are, you know, obviously the riots and the chaos in the streets and the split within amongst libertarians, excuse me, the split amongst libertarians.
So here is Rothbard's program for right-wing populism.
And this is what he says the libertarian program should be if we're getting into the world of politics and how to promote libertarian ideas.
Okay.
So this is what Rothbard says.
I'll just point out one strategy that I'm kind of, I mean, one flawed some.
It's like you're kind of walking this line of, hey, we can't compromise any values because compromising a value, it weakens the libertarian message.
And then you're making one exception, which is in regards to David Duke and possibly, I guess, let's just say hatred of racism.
And that might be one of the most toxic things to, I would say, erode the purity of the libertarian message.
Well, I just want to be clear.
I just want to be clear.
Rothbard's not saying you can't compromise any messages.
In fact, he actually says we can compromise on certain issues that'll be sticking points with us and other right-wingers.
And basically, what he says the compromise should be is just get the federal government out of it, let lower governments handle it.
So he brings up at one point things like pornography, because I think conservatives were really against that in the 90s.
I think that that war has been lost.
But he was like, let's just compromise with let the states and local governments and neighborhoods deal with these issues and not us.
He's not saying the anti-porn agenda.
No, no.
You're really losing me here.
No, he's saying he won't.
Well, don't worry.
The internet came out.
You have nothing to worry about at this point.
But what he's saying is that it's fine to compromise on certain issues as long as we keep the key ones.
What he's saying is you don't compromise the key issues in order to appease the powerful.
That's more or less his argument, just to be clear on that.
But here, so here is Rothbard's strategy.
Here's his program, if you will, for what right-wing populism should look like.
Number one, slash taxes, all taxes, sales, business, property, et cetera, but especially the most oppressive political and personally, the income tax.
We must work toward repeal of the income tax and the abolition of the IRS.
So that's number one, which is pretty hard for any libertarian to argue with that.
Number two, slash welfare.
Get rid of underclass rule by abolishing the welfare system or short of abolish or short of abolition, severely cutting and restricting it.
Okay?
That's number three.
How would you define, because that's such an interesting turn of phrase I never heard.
And I think I know what he's saying, but how would you define underclass rule?
Well, I think what he's saying is just the idea that the underclass, when you say rule, meaning that the underclass in effect is taking stolen money and living off of it.
So I think that, to me, that's just what he meant by that, like just like the idea that you're essentially, if someone else is coming, stealing your money and giving it to someone else, that person is essentially ruling over a portion of your income.
So ending that crap.
Number three, abolish racial or group privileges.
Abolish affirmative action, set aside racial quotas, et cetera.
And point out that the root of such quotas is the entire civil rights structure, which tramples on property rights of every American.
And when he says civil rights, I should say he puts civil rights in quotes, meaning that it's not truly civil rights, that it's civil rights structure.
Now, I just want to point out something that I find interesting is that so many people talk about Rothbard in this period as being the secret racist or he's cozying up with racists or this type of thing.
But right here in his program is abolish racial or group privileges.
Abolish affirmative action set asides.
He's basically saying racial equality under the law, that there should not be any group privileges for any groups.
Just to be clear, he's not saying white racial privilege under the law.
He's saying no racial privilege under the law.
So that's his pitch there.
Now here's where it gets controversial.
And this is the part that I wanted to talk about on today's show because this is where a lot of libertarians were furious with Murray Rothbard.
And I think this is worth going over.
Also, even with that, his lead-in isn't great because he's stripping minorities of their benefits and saying, because that's what we need.
But he's not really explaining that because we need a law of, let's just say, equality under law or just a private protection, because if you have special groups, that also means that white people could be in the special group.
And these are the same laws that worked against black people for so many years.
He's not really giving you the full version of why he's holding that logic.
And so it does look a little bit like he's just trying to strip some of the government benefits that exist for black people.
So it's not, it's not well written for promoting freedom.
Well, I mean, listen, this is the program.
And you technically, even in your criticism there, you technically don't have any problem with the program.
You're just saying that he's not giving a full, more inviting, you know, kind of like justification for it.
And that is true, but it's also because that's not the group that he's targeting.
And he is, and this is the explicit part of Murray Rothbard.
And this is something that I, you know, listen, probably, and again, this is why you have to change your tactics as the years go on.
Probably there's a fair point to what you're saying that this might turn off a whole lot of other people because you're not really explaining that actually the state has been what's fucked over minorities for so many years.
