That goes for simply accepting as truth everything said by Mr. Kinsella. My advice is that you be more careful about labelling someone a liar based on one person’s heavily edited extracts from personal correspondence to which you have no access.

Finally, how can someone both be in a cult and depart from the ideas of the person for whom the cult was named? It seems that it’s not all that hard to do. It starts with calling oneself a “Misesian” (or a “Marxist,” or a “Rothbardian,” or a “Randian,” or a “Jonesian,” or whatever). That requires a commitment to ideas of one person, rather than following your own reason and considering evidence. Then one spends one’s time combing over the sacred texts, the only keys to truth. But often it doesn’t stop there. For the new prophet arrives, who teaches the truer version of that truth, while others have fallen away: say, Hans-Herman Hoppe, who has “proven” that merely to open your mouth to contradict him is to affirm what he believes, and therefore to contradict yourself. Presto! A new prophet. Moreover, by using the works of the original great thinker to draw people in (and anyone who has learned from a book by Mises and done a google search lands at some time on the Rockwell virtual real estate), the cult leaders can enlist the gullible (and you have shown yourself as easily gulled, Mr. Heinrich) in whatever spooky causes they may also have, such as whitewashing the slave-holding Confederacy, or, oh, “physically removing and exiling from society” (see above for the whole statement and the precise translation) those whom Messrs. Hoppe and Rockwell believe cannot be tolerated.

But it’s time to close this thread off. It’s too long to read as it is. If anyone, however, desperately believes that he or she has something to add, email me and if it’s new, I’ll post it. Mr. Hoppe’s defenders have certainly had their chance to offer a vigorous defense. (There is no comment section at lewrockwell.com or at antiwar.com, where people might defend themselves from the outrageous claims or distortions served up by Rockwell, Raimondo, and their merry band of kooks and crackpots.)

So for anyone who has read this far — or skipped to the end, I hope that you will think about the matters raised here and make up your own mind. Do you want to be associated with people who are so happy to embrace the sorts of characters and causes described above? If you are interested in learning more about those persons and causes, take a little trip through The Fever Swamp: http://www.tomgpalmer.com/arch....._swamp.php Think about it. And then make up your own mind.

Bis zum n��?���¤chsten Mal!

That’s nonsense. They weren’t seceding to preserve slavery. They were seceding primarily because of economic reasons (tariffs). Slavery was ended peacefully everywhere in Europe, why no the US?

It is quite remarkable that anyone here could buy the non-sense about the LvMI. Any fair-minded person would take a look at some of the great work on Mises.org, and conclude the stuff here is ridiculous.

He then says “Slavery and serfdom were abolished by political action dictated by the spirit of the much-abused laissez faire, laissez passer ideology.” (Human Action, LVMI Sholar’s Edition, pp. 627-8)

Conflating any sort of apology for Southern secession with Mises’ love of freedom is wrong. No state or person has the right to secede in order to preserve slavery.

By this logic, I and 1000 friends could declare everyone else in Montana slaves and secede from the union. That would be a legitimate act of secession? Are you not aware that slaves outnumbered free people in South Carolina by about 100,000 in 1860?

http://www.civilwarhome.com/population1860.htm

2. Luwig von Mises *was* clearly an advocate of secession. Your quibbling non-sense about S. Carolina doesn’t refute that. The only answer to that would be that those in S. Carolina who didn’t agree, should *secede* from S. Carolina itself. I was merely pointing out that there is nothing counter-Mises about looking fondly on secession. He rightly saw it as a good thing, and so should we. Indeed, Hoppe showed that he might even be sympathethic, although skepitcal, of unlimited secession.

3. Furthermore, my point was also that Mises was a warrior for liberty. Decentralization and secession are one thing promoting that, all the ridiculous BS about the Civil War being a “war to end slavery” aside (it was no such thing, and there’s no reason why ending slavery required the murder of more than 600,000 Americans).

