Lew Rockwell | |
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Chairman of the Mises Institute | |
Assumed office October 1982 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Llewellyn Harrison Rockwell Jr. July 1, 1944 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Spouse | Mardelle Rockwell |
Education | Tufts University (BA) |
Website | www |
Part of a series on |
Anarcho-capitalism |
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This article is part of a series on |
Libertarianism in the United States |
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This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject , potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral.(May 2023) |
Llewellyn Harrison Rockwell Jr. (born July 1, 1944) is an American author, editor, and political consultant. A libertarian and a self-professed anarcho-capitalist, [1] he founded and is the chairman of the Mises Institute, a non-profit promoting the Austrian School of economics.
After graduating from university, Rockwell had jobs at the conservative Arlington House Publishers, the radical-right John Birch Society, and the traditionalist Hillsdale College. [2] [3] Reading the works of Murray Rothbard, who became his mentor, led Rockwell to become an ardent believer in Austrian economics and what he calls "libertarian anarchism". Rockwell was chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul from 1978 to 1982, and was a founding officer and former vice president at Ron Paul & Associates, which published political and investment-oriented newsletters bearing Paul's name. [4] [5] Racist and homophobic content in those newsletters became a controversy in Paul's later campaigns; Rockwell denied ghostwriting it but acknowledged a role in the promotion. [6] [7] Rockwell partnered with Rothbard in 1982 to found the Mises Institute in Alabama, where as of 2024 [update] , Rockwell still serves as chairman. [8]
Rockwell's website, LewRockwell.com, was launched in 1999. The website features articles about political philosophy, economics, and contemporary politics. The website's motto is "anti-war, anti-state, pro-market". Rockwell, his website and the Mises Institute have promoted neo-Confederate views. [9] [3] [10] [11]
Rockwell was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1944. After college,[ specify ] Rockwell worked at Arlington House publishers [ when? ] and became acquainted with the works of Ludwig von Mises. [12]
A former lifetime member of the radical-right John Birch Society, Rockwell worked in its Member's Monthly Message Department before resigning amid disputes with the society's leaders.[ when? ] [3] In the mid-1970s, Rockwell worked at the traditionalist Hillsdale College in fundraising and public relations. [12] [2]
Rockwell met the anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard in 1975 and credits Rothbard with convincing him to abandon minarchism and reject the state completely. [13] [12] In 1985, Rockwell was named a contributing editor to Conservative Digest. [14] Rockwell also served as Vice President of the Center for Libertarian Studies in Burlingame, California,[ when? ] which published the Rothbard-Rockwell Report. [15] Rockwell was closely associated with Rothbard until Rothbard's death in 1995.
Rockwell was Ron Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982 [16] [17] and was a consultant to Paul's 1988 Libertarian Party campaign for President of the United States. [18] He was vice-chair of the exploratory committee for Paul's run for the 1992 Republican Party nomination for president. [19]
Rockwell was a founding officer and former vice president at Ron Paul & Associates, [20] which was one of the publishers of a variety of political and investment-oriented newsletters bearing Paul's name. [4] [5]
In January 2008, during Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign, James Kirchick of The New Republic uncovered a collection of Ron Paul newsletters that contained "decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays." [5] [21] For instance, one issue approved of the slogan "Sodomy = Death" and said homosexuals suffering from HIV/AIDS "enjoy the pity and attention that comes with being sick". [5]
Most of the articles contained no bylines. [5] Numerous sources alleged that Rockwell had ghostwritten the controversial newsletters; [22] Rockwell is listed as "contributing editor" on physical copies of some newsletters [23] [24] and listed as sole Editor of the May 1988 "Ron Paul investment Newsletter". [25] Reason magazine reported that "a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists – including some still close to Paul" had identified Rockwell as the "chief ghostwriter" of the newsletters, [20] as did former Ron Paul Chief of Staff (1981–1985) John W. Robbins. [26]
Rockwell admitted to Kirchick that he was "involved in the promotion" of the newsletters and wrote the subscription letters but denied ghostwriting the articles. He said there were "seven or eight freelancers involved at various stages" of the newsletter's history and indicated another individual who had "left in unfortunate circumstances" and "is now long gone", but whom he did not identify, was in charge of editing and publishing the newsletters. [6] Rockwell has described discussion of the newsletters scandal as "hysterical smears aimed at political enemies." [27] Ron Paul himself repudiated the newsletters' content and said he was not involved in the daily operations of the newsletters or saw much of their content until years later. [22] In 2011, Paul's spokesperson Jesse Benton said that Paul had "taken moral responsibility because they appeared under his name and slipped through under his watch". [28]
In 1982, Rockwell founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and is chairman of the board. [29]
