The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 1 M ISESI NSTITUTE Vol

The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 1 M ISESI NSTITUTE Vol. 1, No. 1 January – February 2015

The

AustrianA PUBLICATION OF THE MISES INSTITUTE

lew rockwell Makes the Libertarian Case for Secession page 4

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Jeff Deist Introduces Our New Publication, The Austrian...... 2 James Bovard on The Absurdity of “Reform” in DC...... 6 David Gordon Reviews Judge Andrew P. Napolitano’s Suicide Pact...... 8 Ryan McMaken on the Netflix Series Marco Polo...... 10 Q&A: Mises U Alum Aaron Ensley, Wisconsin’s Free-Market Evangelist...... 12 Scholar and Alumni News...... 14 Events...... 19 2 | January/February 2015 | The Austrian

from the publisher Jeff Deist

The Free Market is now The Austrian “I actually believe in the free market.” President Barack Obama, Phoenix, August 2013 “I’m a free market welfare state guy.” Paul Krugman, CNBC interview, July 2012

or more than thirty years The Free Market has been the Mises Institute’s flagship monthly Fpublication for our members. Today we introduce The Austrian, a bolder and more robust version of what you’ve known for decades. It’s enlightening these days to hear everyone from Obama and Krugman to Putin and Hollande proclaim their belief in the superiority of free markets (invariably adding several qualifying provisos, of course). Even Bono from U2 has had a change of heart. Only Mr. Piketty appears to be clinging (tenuously) to his support for outright central planning. So it appears we’ve made great strides in the rhetorical battle when it comes to the beauty and power of markets to vastly improve the human condition. We are all free-marketers now, and some of us actually mean it. Thirty years ago, however, our outspoken support for free markets was radical. And since our beginning the Mises Institute has advocated a free market in everything. But today the

The Austrian A PUBLICATION OF THE MISES INSTITUTE Formerly The Free Market, 1983–2014. Published 2015 (six times per year) by the Mises Institute under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Publisher: Jeff Deist Editor: Ryan McMaken Managing Editor: Judith F. Thommesen Contributing Editors: Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Jeffrey M. Herbener, Robert Higgs, Mark Thornton Mises Institute • 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, AL 36832-4501 • 334.321.2100 • Fax: 334.321.2119 • [email protected] • mises.org. The Mises Institute is a nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Note: the views expressed in The Austrian are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute. The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 3

The first issue of The Free Market, published in 1983, featured The Case for Free Trade by a (then) little-known Congressman from Houston, Dr. Ron Paul. It also featured a cover story by our longtime (and current) board member John Denson about the Institute’s new home at Auburn University. Appearing on the masthead of that first issue was the original Mises Institute board, and it was quite a list: Margit von Mises, John Denson, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and Hans Sennholz!

term has been diluted through overuse and misuse, spirit, and the classical liberal tradition our north as demonstrated by Messrs. Obama and Krugman. star. It no longer captures the radical and uncompro- We will publish The Austrian every other month, mising nature of the Institute and its members. A and deliver it to your mailbox or email inbox. Each name change for The Free Market was in order. issue will feature provocative articles by cutting- edge libertarian and Austrian thinkers, conver- When Mises died in 1973, “Austrian” was an sational interviews with leading business people adjective and a loose term of convenience describ- and intellectual entrepreneurs, reviews by David ing the great scholars (and scholarship) of the Aus- Gordon, and cultural commentary by guest writers. trian school of economics. You won’t find this kind of radical, politically incor- Today, thanks to phenomenal growth in the Aus- rect content anywhere else. trian school, one can simply say, “I’m an Austrian” We hope you enjoy The Austrian, and we’re when speaking in libertarian or academic circles. grateful to have you as a member. Please let us “Austrian” has become a noun! know what you think (via [email protected]), Our new moniker, The Austrian, goes to the heart and encourage your friends and family to join the and soul of what we are: an organization dedicated Mises Institute. nn to the brilliant scholarship of Austrian economics. Mises is our touchstone, Rothbard our animating Jeﬀ Deist is President of the Mises Institute. 4 || January/February January/February 2015 2015 | The| The Austrian Austrian