There is nothing shady about applying Austrian insights on economics to a study of history. As anyone reading DiLorenzo should know, Lincoln’s reign as dictator seems to provide ample opportunity to highlight economic fallacy and despotism.

4. Tom Palmer continues to lie about the point of Stephan Kinsella’s quote from Mises on unemployment. Kinsella’s point was not that “Mises said it, therefore it must be true”. His point was that it is difficult to call Hoppe an “embarassment to Austrian economics” if Mises held the same view, unless you also want to call Mises an “embarassment to Austrian economics”.

In any event, Palmer can’t seem to get his story straight. He seems to randomly oscilate between, “they’re unloyal to the ideas of Mises” and “they’re cultists who hold blindly follow Mises”. You can’t consistently make both claims at once. Of course, both claims are ridiculous. The reality is that students build on the work of their mentors, not hold it as sacrosanct.

5. Btw, there was an active discussion of the merits of Mises’ statement on the Mises Blog, started by myself: http://blog.mises.org/blog/archives/002545.asp

6. Regarding Justin Raimondo:

a. As usual, no references, no quotes, nothing. I assume, however, you are talking about this: http://antiwar.com/justin/ It seems, here, that Raimondo is attacking the Israeli State. What’s wrong with that? He’s also raising some questions about who benefits from terrorism. Aside from terrorists, the obvious answer is this: Statists. For example, 9/11 has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to the US government: it has allowed a great increase in State-power, and has benefitted G.W. Bush enormously.

b. Arguing that the State of Israel may have had foreknowledge of the London attacks hardly constitutes anti-Semitism.

c. It is difficult to argue for Justin Raimondo being a flaming anti-Semite when he’s written an entire biography (and a very positive one) on Murray N. Rothbard.

I leave others to judge the quality of the arguments offered in defense of JF and of Hoppe’s eagerness to make common cause with their rejection of “democracy.”

And regarding Mises on secession, the response is sadly inadquate. One can dispense with it fairly easily: 1) Admit that when “the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time” they should be free to do so; 2) Ask whether that applies to the people of South Carolina, half of whom were not asked in any kind of plebescite what their views were, since they were enslaved and not allowed to vote, to speak their minds, to leave, or to do anything not approved by their “owners.” To apply Mises’s criterion to the South Carolina resolution to secede, such persons would have to be considered non-persons. I disagree with the answer given to that question by the eager defenders of South Carolina’s decision to secede. The attempt to connect the remarks of Ludwig von Mises concerning rights to secession to the utterly bizarre fetish of the Rockwell people and the institute so sadly named after the great man is a failure. (And Mr. Heinrich, be careful of what you quote, since the quotation from my personal correspondence of a few years back with the odd Mr. Kinsella contains quite a few of those little dots [...]. The claim that in a free market all unemployment is voluntary is not a tenable thesis; insisting that it must be true because Mises said something that could be interpreted that way is mere evidence of cultishnes, and nothing more. My response was not, by the way, facetious.)

Mr. Heinrich’s attempt at a defense does not convince. Still, he’s done better than any of Hoppe’s other sad coterie of defenders, such as Justin Raimondo (the one who’s now insisting that the Jews were involved in the London bombings — just another little thing add to the list of things that must be explained away, of course). At the end of the day, why would any decent person want to associate with such a crowd?

1. Firstly, and most importantly, I again restate that this is all nothing more than meaningless fallacy, namely guilt by association. This applies both to Palmer’s comments and to those by Steele. Having read the work of Rothbard and Hoppe, there is nothing racist or fascist in them. No quotes have been provided from the work of Rothbard or Hoppe that show, in any way, that either has such tendencies. It is ridiculous to think such, given the advocacy of each for liberty and private property.

2. I posted the remark by Gottfried to voice the response of the accused; incidentally, he wrote that *after* he’d read the stuff on this site. His hostile remark is understandable.

