There’s been a lot of back and forth and many interesting points made, and so I’m going to close this thread off.

Thank you, Billy, for your comments. I regret that some may have read my final post comment above as an attack on “the people of Auburn,” which it certainly was not. I know and have worked with a few of the people you mention and I respect them. I was making an oblique reference to the remarks of Rockwell that Auburn had become “the new Vienna,” as if his presence there should be equated with the presence of such figures as Mach, Freud, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Neurath, Popper, Musil, Mises, Hayek, and others associated with the intellectual life of Vienna.

I would point out, however, that there is no “Cato – LvMI feud,” as was pointed out above (NotCrazy at August 20, 2008 3:40 PM). You cannot find any mention of the Mises Institute of Auburn, Alabama in any Cato publications. (You can find the Mises Institute of Minsk, Belarus, but they have been denounced by the Cultists in Auburn for opposing the dictator of Belarus, whom the Auburn Cultists hold in high esteem for being so tidy: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blo.....08051.html .) All one can find is my humble personal blog. That’s it. The occasional spare time writings of someone who cares about liberty and doesn’t like to see it dragged through the mud. But that’s it. To have a “feud” between two organizations, they both have to be fighting. But one isn’t.

For Anonymous, I should point out that the Hoppe comparison of Hitler to Stalin, with Hitler looking much better, because he didn’t kill his “own” (scare qutoes) people, overlooks that, in addition to ruining “the businesses and careers of hundreds of thousands of German citizen,” the National Socialists had set up forced labor camps for, well, for people who were not considered Germans. That is a bit more than ruining their businesses and careers. The mass program of total extermination, which Hoppe seems to consider a detail of the war, had not yet started, but the expropriations, the humiliations, the arrests, the deportations, and the slave labor were well underway. I recommend Goetz Aly’s books (and others) on the topic. Hoppe was papering over the crimes of the National Socialists, as you would expect from such a person, who is so close to extremist German neo-Nazis such as Junge Freiheit. (He told a Scandinavian friend of mine many years ago that my friend should be proud that his grandfather, who had cooperated with the Nazis, had done so, as that was the right thing to do at the time. My friend was horrified, as you can imagine.)

Lastly, “Francisco,” you have posted a great many posts in my comment sections, an infinite multiple of those that are allowed to be posted on Lew Rockwell’s site when he writes or posts really strange articles about me or about those with whom I work (or about anyone else whom they slime). And you’ve also posted really astonishingly bizarre remarks on other sites alleging various things (notably, that I had been “behind” the discovery of Ron Paul’s ugly newsletters, which was false, and that a part of that alleged involvement was having an affair of some sort with the journalist who did, all based on something you call “social networking theory”). So I have a limited tolerance for your personal quirks and obsessions; your strategy of posting long points over and over to make the comment section too long for people to wade through needs to be curtailed occasionally. I figured your strategy out, so from now on, if you post over two paragraphs at a time, I will just delete them.

As to the issue of lineage, get a grip. The abuse of Mrs. Mises by the Institute has been a subject of discussion for some years; she was an elegant lady who was very advanced in years and not actively involved in the activities of Rockwell, especially when he began to delve more deeply into the fever swamps of the extreme right, and then the weirdness of endorsing Eastern European post-Communist dictators. Chicago Student compares the issues you raise — quite rightly — to a matter of apostolic succession. That’s for religion, not for social science or political philosophy. I agree entirely. So why care about the name? Because it’s the name of a great man who would have recoiled in horror from the racism and bigotry there. His involvement in peripheral roles in various Austrian governments (partly to keep out the Nazis and really extremist anti-Semites — I hope you know at least a little of what happened at that time) is not comparable to being in favor of reviving the Confederacy, mocking Rosa Parks (yes, that was especially ugly. ( http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/026647.php )

So, Adios for now. I have a meeting shortly with some Malaysian libertarians. Cheers!

P.S. A quick correction to the anonymous comment posted at 2:46 PM: I did not refuse “to support immediate withdrawal from Iraq for several years.” I supported a clear withdrawal plan and said that articulating one, with clear deadlines, would be far better than just a mad dash to the exits. Ron Paul also supported a clear withdrawal plan, not merely a helter skelter retreat. Unfortunately, George Bush doesn’t ask my advice much, and our troops are still there. Once the elections were held and a new government set up, which was a responsibility of the US government under international law, the US should have begun its withdrawal. So, for a year, I called for the US to articulate a plan to withdraw. The commentator’s remark suggests I supported an occupation for several years, rather than that for a year I called for the US to set out a withdrawal plan. Those are two very, very different positions and the description given of my view is dishonest.