And this is why it's better to just have no minority preference, you know, or no racial preference under the law.
However, I think what Rothbard's saying is that the group we should be targeting right now is the group who resents these racial set-asides, who resents.
You're not being a principled libertarian.
He's not speaking like because he's not speaking to, hey, there's a value of that government shouldn't have the power to impose on people.
And he's not really trying to bring you into that model in any way.
But to be fair, this is what Rothbard's been writing about for his entire career.
So this is strictly, he's just writing a political program right here.
And he's been talking about why government is illegitimate for decades and decades at this point.
So I don't know if I completely agree with your point on that.
Embracing Populist Frustrations00:16:53
I'm saying, no, but even if you're trying to cater to this community, I would think you have some sort of a responsibility to educate them to the values of freedom and anti-government and what brings us to this model.
To walk in there without any of the, hey, this is what we're going towards.
I don't know.
It seems like it's education.
Well, I don't know if that's a fair criticism because, again, this is what Rothbard talks about all the time.
Just the fact that he didn't mention it in those four sentences, I mean, doesn't, I don't know if that's accurate, but I understand your point.
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But here is number four, the point here, which I think is one of the really controversial, four and five are the really controversial ones.
But I wanted to bring these up because this is really what will lead into a discussion about what we're currently seeing in the streets today.
So here's number four.
Take back the streets.
Crush criminals.
And by this, I mean, of course, not white-collar criminals or insider trading, insider traders, but violent street criminals, robbers, muggers, rapists, murderers.
Cops must be unleashed and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject, of course, to liability when they are in error.
So that's number four.
And I think that that's a really interesting thing that obviously, for obvious reasons, a lot of libertarians do not like hearing that.
But I got to say, I've more than ever watching these riots unfold, understood where Rothbard was coming from.
You can also have to understand that in the early 90s, violent crime throughout cities was just really horrible.
It was really out of control.
Now, all of us would agree that we'd like to see police privatized and everything privatized and all of this.
But seeing as how it's not, and there are cops, I certainly don't think it's unreasonable to say that, which Murray Rothbard is clearly saying here.
Now, the line that gets away from the-I'll just say, he's not explaining himself well because his kicker at the end of police liability, what he's really referring to is that police should be treated.
In my, I would define it as being police should be no different than us.
That if, for instance, they apprehend someone that shouldn't, that's kidnapping.
So, what he's describing is almost a libertarian framework that if you have the police, yes, they should take care of all criminals and they should be able to act in a swift way.
However, they shouldn't have special protection.
The way he writes that there, you need to have a lot of background information to understand how powerful that kicker is.
Well, just so you understand, just to be clear, because he does explain this further in the piece.
This is a long piece that I'm only reading one, you know, like I'm only taking one paragraph out of.
But yeah, but I agree with you.
What Rothbard is saying, and he explains this later in the piece.
What he's saying is that basically we want to privatize everything, but as long as we have these public institutions, we should try to have them work as closely to how private property would work as we can while always trying to shrink the size and scope of the government.
So, what gets taken from this, right?
What's always the three words that get taken from this, but even within this paragraph, is unleash the cops.
Murray Rothbard said unleash the cops.
And this is taken as some, oh, look, he's not being libertarian.
He's saying, unleash the cops.
This is not what a libertarian should believe.
But if you actually listen to what I just said, he's very specifically talking about violent criminals.
And of course, the big kicker there is he says, subject, of course, to liability when they are in error.
Now, I actually think in many ways, short of abolishing the police and privatizing everything, that's kind of the best libertarian solution.
If you have violent criminals and you need instant justice, you need cops there who are going to stop violent criminals.
Now, the funny thing about it is that I would never, I don't think any libertarians would ever say, like, you know, if a cop is arresting a murderer, they'd be like, well, that's unlibertarian to support a cop arresting a murderer.
I mean, like, no, of course not.
That has to be done.
So if we're talking about violent crimes, which he clearly lays out, we're not talking about victimless white collar crimes that shouldn't be crimes.
We're talking about murderers and rapists and thieves, that cops should clean that shit up.
And also, that they should be subject to liability when they are in error.
So I, to me, even though this is viewed as such a controversial statement, I don't really see anything wrong with it.
And I think it's completely reasonable for libertarians to support that, particularly in the face of what we're seeing in the streets right now.
But again, I will grant that that last sentence that he says is really important.