3. Regarding to Junge Freiheit, I refer to Patrick’s statement:

QUOTE:
“there are 16 different “offices” and only one of them has critized the Junge Freiheit. The only “office” which has done so is located in and responsible for the most socialist German state, which has been governed by the SPD”

Also, Gottfried (in the quote I provided) noted that the German court over-threw that 1 office’s decision.

4. Palmer then engages in a *non-sequitar*, claiming that because, in making a point about Prof. Hoppe being interviewed by JH, Patrick said he’d be willing to talk to a communist paper (and that wouldn’t make him a communist). Patrick’s point was that *even if* JH was a paper with fascist-leanings, that wouldn’t make anyone who’s interviewed there a fascist. It was not, as Palmer equivocatingly states, an admission that JH is a fascist paper.

That is, briefly summarized, Patrick’s argument is that:

a. JH is not a fascist paper.
b. Even *IF* it were, it does not follow from that that anyone granting JH an interview is a fascist.

That is, Patrick has engaged in a “layered” argument, or a fallback strategy. From this, Palmer tries to draw the conclusion taht Patrick’s “admitting that” JH is a fascist paper. This is complete non-sense, and I think Palmer knows it.

5. Palmer continues repeating the assertion that the work published by the LvMI is “an embarassment”. In particular, he thinks Hoppe’s work is “an embarassment”. At one point in the past, he argued that Prof. Hoppe’s claim that “on a free market, all unemployment is voluntary” was an embarassment to Austrian economists. Stephan Kinsella responded by quoting a statement of Ludwig von Mises saying the same thing. Palmer then facetuously accused Kinsella of an “appeal to authority” (http://tinyurl.com/ba5e4) Also, in that regards, see *The Ludwig von Mises Legacy: A Reality Check* by J.H. Huebert (http://tinyurl.com/d6kjz).

6. Regarding the study of the Civil War, this is perfectly legitimate for Austrians. Scholars like DiLorenzo and Woods have produced excellent historical scholarship, applying unique Austrian insights and using libertarian judgement to (rightly) cast history as a struggle of liberty against tyranny. Mises was more than just an economist. He was a warrior for liberty, peace, and truth. Part of the war against tyranny involves over-turning common deceptions about the past. That is, historical revisionism, as Rothbard practiced and advocated (_Conceived in Liberty_ is Rothbard’s history of the colonial period). Also, regarding secession, Mises was a great proponent of it:

QUOTE:
Liberalism knows no conquests, no annexations; just as it is indifferent towards the state itself, so the problem of the size of the state is unimportant to it. It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state. Whoever wants to emigrate is not held back. When a part of the people of the state wants to drop out of the union, liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so. The nation as an organic entity can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states; the world as a whole can neither win nor lose from them.
Nation, State, and Economy: 2. Militant or Imperialistic Nationalism. http://www.mises.org/nsande/pt1iich2~a.asp

QUOTE:
The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.
Liberalism: 3. Liberal Foreign Policy: 2. The Right of Self-Determination
http://www.mises.org/liberal/ch3sec2.asp

As Hoppe notes,

QUOTE:
——
“The objections Mises has against unlimited secession are solely technical in nature (economies of scale, etc.). Thus, for instance Mises admits having difficulty imagining “in a nationally mixed city to create two police forces, perhaps a German and a Czech, each of which could take action only against members of its own nationality.” _Nation, State, and Economy” p53. On the other hand, Mises notes that

quote:
‘the political ideas of modern times allow the continued existence of a small state to appear rather more secure today than in earlier centuries…There can be no question of a test of economic self-sufficiency in the formation of states at a time when the division of labor embraces broad stretches of land, whole continents, indeed the whole world. It does not matter whether the inhabitants of a state meet their needs directly or indirectly by production at home; what is important is only that they can meet them at all…Even at the time when the state structure was unified, they [seceding inhabitants] did not obtain [their imported] goods for nothing but only for value supplied in return, and this value in return does not become greater when the political community has fallen apart…The size of a state’s territory therefore does not matter.’ (pp. 81-82)”
——
Hoppe. Democracy: The God That Failed. p80 footnote.