I live in Auburn and attend Auburn University am I am hardly a fan of the Mises’ Institute or the LRC but most of the ludicrous rantings about the Cato Institute come from the LRC website, not Mises.org. Both think tanks (rather, one think tank and a nut house) have mostly kept the feud away from the official websites.

Outside of the writings in Austrian economics, I believe you will find very few people in Auburn who actually agree with the writings and positions you find at LRC. The few scholars at Auburn who openly associate with the Mises Institute (Roger Garrison, Roderick Long, David Laband, etc.) only offer comment on economics or philosophy and Roderick Long has often served as a moderating voice in the Cato – LvMI feud.

Actually, you will only find one true Austrian (Roger Garrison) in Auburn’s entire economics departments, although, this may have to do with the idiotic decision of Auburn’s Board of Trustees to kill the PhD program.

“Also, GMU, I think it takes some degree of self delusion to suggest that either the Cato Institute or the Mises Institute is taken seriously in the real world. Our government in practice is so plainly removed from even the most basic principles of libertarian government that any libertarian organization’s quest for influence is automatically confined to the extreme periphery of the policy sphere.”

Devil his due, stopped clock and all that…

I wasn’t complaining about Murray Rothbard’s eccentricities. I do not care about these. I was complaining about Rothbard’s scholarship, which is largely a joke and became more of a joke as he aged. Even the most dull witted neoclassical economist of the kind that Rothbard liked to poke fun at probably did less to harm the cause of economic understanding than Rothbard did.

Of course, that doesn’t stop Cato from trying to be the biggest fish in the smallest pond. And at that they do excel…

The sole provocation for him doing so seems to be his frustrations with me for committing the “sin” of exposing the vulnerabilities of his silly feud with Rockwell.

I don’t dispute his property right to do whatever he wants with his personal website. But his oft-professed devotion to the exchange of idea is in fact being put forth in a plainly deceptive manner. Far from it, he does not desire the exchange of ideas he purports; he only (briefly) tolerates mild dissent then silences anything that becomes an annoyance by calling attention to weaknesses in his positions.

Furthermore, he is engaged in an act of pure hypocrisy considering the amount of space he devotes to chastising the Mises crowd for editing their blog posts, allegedly stifling dissent, and the sort.

Fortunately their are many ways to get around IP blocks. And lest any of this disappear “down the memory hole” as Palmer is so fond of saying, he should also know he is not the only one who knows how to use screen captures.

Such issues completely sidestep the original argument, which is to say whether or not the Mises Institute has an authentic lineage, whatever that lineage may be, to Ludwig von Mises himself.

Tom Palmer, venting in his continuous state of feud with the Mises Institute people, has claimed that they do not. He has likened their connection to Mises with that of Lyndon LaRouche to Adam Smith, has flippantly and without evidence asserted that Mises would have been “appalled” by some of the positions of the Mises crowd, and has put himself forward as some sort of defender of the “true” legacy of von Mises from what he clearly sees as imposters in the Mises Institute.

I offered three counterarguments to Palmer on these contentions, and not one has been satisfactorily answered. I’ll restate them out of courtesy and convenience to you.

1. The Mises Institute has a connection to Mises himself through his wife Margit, who gave her blessing to its creation and was active in its leadership for over a decade before she died. To date the only answer to this has been the patently offensive and distinctly un-libertarian suggestion that Margit must have been a feeble-minded senile old lady who was being exploited by Rockwell in denial of her free will of association.

2. The Mises Institute has a documented intellectual lineage to Mises through his students in the Austrian school’s so-called “fifth generation.” The most direct of these influences was Rothbard, though it also includes other distinguished 5th generation Austrians such as Israel Kirzner, who evidently does not share Mr. Palmer’s opinion of the Mises Institute. To date the only answer to this argument has been to sidestep it by insulting Rothbard’s eccentricities and glossing over Kirzner due to a flap he had with Hoppe at FEE.

3. Mises himself had a friendly and supportive relationship with, and held cabinet ministry positions in, the quasi-theocratic Rerum Novarum-based corporatist governments of Chancellors Seipel and Dollfuss in Austria. This suggests that he would have been anything but “appalled” by the Mises Institute for doing things that Palmer deems insufficiently critical of non-democracies, or perhaps too friendly with Hapsburg Austria. To date this argument has gone completely unanswered.