The Mises Institute published Rockwell's Speaking of Liberty, an anthology of editorials which were originally published on his website, along with transcripts from some of his speaking engagements. The institute hosted conferences on secession; [9] Rockwell wrote before a 1995 conference, "We'll explore what causes [secession] and how to promote it." [5]
Rothbard, Rockwell and others described their views as paleolibertarian to describe their cultural conservatism fused with their otherwise anti-statist beliefs. [13] [30] They forged a "paleo alliance" between paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives in the form of the John Randolph Club in 1989, which allied the Mises Institute and the paleoconservative Rockford Institute. [13] [31]
In a 2007 interview, Rockwell revealed he no longer considered himself a "paleolibertarian" and was "happy with the term libertarian." He explained "the term paleolibertarian became confused because of its association with paleoconservative, so it came to mean some sort of socially conservative libertarian, which wasn't the point at all...." [32]
Rockwell's website, LewRockwell.com, formed in 1999, features articles and blog entries by various columnists and writers. [13] Its motto is "anti-war, anti-state, pro-market". [33] There also is a weekly podcast called The Lew Rockwell Show. [34] As of March 2017 [update] , it was in the top 10,000 websites in the United States. [35] LewRockwell.com publishes articles questioning United States participation in World War II, opposing "economic fascism" and supporting Austrian economics and secessionism. [36] [ third-party source needed ] The website is primarily home to right-libertarian authors, although left-wing anti-war writers have been featured. [37] [ third-party source needed ] The academic Tanni Haas wrote in his 2011 book on political bloggers that of the 20 figures he interviewed, "none have more radical views" than Rockwell, whose avowed goal was to "do everything he can to undermine the state". [38]
Brian Doherty of Reason wrote that the site's "Mises Institute-associated writers" tend to emphasize the domestic and international fallout from government action. [39] Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg of National Review wrote that the site regularly hosts invective against icons of American mainstream conservatism, including National Review, The Weekly Standard , neoconservatives, and William F. Buckley Jr. [40] A writer in The American Conservative described the site as paleolibertarian and "an indispensable source" of news on Ron Paul. [41] The site published InfoWars articles by the conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson from 2011 to 2016. [42] The site has been criticized for presenting articles which advocate HIV/AIDS denialism, the view that HIV does not cause AIDS, [43] and the view that vaccines cause autism. [44]
Rockwell's paleolibertarian ideology, like Rothbard's in his later years, combines a right-libertarian theory of anarcho-capitalism based on natural rights with the cultural conservative values and concerns of paleoconservatism, and he identifies strongly with the modern Rothbardian tradition of Austrian economics. In politics, he advocates federalist or Anti-Federalist policies as means to achieve increasing degrees of freedom from central government and secession for the same political decentralist reasons. Rockwell has called environmentalism "an ideology as pitiless and Messianic as Marxism." [45] [ non-primary source needed ]
Rockwell is Catholic. [46] [ self-published source? ]
Anarcho-capitalism is an anti-statist, libertarian political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies, based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. An anarcho-capitalist philosophy extends the concept of ownership to include control of private property as part of the self, In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market, which they describe as a voluntary society involving the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society a system of private property would still exist, and would be enforced by private defense agencies and/or insurance companies that were selected by property owners, whose ownership rights or claims would be enforced by private defence agencies and/or insurance companies. These agencies or companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police, similar to a state apparatus. Some anarcho-capitalist authors have argued that slavery is compatible with anarcho-capitalist ideals.
Gary Kilgore North was an American writer, Austrian School economic historian, and leading figure in the Christian reconstructionist movement. North authored or coauthored over fifty books on topics including Reformed Protestant theology, economics, and history. He was an Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute.
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement, particularly its right-wing strands, and was a founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. He wrote over twenty books on political theory, history, economics, and other subjects.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a German-American academic associated with Austrian School economics, anarcho-capitalism, right-wing libertarianism, and opposition to democracy. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), senior fellow of the Mises Institute think tank, and the founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, or Mises Institute, is a nonprofit think tank headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, that is a center for Austrian economics, right-wing libertarian thought and the paleolibertarian and anarcho-capitalist movements in the United States. It is named after the economist Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) and promotes his version of heterodox Misesian Austrian economics.