Lew Rockwell The Libertarian Principle of Secession

or a century and a half, the idea of secession has been systematically demonized among the American public. The government’s schools spin fairy tales about the “indivisible Union” and the wise statesmen who fought to preserve it. Decentralization is portrayed as unsophis- ticated and backward, while nationalism and centralization are made to seem progressive and inevitable.F When a smaller political unit wishes to withdraw from a larger one, its motives must be disrep- utable and base, while the motivations of the central power seeking to keep that unit in an arrangement it does not want are portrayed as selfless and patriotic, if they are considered at all. As usual, disinformation campaigns are meant to make potentially liberating ideas appear toxic and dangerous, and conveying the message that anyone who seeks acceptance and popularity ought to steer clear of whatever it is — in this case, secession — the regime has condemned. But when we set the propaganda aside, we discover that support for secession means simply this: it is morally illegitimate to employ state violence against individuals who choose to group themselves differently from how the existing regime chooses to group them. They prefer to live under a different jurisdiction. Libertarians consider it unacceptable to aggress against them for this. The libertarian principle of secession is not exactly embraced with enthusiasm by the people and institutions I call “regime libertarians.” Although these people tend to be located in and around the Beltway, regime libertarianism tran- scends geographical location, which is why I coined this special term to describe it. The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 5

The regime libertarian believes in the market econ- seems to support only those acts of secession that have omy, more or less. But talk about the Federal Reserve or the approval or connivance of the CIA. Austrian business cycle theory and he gets fidgety. His Mention secession, and the subject immediately turns institute would rather invite Janet Yellen for an exclusive to the southern Confederacy, whose moral enormities cocktail event than Ron Paul for a lecture. the regime libertarian proceeds to denounce, insinuat- He loves the idea of reform — whether it’s the Fed, ing that supporters of secession must be turning a blind the tax code, government schools, whatever. He flees eye to those enormities. But every libertarian worthy of from the idea of abolition. Why, that just isn’t respect- the name opposes any government’s support for slavery, able! He spends his time advocating this or that “tax centralization, conscription, taxation, or the suppres- reform” effort, instead of simply pushing for a lowering sion of speech and press. That goes without saying or repeal of existing taxes. It’s too tough to be a libertar- As Tom Woods has pointed out, the classical liberal, ian when it comes to antidiscrimination law, given how or libertarian, tradition of support for secession can much flak he’s liable to get, so he’ll side with left-liberals boast such luminaries as Alexis de Tocqueville, Rich- on that, even though it’s completely incompatible with ard Cobden, and Lord Acton, among many others. I’d his stated principles. like to add two more figures: in the nineteenth century, Lysander Spooner, and in the twentieth, Frank He is antiwar — sometimes, but certainly not as a gen- Chodorov. eral principle. He can be counted on to support the wars that have practically defined the American regime, and Spooner presents a real problem for the regime lib- which remain popular among the general public. He sups ertarians. Every libertarian acknowledges the greatness in happy concord with supporters of the most egregiously and importance of Spooner. The trouble is, he was an unjust wars, but his blood boils in moral outrage at some- avowed secessionist. one who told an off-color joke twenty-five years ago. Lysander Spooner was born in Massachusetts in I suppose you can guess where our regime libertarian January 1808, and would go on to become a lawyer, an stands on secession. Since the modern American regime entrepreneur, and a political theorist. He believed that emerged out of the violent suppression of the attempted true justice was not so much a matter of compliance with man-made law, but a refusal to engage in aggres- secession of eleven states, he, too, is an opponent of sion against peaceful individuals. His American Letter secession. If cornered, he may grudgingly endorse seces- Mail Company competed successfully against the US sion at a theoretical level, but in practice he generally Post Office, offering better service at lower prices, until the government forced him out of business in 1851. His work No Treason (1867), a collection of three essays, took the position that the Constitution, not having been agreed to by any living person and only ever expressly consented to by a small handful, cannot be binding on anyone. In a work called The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, Spooner had argued that the primary interpretive key in understanding the Constitution was what we now call “original meaning.” This is different from “original understanding,” the concept referred to by figures like Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia. According to that view, we should interpret the Constitution according to the original intent of those who drafted and ratified that document. Spooner rejected this. What mattered, according to Spooner, was not the inscrutable “intention” CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 6 | January/February 2015 | The Austrian