By 1939, Hitler probably had only killed hundreds, including Jews. The Holocaust as we know it hadn’t begun yet.

GMU, I just recently stumbled upon that accidentaly. Namely it is mentioned here (top post):

http://www.stephankinsella.com.....rchive.php

You know, people keep talking about infighting between Cato and Mises/LRC, but it seems to me it’s mostly oneway. The LRC is obsessed with attacking Cato, but I’ve been searching the Cato site and blog, and I can’t find ANY references to Mises Institute (lots to Mises, just not to the Institute) or Rockwell. Seems like the Cato site is full of critical analyses of Clinton and Bush, McCain and Obama, the war in Iraq and the Federal Reserve, but they just ignore the Auburn crowd. (Although David Boaz did obliquely mention the attacks once here: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org.....-you-read/ .) Yes, one Cato scholar criticizes Auburn on his little ol’ personal blog, but that’s hardly equivalent to the incessant attacks on Cato found “over there.”

So anybody who objects to “infighting” should be directing their criticisms to Auburn, not to Cato.

Tom wrote about it on his blog at http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/022289.php
The link to the Hoppe review was not working (that took more time to track down) and something weird happened to a lot of the formatting. But if you can tolerate that, it’s worth seeing what Rockwell and Hoppe were up to in the name of Mises; hanging with German neo-Nazis, who would have hanged Mises.

I have read strong (STRONG) support for Southern Secession on the Rockwell site and heard it in person from Mises Institute zombies. That was combined with bogus pseudohistory about how it was secession about the tariff and other nonsense. It was about slavery and preserving it. And cherry picking a quote from Rockwell is not evidence of anything. He has been enthusiastic about the invasion. Maybe someone will say it’s really off topic, by the way, but supporting statism in other countrie isn’t made “libertarian” because the other state is hostile to “our” state. That’s not my classical liberalism/libertarianism.

It took me a while, but I found what GMU student (greetings!) was referring to.

Here is the Hoppe review that caused such a stink at FEE (where I also attended a seminar and learned about public choice and Austrian thinking) for whitewashing Hitler and rewriting history:
“While the facts and the conclusions reached are largely correct and reasonable, the book is not without shortcomings. Even a professed revisionist such as Ebeling cannot free himself entirely from orthodox-leftist historical myths when he appears to liken and classify as on a par the evils of Stalin and Hitler and the socio-economic character of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. From 1929 to 1939, in peace time, Stalin and the Bolsheviks killed about 20 million Soviet citizens, for no predictable reason. Hitler and the National Socialists ruined the businesses and careers of hundreds of thousands of German citizens, but the number of people killed by them before the outbreak of the war was only a few hundred, most of them fellow Nazis and all of them for a predictable reason.”
http://www.fee.org/publication.....p?aid=4668
I guess that the Jews were not Germans, so they didn’t count!

“Russia should not have intevened, and should immediately withdraw.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blo.....08_11.html

You might think this is insufficient, but it’s much better than Palmer’s refusal to support immediate withdrawal from Iraq for several years, instead saying “we” needed to kill all the terrorists there and make sure democracy broke out. He was so soft on this war, attacking the antiwar movement more than the Bush administration in the run-up to war, and then being soft on withdrawal for years.

If this issue is about anything, it’s about about intellectual honesty and seriousness. Why call something the “Ludwig von Mises Institute” and trade off of his good name, when they are much more focused on reviving the Confederate States of America and justifying a secession that had as its explicit purpose keeping people as property, like cows and horses. (And I doubt that Mises was very supportive of promoting foreign dicatorships, either.) Whoever was “closer” to a scholar is irrelevant when that scholar would have been really, really upset about being associated with that program. And the quality of the “scholarship” coming from that cult is, overall, pathetically poor, which is what you’d expect from a cult.

I’m studying to become a good economist, not to become a priest. And if I ever do join a religion, it wouldn’t be a church of the absurd, like Lew Rockwell has created around the saints of Mises, Rothbard, and Jefferson Davis.

Does anybody here remember if anything like this happened between Professor Kirzner and Hoppe?

I recently tried to read Man, Economy and State and put it down after a few pages realizing that it would teach me nothing much worthwhile. Better to spend that time reading Marginal Revolution or Tom Palmer’s blog.