Subject to liability, of course, when they're wrong.
And that's interesting that it gets into almost like the qualified immunity point and the idea that cops should not have immunity or impunity to commit these crimes when they're wrong.
They need to be punished for that, which in my opinion would clean up a lot of them being wrong if they were just incentivized not to.
Okay, and here's number five.
This is also another controversial one.
Number five, take back the streets, get rid of the bums.
Again, unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants.
Where will they go?
Who cares?
Hopefully, they will disappear.
That is, move from the ranks of the petted and coseted bum class to the ranks of the productive members of society.
Now, that's another one that gets a lot of controversy because he is saying now that cops should essentially clear out bums from the streets.
And it's interesting.
So, like, I've read this article several times.
I just went back and read it the other day.
And it's like what I can't help but think of through all of this.
It's amazing.
Like, even if you hate this article, which many libertarians do, they just despise what Rothbard wrote here.
I just feel like you'd have to admit that, like, man, so much of the shit he's talking about is really relevant today.
Like, we have a sitting president who ran on a right-wing populist message.
And this one, where he's talking about the homeless people, I mean, maybe this is just what I'm thinking of, but literally, my neighborhood for the last three years and for I had lived in the Upper West Side before that has, I don't know, you've, did we talk about this, or you've seen what's going on with the Upper West Side, right?
Where the city has basically rented out these hotels and turned them into homeless shelters in the middle of this neighborhood that's a family neighborhood, and there's homeless people all over the streets.
And it's a problem.
And Rothbard here is saying that cops should basically remove, clear the streets of homeless people.
Now, this gets to be for sure a sticking point for libertarians because now what you're talking about is not just rapists and murderers and violent criminals.
You're talking about people who essentially are, I mean, not always, certainly there are crimes associated with them, but just being homeless and sitting on a public street is not itself an act of aggression.
And he's saying that cops should be clearing them out.
And I got to say, I'm pretty sympathetic to this Murray Rothbard argument.
And the way I look at it is like libertarians, and this is the difference between kind of like the what Hoppe called the la-la libertarians or the, you know, the Lolbertarians or whatever people call them, the kind of left-wing libertarians who are like, the libertarian position is, hey, man, you can do whatever you want to do.
Like if you want to shit yourself and sit on the street and beg for money, that's your freedom.
And if you want to go and get a job and be a traditional, you know, Christian or something, that's your freedom.
And to me, as an ANCAP, I see things a little bit differently.
My position is that everything should be privatized and property owners should be allowed to make decisions on their property.
And in private property, if there were homeless people coming in and sitting there and driving the property value down and just like making like a horrible scene for all of these families there, and the property owner said, we want you out and I'm going to clear the streets of you, that would be completely fine and legitimate and probably would happen in an ANCAP society.
And so we have a problem now where there's these public streets and this public police force and all of this, but it doesn't seem like it's one of these things where, okay, if the government clears out the homeless people, that is the government doing something.
But if the government, you know, rents out hotels and invites all of these homeless people in, that is also the government doing something.
I mean, that's not libertarian either.
And there have been stories, I mean, the people in the Upper West Side right now are like up in arms.
They're furious about this.
I'm furious about this and I don't even live there anymore.
But it's just like, you know, so you just have to walk down the street with your kids and see homeless guys jerking off and shooting up heroin.
And that's, you're not allowed to do anything about that.
In fact, the government's going to encourage it.
I don't know.
I think since the government's doing something either way, I'm actually much more comfortable with what they're doing being removing the drug addicts from the streets where kids play.
I don't know.
What are your thoughts on that?
I don't know.
You need some sort of a standard.
Like if the government, it's what you're describing of its private, like if they're saying they're going to have public roads and they're going to maintain the public roads, they have to actually do so.
It's this quasi-gray area, and that's what's leading to chaos and ramping up violence.
I just, I hate these gray areas that government creates when it goes, hey, we're going to take care of this job.
And then they don't really do it.
Like, I don't know, what can I say?
It's my years, my couple years in Talmud school.
Those Jews thought through every single scenario you could possibly think of when it comes to every single law and they debated the hell out of it and it's all in the books.
And if for some reason you came up with some wacky case that they didn't think through, they were happy to sit through and think through it.
So when it comes to really everyday stuff, which is, believe me, not as loony as the stupid real estate zoning Jew laws.
And like, I can't even tell you the freaking casework that we worked through and all the lunacy of it.