JAMES BOVARD The Absurdity of “Reform” in DC

n the 1930s, peasants who were starv- Institute, is renown as one of Washington’s ing because of the Soviet regime’s brutal most prominent defenders of Big Govern- Ifarm collectivization policy lamented, ment. In a New York Times op-ed spinoff, “If only Stalin knew!” Nowadays, American Haskins proclaimed that “since its earliest social scientists look at floundering federal days the Obama administration has been programs and lament: “If only Congress pursuing the most important initiative in knew!” And the solution is the “evidence- the history of federal attempts to use evi- based” reform movement which will magi- dence to improve social programs.” cally beget a new era of good governance. Haskins’s book is building on a Hosanna Show Me the Evidence: Obama’s Fight for moment for Washington policy wonks. Rigor and Results in Social Policy is the title On May 18, 2012, the Office of Manage- of a new book written by Ron Haskins, a ment and Budget issued a memo notify- former congressional staffer who was also ing federal agencies that “programs that briefly a White House aide under George W. can prove their effectiveness with data will Bush. The book’s publisher, the Brookings be more likely to get the funds they seek.” A New York Times headline whooped up that memo: “The Dawn of the Evidence- Based Budget.” The Times noted: “When James Bovard is the author of ten books, including we consider the vast sums that govern- 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention ments spend, it seems crazy that policy Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, makers don’t routinely make good use of and many other publications. evidence.” “Seems crazy” is an accurate The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 7

description of policymaking but expectations for an Foreign aid is the largest laboratory for Obama’s outbreak of sanity are premature. evidence-based reforms. Obama promised in a 2010 Haskins and organizations such as the Coalition for United Nations speech to “change the way we do business” with foreign aid, pledging to judge aid programs Evidence-Based Policy encourage Americans to believe and budgets “based not on dollars spent, but on out- that, because a few federal programs are spending comes achieved.” The following year, the Agency for pocket change for solid program evaluations, the gov- International Development ballyhooed a new evalu- ernment as a whole could soon be far more competent. ation policy for a “transformation based on absolute But history shows that mere evidence rarely deters poli- demand for results.” ticians from seizing power over vast swaths of American life. But that “absolute demand” could not compete with the pressure generated by Obama’s 2008 campaign For instance, the folly of farm subsidies has been pledge to double foreign aid. His administration has obvious for more than eighty years. In 1930, The New been far more concerned with boosting spending and York Times, surveying the wreckage of agricultural covering up boondoggles. The Washington Post nailed markets after the federal government tried to drive up AID last year for massively suppressing audit reports wheat prices, concluded, “It is perhaps fortunate for the revealing waste, fraud and abuse. More than 400 nega- country that its fingers were so badly burned at the very tive findings were deleted from a sample of twelve first trial of the scheme.” But that did not deter President Inspector General draft audit reports. In one case, more Franklin Roosevelt and Congress from making the Sec- than 90 percent of the negative findings were expunged retary of Agriculture a farm dictator. before the report was publicly released. Acting Inspec- Despite an unbroken string of failures, the federal tor General Michael Carroll buried the embarrassing government has continued disrupting agriculture ever audit findings because he “did not want to create con- troversy as he awaited Senate confirmation to become since. Politicians create convoluted programs that pay the permanent inspector general,” according to some farmers more than their crops are worth, and then AID auditors. launch new interventions spurred by the disruptions caused by suppressing price signals. Most of the ag Obama’s rhetoric bounced off AID’s bureaucratic policy mistakes of the past are still being repeated: only Teflon. A 2013 Congressional Research Service report the names of the secretaries of agriculture and of the quoted one AID bureaucrat: “If you don’t ask [about farm-state congressmen have changed. CONTINUED ON PAGE 15 8 | January/February 2015 | The Austrian