1. Firstly, and most importantly, I again restate that this is all nothing more than meaningless fallacy, namely guilt by association. This applies both to Palmer’s comments and to those by Steele. Having read the work of Rothbard and Hoppe, there is nothing racist or fascist in them. No quotes have been provided from the work of Rothbard or Hoppe that show, in any way, that either has such tendencies. It is ridiculous to think such, given the advocacy of each for liberty and private property.

2. I posted the remark by Gottfried to voice the response of the accused; incidentally, he wrote that *after* he’d read the stuff on this site. His hostile remark is understandable.

3. Regarding to Junge Freiheit, I refer to Patrick’s statement:

QUOTE:
“there are 16 different “offices” and only one of them has critized the Junge Freiheit. The only “office” which has done so is located in and responsible for the most socialist German state, which has been governed by the SPD”

Also, Gottfried (in the quote I provided) noted that the German court over-threw that 1 office’s decision.

4. Palmer then engages in a *non-sequitar*, claiming that because, in making a point about Prof. Hoppe being interviewed by JH, Patrick said he’d be willing to talk to a communist paper (and that wouldn’t make him a communist). Patrick’s point was that *even if* JH was a paper with fascist-leanings, that wouldn’t make anyone who’s interviewed there a fascist. It was not, as Palmer equivocatingly states, an admission that JH is a fascist paper.

That is, briefly summarized, Patrick’s argument is that:

a. JH is not a fascist paper.
b. Even *IF* it were, it does not follow from that that anyone granting JH an interview is a fascist.

That is, Patrick has engaged in a “layered” argument, or a fallback strategy. From this, Palmer tries to draw the conclusion taht Patrick’s “admitting that” JH is a fascist paper. This is complete non-sense, and I think Palmer knows it.

5. Palmer continues repeating the assertion that the work published by the LvMI is “an embarassment”. In particular, he thinks Hoppe’s work is “an embarassment”. At one point in the past, he argued that Prof. Hoppe’s claim that “on a free market, all unemployment is voluntary” was an embarassment to Austrian economists. Stephan Kinsella responded by quoting a statement of Ludwig von Mises saying the same thing. Palmer then facetuously accused Kinsella of an “appeal to authority” (http://tinyurl.com/ba5e4) Also, in that regards, see *The Ludwig von Mises Legacy: A Reality Check* by J.H. Huebert (http://tinyurl.com/d6kjz).

6. Regarding the study of the Civil War, this is perfectly legitimate for Austrians. Scholars like DiLorenzo and Woods have produced excellent historical scholarship, applying unique Austrian insights and using libertarian judgement to (rightly) cast history as a struggle of liberty against tyranny. Mises was more than just an economist. He was a warrior for liberty, peace, and truth. Part of the war against tyranny involves over-turning common deceptions about the past. That is, historical revisionism, as Rothbard practiced and advocated (_Conceived in Liberty_ is Rothbard’s history of the colonial period). Also, regarding secession, Mises was a great proponent of it:

QUOTE:
Liberalism knows no conquests, no annexations; just as it is indifferent towards the state itself, so the problem of the size of the state is unimportant to it. It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state. Whoever wants to emigrate is not held back. When a part of the people of the state wants to drop out of the union, liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so. The nation as an organic entity can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states; the world as a whole can neither win nor lose from them.
Nation, State, and Economy: 2. Militant or Imperialistic Nationalism. http://www.mises.org/nsande/pt1iich2~a.asp

QUOTE:
The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.
Liberalism: 3. Liberal Foreign Policy: 2. The Right of Self-Determination
http://www.mises.org/liberal/ch3sec2.asp