Libertarian perspectives on foreign intervention started as a reaction to the Cold War mentality of military interventionism promoted by American conservatives, including William F. Buckley Jr., who supplanted Old Right non-interventionism.
Paleolibertarianism is a libertarian political activism strategy aimed at uniting libertarians and paleoconservatives. It was developed by American anarcho-capitalist theorists Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell in the American political context after the end of the Cold War. From 1989 to 1995, they sought to communicate libertarian notions of opposition to government intervention by using messages accessible to the working class and middle class people of the time. They combined libertarian free market views with the cultural conservatism of paleoconservatism, while also opposing protectionism. The strategy also embraced the paleoconservative reverence for tradition and religion. This approach, usually identified as right-wing populism, was intended to radicalize citizens against the state. The name they chose for this style of activism evoked the roots of modern libertarianism, hence the prefix paleo. That founding movement was American classical liberalism, which shared the anti-war and anti-New Deal sentiments of the Old Right in the first half of the 20th century. Paleolibertarianism is generally seen as a right-wing ideology.
Libertarian perspectives on political alliances vary greatly, with controversies among libertarians as to which alliances are acceptable or useful to the movement.
Jeffrey Albert Tucker is an American libertarian writer, publisher, entrepreneur and advocate of anarcho-capitalism and Bitcoin.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing equality before the law and civil rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice. Libertarians are often skeptical of or opposed to authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of Libertarianism. Scholars distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines. Libertarians of various schools were influenced by liberal ideas.
In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom, often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism. Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal; the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old Right and 19th-century libertarianism and American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner while rejecting the labor theory of value in favor of Austrian School economics and the subjective theory of value; the libertarianism developed in the 1970s by Robert Nozick and founded in American and European classical liberal traditions; and the libertarianism associated with the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971, including politicians such as David Nolan and Ron Paul.
Burton S. Blumert was the president of the Center for Libertarian Studies in Burlingame, California, co-founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, and the publisher of LewRockwell.com. In a career that spanned almost 50 years until his retirement in 2008, he bought and sold precious metals as the proprietor of Camino Coin Company.
Right-libertarianism, also known as libertarian capitalism, or right-wing libertarianism, is a libertarian political philosophy that supports capitalist property rights and defends market distribution of natural resources and private property. The term right-libertarianism is used to distinguish this class of views on the nature of property and capital from left-libertarianism, a type of libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to property and income. In contrast to socialist libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports free-market capitalism. Like most forms of libertarianism, it supports civil liberties, especially natural law, negative rights, the non-aggression principle, and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.
The Center for Libertarian Studies (CLS) was a libertarian and anarcho-capitalist oriented educational organization founded in 1976 by Murray Rothbard and Burton Blumert, which grew out of the Libertarian Scholars Conferences. That year, the conference was sponsored by industrialist and libertarian Charles Koch. It published the Journal of Libertarian Studies from 1977 to 2000, a newsletter, several monographs, and sponsors conferences, seminars, and symposia.
Conceived in Liberty is a five-volume narrative by Murray Rothbard on the history of the United States from the pre-colonial period through the American Revolution.
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto is a book by American economist and historian Murray Rothbard, in which the author promotes anarcho-capitalism. The work has been credited as an influence on modern libertarian thought and on part of the New Right.
Libertarian conservatism, also referred to as conservative libertarianism and conservatarianism, is a political and social philosophy that combines conservatism and libertarianism, representing the libertarian wing of conservatism and vice versa.
Walter Edward Block is an American Austrian School economist and anarcho-capitalist theorist. He was the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at the School of Business at Loyola University New Orleans and a former senior fellow of the non-profit think-tank Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
David Gordon is an American libertarian philosopher and intellectual historian influenced by Murray Rothbard's views of economics. He is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and is the editor of The Mises Review.
The Libertarian Party in the United States is composed of various factions, sometimes described as left and right, although many libertarians reject use of these terms to describe the political philosophy.
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)The site also features regular screeds about how Abraham Lincoln was a murderous war criminal, how the American military is a hotbed of criminal imperialism and murderous warmongering, and why Southern secession not only was honorable and noble but how it still is a viable option.In this article, Goldberg was responding to criticisms of another article he had written about the website.
[A] decade ago...Rockwell hoped to mobilize grassroots conservatives on behalf of anti-statism, during the Bush era he has detected a whiff of 'red-state fascism' among the Republican base. Other [LRC] writers prefer terms like 'neoconofascist'.