eaders of Judge Napolitano’s outstanding book will DAVIDGORDON at once be struck by its unusual title. What is the “suicide pact” referred to there? The phrase occurs in a REVIEWS famous dissenting opinion by Justice Robert Jackson. In Terminiello v.R Chicago (1949), the Supreme Court held that the city of Chicago had wrongly restricted the free speech of an incendiary speaker. The Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential claim that doing so was needed to preserve public order did not suf- Power and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty fice, the Court maintained. Jackson disagreed, warning that “there is a danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic Judge Andrew P. Napolitano with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill Thomas Nelson, 2014 of Rights into a suicide pact.” Xxxii + 444 pages It is precisely this thesis that Judge Napolitano takes as his princi- pal task in this book to oppose. He strongly supports natural law. On this view, human beings have rights that the state cannot infringe. “The core concept of Natural Law is the idea of self-ownership and limitless personal liberty ... rights, specifically natural rights, are intangible and enforceable legal choices that are inalienable and exist a priori to any political or economic system, and for the exercise of which one does not need government approval.” From this bedrock point, the Judge constructs a remarkable argu- ment. He distinguishes between rights, which cannot be given away or exchanged, and goods, which can be. Security falls into the latter class; and, as such, it cannot be traded against a right. “How can one balance a derivative against an a priori right? One cannot. In order to create a social arrangement that validly enacts laws or defines man’s relationship to other persons and their property, the underlying premise of self-ownership and natural rights both precedes and acts as precedent to the lawful acquisition of any good ... security, like that provided by the government, is a good, which cannot be freely exchanged between persons or entities, like states, without first rec- ognizing a priori natural rights. Therefore, in considering the good of security and the right of free speech, no balancing act is possible or even conceivable.” From this standpoint, Judge Napolitano reviews security policy throughout the course of American history. Unfortunately, the natural rights approach has rarely guided American policy. To the The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 9