It'd be unlike whether or not someone, whatever.
I don't have to get into even examples, but it was loony talk.
And then you've got examples of people in public squares shooting each other.
And it's a gray area of who's supposed to maintain it.
What kind of a weapon you're allowed to have?
Who's allowed to protect the property?
Is this guy a trespasser if there's no threat?
Like, none of this should be gray area.
This stuff should be worked out to a T. There should be legal scholars working this out to a T. Whether or not cops, like the fact that cops, for example, can choose not to do their job and protect you and aren't held accountable.
That makes no sense.
Like there's just so many standards here that make no sense.
So it's as simple as if government's going to step in and say, we're going to maintain this, they have to maintain it.
And we have to work out every single situation that there is no gray area.
There's no, hey, who's supposed to be taking care of it?
That whole thing, it doesn't make sense.
And it's just like a little blunder on all of humanity that's just eroding value all the time and leaves everybody not taking action because they think someone else is supposed to.
So in that regard, I just agree with him.
It's like, if we're going to, listen, even in a libertarian society, the fundamental value is going to be protection of private property.
So if we go, hey, listen, in the current climate, I can't convince the world that private forces can take care of that.
And we currently have this thing called the cops.
But at the end of the day, we're going to need civility or we're going to need someone to protect private property.
So this is the current institution.
How do I at least ensure they're doing that fundamental thing that all society is based upon?
And so Rothbard's framework here is essentially: one, they have to actually maintain the public square, which means you can't have people taking down the property value or creating an environment for, you know, that's going to attract criminals or make it unpleasant for everyday people to live.
Two, cops need to be held to the same standard as anyone else if they're messing up.
And so you've got, even though I don't think his language is here would necessarily sell people to the value of the ideas he's putting forward, he's got a pretty decent framework here.
Yeah, so I tend to agree with you on that.
And I think the thing that's important to keep in mind, right, is that Rothbard is not like in this piece.
He's not speaking to the left.
He's speaking to the right and trying to convince them of this program.
And so like, I agree with you.
There would be some people who are turned off by this.
And obviously, there are.
The left libertarians are very turned off by this.
But I also, I agree with it 100%.
And I agree with what you just said.
This is why I'm an ANCAP, because there are all of these problems that are created by public land and public roads and government ownership.
It's the only situation where you find yourself in the situation that you detailed just there, where it's like, well, who the hell is supposed to be controlling this and who's doing this?
But I don't think it's true, or I don't think it's libertarian, that the answer is like, well, you just have to accept that.
You just have to accept that there's people shooting up heroin in the middle of a street of a beautiful neighborhood with nice families living there.
I just, I don't buy that at all.
I do think that even in speaking to these other groups, and I don't have a perfect example off the top of my head, but in the same way we've criticized Joe Jurgenson about using the language like Black Lives Matter, there are things that we agree with even the far left on, but you've got to educate them on our principles and values.
And I think that's true about the right here, that even if we have a similar framework, you have to educate them onto our principles and as to why these are good ways of enforcing our principles.
So that's actually a really good point.
And I think that can kind of take us into more or less like the conclusion that I draw from Murray Rothbard's case for right-wing populism.
I personally, I think that right now, the strategy that libertarians should embark on is not the same as this strategy.
And I agree with a lot of the points you're making.
I think that actually the Scott Horton idea of you need to attack the left from the left and attack the right from the right.
I think we should have a strategy of populism, both left and right.
I think we live in a populist moment in the country right now, and we should be able to talk to both of them.
But to your point that you were just saying, and this is actually a point Rothbard makes in the article, what we need to do is kind of embrace that populism, you know, understand where their frustrations are and speak to them, and then always be guiding it back to our philosophy and why the solution to all of these problems is liberty.
That's kind of what it is.
So like what you said, always then trying to kind of educate people on, okay, and this is why we believe what we believe here.
Now, I don't, so Rothbard and Hoppe, and this is later Hoppe, by the way, I should just say this strategy, this like paleo strategy thing, it only lasted for like a couple years and then the whole thing fell apart.
And actually it was Hoppe, I believe, who fucking ended it when he was furious with the direction that Pat Buchanan was going and some of the paleocons were going.
Why Pure Principles Failed00:05:41
And he was really furious about their economics because they were like protectionist and didn't believe in free trade and got too into like government central planning and things.
And Hoppe actually called them essentially Nazis.
