Jun

29

The Uncompromising Rothbard

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The Uncompromising Rothbard
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

This originally appeared in the September 2005 issue of The Free Market

There are many varieties of libertarianism alive in the world today, and they owe a great debt to the work of Ludwig von Mises. His top American student was Murray N. Rothbard, and Rothbardianism remains the center of its intellectual gravity, its primary muse and conscience, its strategic and moral core, and the focal point of debate even when its name is not acknowledged. The reason is that Rothbard forged a blend between Austrian economics and natural-rights political theory of the old liberal school to create a modern libertarianism, a political-economic-ideological system that proposes a once-and-for-all escape from the trappings of left and right and their central plans for how state power should be used. Libertarianism is the radical alternative that says state power is both unworkable and immoral. Read more