contrary, “it has largely been ignored by every Ameri- In his account of Woodrow Wilson, Napolitano can government since George Washington. Those gov- makes an important contribution to political theory. ernments have all reflected the inevitable growth of the Concerning the oceans of misleading propaganda cir- power of government and the shrinkage of personal free- culated by George Creel’s Committee on Public Infor- doms.” mation, he says: “In a social compact, the power of the government to act in any manner derives from the peo- Why has this been so? The chief culprit has been war ple’s acquiescence en masse to the ability of the govern- and the threat of war. Wars vastly increase the power of ment to act only as they have agreed to in the compact the government; and, contrary to natural law, “national that it may. Parties to a contract have a duty not to misin- security” all too often tramples liberty afoot. Napolitano form the other party or parties to the contract in a mate- aptly quotes Randolph Bourne: “War is the health of rial manner. The people have ceded the power to make the state.” Elaborating on Bourne’s claim, Napolitano remarks: “A galvanized people [is] fearful of dissent and willing to accept suppression of their and others’ natural rights to free speech based on the seemingly xenophilic No history of how the content of a viewpoint alone ... individual liberty suffers government destroys rights incomparably during war.” We see this pattern from the beginning of America’s during wartime can ignore government under the Constitution. Tense relations Abraham Lincoln. with France fueled the Federalists’ endeavor in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, contrary to the First Amend- ment, to suppress criticism of the government. Fortu- nately, these measures aroused great popular resistance, war to the government in this compact, but their repre- culminating in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. sentatives cannot do so under false pretenses and through In this connection, Napolitano says of nullification: “In falsehoods and remain faithful to the compact — that large part, the doctrine of nullification follows logically is fraud of the highest caliber. Wilson’s misinformation from the idea of the consent of the governed. ... The justifying war with Germany and social conditioning of states, by act of state legislature or convention, ratified the people represent an unconscionable violation of the the Constitution; the people did not do so as individu- social compact.” als. ... Nullification then seems to follow very logically.” Suffice it to say that matters did not improve under No history of how the government destroys rights Franklin Roosevelt. During World War II, Japanese during wartime can ignore Abraham Lincoln. All consti- Americans on the West Coast were interned in con- tutional rights depend on the right to the writ of habeas centration camps; and the Supreme Court in the Kore- corpus. Without it, the government is free to violate matsu case upheld this measure. Napolitano’s verdict is whatever rights it wishes. There is no recourse against scathing: “Thus, in the face of difficult and trying times, arbitrary imprisonment. Lincoln, flouting the Consti- actions that were not justifiable under necessity, but were tution, suspended the writ. Chief Justice Taney, sitting manifestations of racism, hysteria and the ‘herd’ men- as a circuit judge, declared the president’s actions illegal, tality lamented in the [Randolph] Bourne essay, were but “Lincoln, revealing his antipathy for the Constitu- made legal and constitutional. The counter-majoritarian tion, personal liberty, and the rule of law, rebuked the branch, the Court, charged with halting the majority chief justice and refused to obey the order.” Napolitano encroachment on the civil and natural liberty of personal sums up Lincoln’s views in this way: “The president ... movement and use of property, had failed miserably in was essentially advocating for dictator-like control of the its delegated task.” Justice Frank Murphy issued a “vigor- government. Lincoln would have the Court declare the ous dissent [which] would destroy his personal friend- president a Caesar in times of war instead of having a fed- ship with FDR.” eral government with checks and balances.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 18 10 || January/February January/February 2015 2015 | The| The Austrian Austrian DEATH AND TAXES in the Netﬂ ix Series MARCO POLO

e’re eight episodes into the new Netflix series Marco Polo before we see the titular Wcharacter’s first serious moral crisis over matters of state. While preparing to lay siege to their enemy’s capital city, the Mongolian troops, whom Marco Polo serves, begin butchering alive captured enemy troops so their fat can be rendered into boiling oil to be used as a weapon. Marco is horrified. “They are our captives,” he pro- tests “This is sin.” The quaint excuse he is given is still commonly heard today: “This is war.” Indeed, in spite of numerous hours of on-screen warfare, torture, adultery, and lying, Marco’s defense of prisoners of war is the first and only time we hear of “sin” in the series. But there’s a good reason for this. Only in the most extreme cases does Marco look to big ideas such as his Christian morality. Marco Polo, after all, is not a show about ideology, politics, or philosophy. At its core, it is a story about family. Ryan McMaken The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 11