As Hoppe notes,

QUOTE:
——
“The objections Mises has against unlimited secession are solely technical in nature (economies of scale, etc.). Thus, for instance Mises admits having difficulty imagining “in a nationally mixed city to create two police forces, perhaps a German and a Czech, each of which could take action only against members of its own nationality.” _Nation, State, and Economy” p53. On the other hand, Mises notes that

quote:
‘the political ideas of modern times allow the continued existence of a small state to appear rather more secure today than in earlier centuries…There can be no question of a test of economic self-sufficiency in the formation of states at a time when the division of labor embraces broad stretches of land, whole continents, indeed the whole world. It does not matter whether the inhabitants of a state meet their needs directly or indirectly by production at home; what is important is only that they can meet them at all…Even at the time when the state structure was unified, they [seceding inhabitants] did not obtain [their imported] goods for nothing but only for value supplied in return, and this value in return does not become greater when the political community has fallen apart…The size of a state’s territory therefore does not matter.’ (pp. 81-82)”
——
Hoppe. Democracy: The God That Failed. p80 footnote.

First, Mr. Heinrich refers to Paul Gottfried as “the slandered.” Then he posts a remark in which Mr. Gottfried denounces “the nonsense that Palmer has been frenetically spouting– presumably while under the influence.” That’s rather telling in regard to his standards. His earlier reference to “self-appointed victims of the holocaust” was even more telling; the Zwangsarbeiter who were liberated from the camps were not “self-appointed victims,” they were appointed victims by the National Socialist state. What kind of person would write such a thing? Ugh. And, please, the description of the Verfassungsschutz as “ultra-leftist” is over the top, as were JustinRaimondo/Clement’s claims that it is a Stasi (i.e., Communist East German Security Service) front. It is, moreover, a diversion from the question of what they believe and what they promote, and what they promote is illiberal and anti-libertarian.

Patrick (posting at July 8, 2005 09:04 AM) also makes some assertions, including that the Junge Freiheit should have the right to publish what they want (agreed), that “I’m sure that the Junge Freiheit is far more “moderate and liberal” than Newt Gingrich, Patrick Buchanan and the American Christian Right.,” and so on. The thread of his argument is rather tangled. Yes, they have the right to freedom of speech, but that doesn’t make their views palatable or acceptable in polite company. That they might be more moderate than Gingrich, Buchanan, and “the American Christian Right,” is laughable (unless you have an unusual definition of the last term). I don’t think that Gingrich and Buchanan (smart guys for whose views I have little sympathy, just as I’m sure they have great antipathy for each other) are really interested in spreading the lies and distortions of David Irving, loudly deny that the holocaust happened while filling their lives with Nazi memorabilia, and so on. But stranger still is the claim that the JF interviews union activists and Greens, it’s just an open forum without any agenda, and anyway, if you want to reach people, why not, and you know, so maybe they are kind of fascist-oriented, but gosh, how do you change the minds of such people if you don’t talk to them? “:I would be willing to talk to a comunist paper which sure wouldn’t turn me into a comunist. If you want to spread out your opinion you should not only talk to people who already share your views. Do you seriously think that liberals should only talk to other liberals?” That is an admission that JF is not in fact like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (which interview lots of people and run op-eds and letters from many viewpoints), but is in fact a paper with a clear agenda, and that agenda is….well, the closest that Patrick can say is “politically incorrect,” but what does that mean in context? It means denial of the holocaust, whitewashing of the German past, a desire to revise Germany’s borders, and on and on and on. And we know what that is. JF is not “politically incorrect” in the sense that “The Onion” or the “National Lampoon” are politically incorrect; JF actively promotes an agenda of rehabilitation of Germany’s past (say, starting in 1933…), revising the borders of Europe, kicking out foreign trash, etc., etc.

I’m afraid that Patrick let out more than he intended. (And on the basis of that, Mr. Heinrich thanked him for “the sanity.”)

