Block W. - Toward a Libertarian Society

I n his talk entitled Emulate Ron Paul delivered to the Alabama state convention of Young Americans for Liberty in Auburn, Alabama on April 6, 2013, Lew Rockwell mentioned five points. The first of them, the most important one in my view, was: The subject of war cannot, and should not, be avoided. In this regard Lew went on to say:

First and foremost, Ron is a critic of the warfare state. The war in Iraq, which was still a live issue when Ron first ran for the Republican nomination, had been sold to the public on the basis of lies that were transparent and insulting even by the US governments standards. The devastation in terms of deaths, maimings, displacement, and sheer destruction appalled every decent human being.

Yes, the Department of Education is an outrage, but it is nothing next to the horrifying images of what happened to the men, women, and children of Iraq. If he wasnt going to denounce such a clear moral evil, Ron thought, what was the point of being in public life at all?

Still, this is the issue strategists would have had him avoid. Just talk about the budget, talk about the greatness of America, talk about whatever everyone else was talking about, and youll be fine. And, they neglected to add, forgotten.

But had Ron shied away from this issue, there would have been no Ron Paul Revolution. It was his courageous refusal to back down from certain unspeakable truths about the American role in the world that caused Americans, and especially students, to sit up and take notice.

While still in his thirties, Murray Rothbard wrote privately that he was beginning to view war as the key to the whole libertarian business. Here is another way Ron Paul has been faithful to the Rothbardian tradition. Time after time, in interviews and public appearances, Ron has brought the questions posed to him back to the central issues of war and foreign policy.

Worried about the budget? You cant run an empire on the cheap. Concerned about TSA groping, or government eavesdropping, or cameras trained on you? These are the inevitable policies of a hegemon. In case after case, Ron pointed to the connection between an imperial policy abroad and abuses and outrages at home.

Inspired by Ron, libertarians began to challenge conservatives by reminding them that war, after all, is the ultimate government program. War has it all: propaganda, censorship, spying, crony contracts, money printing, skyrocketing spending, debt creation, central planning, hubris everything we associate with the worst interventions into the economy.

I have already contributed my love letter to Ron Paul in my 2012 book Yes to Ron Paul and Liberty; I mention this only to explain the organization of the present book. It has five sections: I. Foreign Policy, II. Economics, and III. Personal Liberties, and IV. Libertarian Theory. Of course, the five are interconnected. But, if I had to single one out, and I did, I would choose as first and foremost as did Rockwell, and Rothbard, foreign policy. War is the health of the state, said Randolph Bourne, and no words ever said are truer than those. War mongering has implications for economic policy; it is not for nothing that the government engages in debauchment of the currency: it helps them raise more funds than would otherwise be possible for their favorite pastime: throwing their weight around the world. It has implications for personal liberties, too. In no small part is the mischievous war on drugs a handmaiden of imperialism. I place the economics section second, since I tend to see the world more through those eye glasses than any other. The third section of the book focuses on personal liberties, surely an all important subject for all libertarians. The fourth section is about the medical issues that are needful of thought. The final section concerns the backbone of libertarian thought, its theories and core.

I thank Lew Rockwell for inviting me to put together a series of columns I wrote for LewRockwell.com over the years. I thank Stephan Kinsella and William Barnett II for their permission to include in this book essays I have co-authored with them, respectively.

Ron Paul, and Lew Rockwell for that matter, are hardly the only ones who have been faithful to the Rothbardian tradition. Murray, my friend for many years, my mentor, my teacher, my inspiration, has motivated an entire generation of libertarians, and Austrian economists, to promote the glorious Austro-libertarian philosophy. This book is in a small way devoted to that goal. This book is dedicated to the memory of that great man, Murray N. Rothbard.

Walter Block

New Orleans, 2014

9/11/01, 171

failure of FBI to protect against, 173

and gun control, 172

Abolitionists, 187, 189

Abortion, 18182

Adams, John, Quincy, 30

Aggression, 22, 24, 103, 160

as distinct from defense, 2425

Aggressor, 25

nation, 25

Anarcho-libertarian, See Libertarian

Animals. See Private property rights; hunt farms

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith), 53, 56

AIDS, 83, 143, 170

Airport security, 5962

Anarchy, State and Utopia (Nozick), 193, 196

Arbitration, private, 36

Army, standing, 174

Atlas Shrugged (Rand), 68, 168

Barrier to entry, 111

Becker, Gary, on incarceration of blacks, 132

Benevolence, 5253, 57, 70

Black market. See Drugs

Bourne, Randolph, on war is the health of the state, 16

Boxing 4748, 127, 138

Broken window fallacy, 83

Bush, George W. (President), 29, 32, 16668, 172, 174

compassionate conservatism, 166, 168

empire, 174

Business failures, 89

Capitalism, 53, 54, 6768, 71, 98, 111, 178

tends toward income equality, 57

Charities, 143, 166, 168

American Red Cross, 83, 140, 143, 17071

churches, 16768

donors, 166

faith-based initiatives, 166

non-profit organizations, 82

private, 167, 169

Salvation Army, government money means government control,16768

supported by Wal-Mart, 8283, 143

to Hurricane Katrina victims, 143

Coercion, 43, 46, 103

Competition, 49, 51, 61, 70

Confederacy, 3839, 187

Confederate states, 38, 18890

Constitution, 2728, 205

Counterfeiters, 65

Crime rate, 45

Currency. See Money

Danneskjld, Ragnar, 68, 101, 168

Death by Government (Rummel), 137

Death penalty, 19396

Defense, as distinct from aggression, 2425

Defensive violence, 22

Democracy, 199200

Democracy: The God that Failed (Hoppe), 199

Deontology, 67, 136

Discrimination, 18486

racial, 130

Drugs, 13132, 136

laws, 135

legalization, 131, 134, 137

black market sales not taxed, 131

See also Prohibition

Economics in One Lesson (Hazlitt), 204

Employee-employer relationship, 8889, 9496, 10102, 106, 110

Employment protection laws, 110

Employees, 96

Economic development, 5354, 74

Entrepreneurs, 51, 56, 70, 75, 80, 105

Environmentalism, 69, 71, 173

Alaska, 173

free market, 70

Ehrlich, Isaac, on executions, 194

Executions, 194, 198

due process for, 198

Farewell Address (George Washington), 30, 35, 174

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 66

hosted at Association of Private Enterprise Educators (APEE), 6668

Federal Reserve System, 65, 67, 111

Females. See Women

Feminism, 11517, 12127, 182

effect on boys, 122

glass ceiling, 123, 124

homemaking, 123

Take Our Daughters to Work Day, 121, 123

Fiat currency. See Money

Force, 30, 179, 190

Foreign policy, 35