Marco Polo, Netflix’s new $90-million stream- to kill his own brother, after which he mourns and ing television series, takes place against the real- asks Marco to explain to him the story of Cain and life historical backdrop of the final days of the Abel from Marco’s “holy books.” Marco in turn Song dynasty, which was the last significant seeks the approval of his father, and when Marco’s source of resistance in China to the Mongo- father and uncle are caught smuggling silk worms lian Khan in the thirteenth century. The Khan out of China — a crime punishable by death — wishes to unite all of Mongolia and China into Kublai fully expects Marco to intercede for them, one vast empire. To do this, he must force the which he does. Had Marco not interceded to save Song dynasty government to submit to his rule. his own family members, we are led to believe, Such events, so distant in both time and geog- the Khan would have regarded such indifference raphy are wisely channeled by the series creators to family as an enormous failing. Family, it seems, through the eyes of Marco himself, who remains trumps all ideologies and other loyalties. never more than a foreigner in this strange land. The central role of family is present among the Moreover, from the very beginning of the series, Khan’s enemies among the Song dynasty as well. we learn that Marco is only in Mongolia out of a The woman who spies on the Khan’s court for the desire to know his father who has been away trav- Song regime is motivated not by any sort of patrio- eling most of Marco’s life. And yet, upon arrival at tism, but by a desire to protect her daughter from Kublai Khan’s court, Marco’s father abandons him the corrupt prime minister, Jia Sidao. and gives him to the Khan as a sort of collateral Sidao himself, a low-born social climber, illus- for the Khan’s permission to trade freely along the trates within Marco Polo what becomes of those Silk Road. who value only political power. Sidao treats his Marco eventually becomes an advisor to the own sister and niece with contempt and thinks Khan, and as with all such courtiers, Marco is not only of matters of state. A master conniver, Sid- a captive, but he isn’t free either. Everything he has ao’s brutality is contrasted with that of the Khan. depends on being in favor with the Khan. Marco, Unlike with Sidao, the Khan’s brutality is in the stunned by his own father’s betrayal, begins to feel service of what he sees as his many responsibilities. a familial bond with the Khan who takes Marco He owes a debt to his family, to his ancestors, and into his confidence. When Marco has the oppor- to those who rely on him for employment and sus- tunity to escape the Khan’s lands, he nevertheless tenance. remains at the Khan’s side, even to the point of Sidao, on the other hand is in the service of ignoring the Khan’s brutality in war. The Khan no one, including the people of the Song or the himself lives in the shadow of his grandfather emperor he is sworn to serve. He is, in a sense, the Genghis Khan, and feels obligated to expand the ultimate individualist, and a community of one. empire handed down to him. The Khan must also Through these relationships, we find that deal with an ambitious brother and unruly cous- Marco Polo is profoundly conservative (in the tra- ins. ditionalist sense) in its view of the state and those The characters who inhabit the world of Marco who live under it. Yet, while we can speak well Polo seek to love and be loved by family mem- of Marco Polo’s contrasting of the family and the bers. Matters of state, on the other hand, are an state, and of the show’s assertion that matters of obstacle to the nurturing of these relationships. state should be subordinate to family matters, it Putting down an insurrection requires the Khan would be a mistake to CONTINUED ON PAGE 18 12 | January/February 2015 | The Austrian 12 | January/February 2015 | The Austrian

A CONVERSATION WITH MISES U ALUM AARON ENSLEY WISCONSIN'S FREE-MARKET EVANGELIST

Mises University alumnus THE AUSTRIAN: Why did you decide to apply for and attend Aaron Ensley teaches economics in Wisconsin, Mises University? and is one of the directors for the Wisconsin Forum, AARON ENSLEY: Honesty compels me to admit that my an organization that hosts primary motivation for attending Mises University was to nationally recognized free-market speakers in receive the final “seminar” credit that I needed to graduate the Milwaukee area. from the University of Detroit Mercy. However, independent of this credit, I was in fact eager to attend Mises University because I was familiar with many of the speakers and very much looked forward to hearing them speak and getting the opportunity to meet them personally.

TA: What effect has your work with the Mises Institute had on your academic career?

AE: Although I still have and frequently reference the many pages of notes I took while attending Mises University, I would say that I probably learned more from the Mises University podcasts that I often listened to while operat- ing a small business (a lawn mowing service). Don’t tell my graduate professor this, but without question, I learned more about economics by listening to podcasts while mowing lawns than I ever could have in school. Over the course of a few years, I listened to hundreds of podcasts and audiobooks on a The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 13