I mean, he didn't call them Nazis in the sense of like the way a screeching left-winger calls people Nazis today, like where it's kind of like, you're basically, you know, you basically support genocide or something like that.
Like he's not like an idiot like that.
What he was saying was he goes, you're basically embarking on the economics of national socialism is what you're getting into.
And we can't have any part of this.
Rothbard disavowed the whole thing before he died.
There was a falling out and the whole thing stopped.
So the strategy itself didn't work.
And it's good to be critical of any strategy that didn't work.
That being said, what libertarian strategy would have worked in 1991, there probably wasn't really any.
All of the strategies failed.
The Cato strategy, the Hayek strategy, the Rothbard strategy, they all failed.
But it's interesting to see what we can learn from each.
And then the Ron Paul strategy was basically the best that libertarians have ever had.
And what Ron Paul did was basically speak in a language of love, in a language of liberty, not turn off people on the left from what you're talking about with this kind of harsh Rothbardian clean out the bums talk.
But at the same time, by Ron Paul, being a social conservative and speaking to a lot of the right-wing populist issues, was able to build up the biggest movement that we've ever seen for liberty.
So, what I would say, right, is that my thing is, I don't think it's as simple in 2020 when we have the internet and we can reach all of these different people.
I don't have to, you know, focus on I'm writing for like a right-wing publication, and so I'm talking to right-wing people.
I can do what I'm doing right now and talk to right-wing people, then go on Jimmy Door's show and talk to left-wing people that have left-wingers, right-wingers, have all of them in and stay true to what our beliefs are, which is like being against the state and pro-market and pro-freedom and non-aggression principle and all that shit.
However, I do think that the point that Hoppe has made in recent years is not without merit.
And his point is basically that he basically says that you have to realize that probably people who are more socially conservative and people who are more, as Hoppe would put it, like the kind of straight white male, family, Christian, heteronormative, you know, whatever world are going to be more,
we're going to be more successful talking to that group than we are talking to other groups who are privileged by the current system that we live in.
So, his thing is that, you know, I forget exactly how he said it, but it was something like, you know, if you're talking to like, you know, a black Muslim lesbian woman, she's probably going to be less likely to reject intersectionality than some straight white man who's like into family values and things like that.
Like, he's probably going to be more open to the message of freedom and capitalism and things like that, where she's probably not.
Now, my thing is, I go, talk to all of them.
Talk to both of them.
Try to see.
You never know.
And even Hoppe says that doesn't mean we should be exclusively talking to this group.
But it is worth noting for libertarians that white men do seem to be the overwhelming majority of libertarians.
By the way, even the loser brigade, left libertarians who like come after me and Tom Woods, they're dominantly white men or vast majority of them are white men.
So my listen, my conclusion from all of this is not that we should only be targeting that group.
I think that's stupid.
I think you target every group you can and you try your best not to turn off any group while staying pure to your principles.
If staying pure to your principles turns off a group, then so be it.
That's just, you're not going to compromise that.
But you try your best to target everyone.
But the point with the Joe Jorgensen stuff and all of that is that what you definitely damn sure don't want to do is turn off the group that is your best chance, the group where you're most likely to draw people in.
That you, you first priority is you don't want to alienate them needlessly.
And that's part of the reason why I think tweeting, we must be, you can't just not be racist, you must be anti-racist shit like that is stupid because you're turning off the group that you're probably most likely to have success with.
That's more or less what I take from all of this.
I think that if you actually read the Rothbard article, there's nothing horrible in it.
There's nothing racist in it.
It's not this evil thing that a lot of people make it out to be.
I think he's thinking through strategy.
He gets a lot of shit right.
It's probably not completely perfect.
The strategy in 2020 shouldn't be exactly what the strategy in 1991 was.
But I think if you give it a reasonably generous interpretation, he's just talking about how we can actually move from where we are now to a libertarian society.
And I think we should learn from that and build upon it.
But I do think that today, in today's current climate right now, that opposing the, like I've been saying for months, opposing the lockdowns, opposing the riots, opposing the violence, this is a clear strategy for libertarian populism.
Final Thoughts On Libertarianism00:00:24
And I think that's libertarian populism, not right populism or left populism, is probably our best bet going forward.
So that's what I'd say about that.
Any final thoughts, Mr. Bernstein?
No, I think a lot of food for thought.
Interesting stuff.
All right, very good.
That's what I like to hear.
All right, that's our show for today.
We will be back on Wednesday with a brand new episode.