I’ll let others judge the quality of the scholarship associated with Mr. Rockwell’s enterprises. The fact is that it varies and I could not properly characterize all of it. A great deal that is hailed as brilliant is in fact an embarrassment, but is mixed in with reprints of works that are excellent or with invited papers by scholars unaware of the strange political fetishes of Lew Rockwell. My concern has been that the ideas of “Austrian economics” are associated with Rockwellian causes that have no affinity with the ideas of the Austrian economists. When I asked why the cause of the Confederacy was somehow deeply associated with the ideas of a group of Viennese economists about monetary policy, trade cycles, and similar topics, another Rockwell disciple replied hotly that out of 36 papers at the last “Austrian Scholars Conference,” only 9 were about the Confederacy. Um, right.

(Also, if you haven’t selected courses yet, take the Int’l Econ — it’s one place where the neoclassicals have done good work.)

The one thing all of these allegations against those affiliated or associated with the LvMI is this: no proof. No references. And when references are given (see Palmer above), the conclusion isn’t obviously what it’s stated to be, or they’re taken out of context. This is particularly so in regards to Prof. Hoppe’s discussion in _Democracy: The God That Failed_ on community covenant and expulsion.

As for Thomas Fleming, all that we have is an assertion. Perhaps you could refer to something in his published work — which, to my knowledge, is largely excellent, including works such as _The New Dealers’ War_ — that would be meaningful. Hearsay is not.

The one thing all of these allegations against those affiliated or associated with the LvMI is this: no proof. No references. And when references are given (see Palmer above), the conclusion isn’t obviously what it’s stated to be, or they’re taken out of context. This is particularly so in regards to Prof. Hoppe’s discussion in _Democracy: The God That Failed_ on community covenant and expulsion.

As for Thomas Fleming, all that we have is an assertion. Perhaps you could refer to something in his published work — which, to my knowledge, is largely excellent, including works such as _The New Dealers’ War_ — that would be meaningful. Hearsay is not.

I can’t say how “filled” LVMI is, but “allied with” is obvious. As just one example, I attended a joint LVMI-Rockford Institute conference some years back. The final addresses were given by Rothbard and Tom Fleming of Rockford. After Rothbard spoke of how refreshing it was to have finally purged the neolibertarians and neocons so that the paleolibs and paleocons could finally have real discussion. Then Fleming got up and stated that the one obvious conclusion of the conference was that individual rights doctrine is nonsense and that only white christian males should rule. Rothbard never let out a peep, even though he had ample opportunity.

Tom: I believe this is the 100th post on this thread… do I win anything?

I can’t say how “filled” LVMI is, but “allied with” is obvious. As just one example, I attended a joint LVMI-Rockford Institute conference some years back. The final addresses were given by Rothbard and Tom Fleming of Rockford. After Rothbard spoke of how refreshing it was to have finally purged the neolibertarians and neocons so that the paleolibs and paleocons could finally have real discussion. Then Fleming got up and stated that the one obvious conclusion of the conference was that individual rights doctrine is nonsense and that only white christian males should rule. Rothbard never let out a peep, even though he had ample opportunity.

Tom: I believe this is the 100th post on this thread… do I win anything?

These websites/organizations are not the same group. They are related. Lew Rockwell is the President of the Mises Institute. I’m not sure who Anti-War.com is run by. Each organization shares many common members, although it is not the same. LewRockwell.com is Rockwell’s personal blog, and it features anything he finds of interest, focusing on liberty, anti-statism, and pro-free-marketism. There are also occasionally personal advice columns on there, particularly by Burt Blumert (with regards to gold-investing) and Gary North (also gold investing, and some matters of personal finance). Although a libertarian website run by a supporter of the Austrian school, LRC features articles by non-libertarians and non-Austrians when they make interesting points (e.g., Chomsky).

Mises.org is funded by private donors. I do not believe their names are disclosed in some place on the website. You’d have to contact the LvMI about that. However, they only accept private donations, and not donations from the government or corporations. The LRC column is, however, listed as a publishing opportunity in Mises.org’s About webpage (http://tinyurl.com/bpunj). Whatever information they have on funding, that I know of, is available on their “Become a Member Page” (http://tinyurl.com/84zrj).