variety of special topics that pertain to Austrian method- AE: Students who have a natural curiosity and desire ology and economic history. However, it is worth noting to learn generally enjoy my classes and appreciate the that I probably would not have listened to so many of methodology used to analyze the economy. I always let these podcasts if the speakers were not so entertaining students know in advance that my class will not likely (e.g., Tom Woods, Walter Block, Joe Salerno, and Charles be what they are expecting (they are always prepared Adams). Also, these podcasts not only gave me a more for the worst). I also let them know that I disliked the robust understanding of subjects like American history, first two economics courses that I took when I was an anarcho-capitalism, entrepreneurship, and tax history, undergraduate because the subject was presented but the speakers usually cited other books and articles through the lens of graphs, rather than through the lens that I would often look into later. To say it plainly, the of logic or philosophical reasoning, but I learned to love Mises Institute became a Pandora’s box of excellent it once I had a teacher that presented the latter meth- resources that I reference often. odology. This generally sets students at ease and I have received a lot of feedback that indicates that they did TA: How has your knowledge of Austrian economics in fact appreciate my methodology. More importantly, I impacted your work as an economics instructor? believe that the students who leave my class will forever see the world differently and will have an appreciation AE: I have had the unique privilege of working for insti- for what freedom really means as it pertains to our stan- tutions that are explicitly supportive of Austrian eco- dard of living and overall well-being. nomics, so unlike many other instructors, I am generally free to teach Austrian economics as the primary meth- If you want to see what many of my students have said odology for my economics courses (of course, I do dis- about my courses, I would encourage you to take a look cuss other schools as well). at some of my student reviews at RateMyProfessor.com.

I may be a bit unique to the “academic world” in that I have never considered myself an academic, but more of a “free-market evangelist” that had a revelation of how markets work and I have been eager to share this knowledge with others ever since. When I began teaching at Northwood University and later at Brookfield Acad- emy, I probably had more passion than book-smarts, but I had a good foundation and a broad understanding of the importance of free enterprise, limited government, and entrepreneurship, which caused me to focus mostly on the fundamental concepts in micro, macro, and international trade. Although I now teach Advanced Placement economics courses as well, I still use Austrian economics and its methodology (prax- eology) as the foundation for the courses, even though some of the AP content deviates from what I might like to emphasize (e.g., calculating elasticity, cost curves, the Lorenz Curve, etc.). I generally find that once students are presented with Austrian ideas that make sense, they tend to see how much more useful Austrian economics is than the more modern focus of the economics disci- pline, which is often illogical and not particularly useful.

TA: What reaction have you received from students to the Austrian method of analyzing the economy? 14 | January/February 2015 | The Austrian

TA: You recently invited Mark Thornton to Wisconsin to for him to speak to our upper school students at Brook- participate in a discussion on drug prohibition. Can you field Academy, but at the last minute, there was some tell us more about it? concern (and perhaps panic) from the administration that some of the students might misinterpret Dr. Thorn- AE: I serve on the board of directors for the Wisconsin ton’s presentation and then the school would have a Forum (WisconsinForum.org), a nonprofit free-market problem with parents. advocacy group based in Milwaukee. At my sugges- tion, we invited Dr. Thornton to address the members As a result, Dr. Thornton modified his talk and focus to and guests of the Wisconsin Forum at a dinner event alcohol prohibition, rather than drugs. The message is (we generally do this five times a year). Dr. Thornton the same whether you are talking drugs, alcohol, com- delivered excellent content on drug and alcohol prohi- merce, or money: the market works better without gov- bition and we were very glad he came. I also arranged ernment intervention. nn

Scholar and Alumni News

Distinguished Senior Fellow Hans-Hermann Hoppe joined Senior Fellow Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Associated Scholar Thorsten Polleit, Associated Scholar Philipp Bagus, and 130 other participants at the German stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany in January for the Ludwig von Mises Seminar sponsored by the German Mises Institute.

HANS-HERMANN Academic Vice President Joseph Salerno co-authored “Böhm-Bawerk’s Approach to HOPPE Entrepreneurship” with former Summer Fellow M attHEW McCaffrey in the December 2014 issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

Senior Fellow M ark Thornton organized a session at the Southern Economic Asso- ciation’s convention this year featuring papers by Thornton, Senior Fellow Peter Klein, Joseph Salerno, and former Summer Fellow Jonathan Newman. Dr. Thornton also appeared on a variety of television and radio programs in December including the Voice of Jörg Guido Moscow, Drug Truth Network, Power Trading Radio, Press TV, the Tom Woods Show, and the Scott Hülsmann Horton Show.

Associated Scholar and former Mises Institute Fellow Christopher Westley is now Professor of Economics at Florida Gulf Coast University and in May will be the director of the University’s Regional Economic Research Institute.

In Defense of Deflation by Philipp Bagus was published in February by Springer publica- CHRISTOPHER tions. The book is now available on Amazon. WESTLEY Former Summer Fellow Carmen ELENA Dorobăț translated Joseph Salerno’s article “Ludwig von Mises as Social Rationalist” into Romanian and published “Foreign Policy and Domestic Policy Are but One System: Mises on International Organizations and the WTO” in the winter 2015 issue of Independent Review.

Associated Scholar Paul Prentice lectured on “Constitutionomics” at the Bastiat Society Carmen ELENA of Colorado Springs and “The Moral Foundations of Capitalism” at the Pikes Peak Economics Dorobăț Club in Colorado. The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 15

JAMES BOVARD inflating medical costs and disrupting health care. But CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7 the president was far more concerned with creating a legacy than with learning from Medicare and Medicaid results], you don’t fail, and your budget isn’t cut.” More fiascos. than thirty years ago, GAO captured AID’s intransigence The “evidence based” reform campaign presumes in perhaps its most sardonic report title ever: "Experi- that politics is essentially a noble business in which ence — A Potential Tool for Improving U.S. Assistance public servants love nothing more than serving the Abroad." At least AID’s “fail-and-repeat” tactic provides public. But for politicians, programs are fiefdoms. How bureaucratic job security. many kings have abdicated their thrones after becom- “Evidence-based” evaluations have probably been ing convinced that monarchy did not truly serve the applied to less than two percent of federal programs. downtrodden masses? Will politicians cede power after This is akin to Obama preening that he will do an honest, social scientists document how their favorite programs balanced analysis on whether the US should intervene do more harm than good? in the tiny African nation of Lesotho — at the same time H.L. Mencken noted that the main concern of elected he ramps up his war efforts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan politicians’ souls “is to keep a place at the public trough.” and continues covertly warring in Yemen, Pakistan, and Politicians will always be far more interested in verdicts Somalia. And Obama has simply ignored evidence that from the voting booth than from the American Journal did not suit his ambitions. When he began pushing his of Sociology. There is no reason to expect that fighting Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2009, there waste, fraud, and abuse will suddenly become more was already a proven history of federal intervention popular on Capitol Hill than reelection. nn 16 | January/February 2015 | The Austrian

LEW ROCKWELL behind this or that word or pas- Spooner continued: CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 sage, but rather the plain mean- No principle, that is possible to be named, can be ing of the word or passage itself. more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evi- Furthermore, given that human liberty was a mandate dently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed of the natural law, any time constitutional language in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If might appear to run contrary to the principle of liberty, it really be established, the number of slaves, instead we ought to prefer some other meaning of the words in of having been diminished by the war, has been question, even if we have to strain a bit to do so, and even greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there if the anti-liberty interpretation is the more natural read- is no difference, in principle — but only in degree ing. — between political and chattel slavery. The former, Thus Spooner could claim, contrary to the majority no less than the latter, denies a man’s ownership of of abolitionists, that the Constitution was in fact an anti- himself and the products of his labor; and asserts slavery document, and that its oblique and fleeting refer- that other men may own him, and dispose of him ences to slavery — a word never used in the Constitution and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure. — did not have to carry the meanings commonly attrib- By the logic of the regime libertarian, Spooner was uted to them. Frederick Douglass, the celebrated former a “neo-Confederate” defender of slavery — after all, he slave turned abolitionist writer and speaker, adopted asserted the southern states’ right to withdraw from the Spooner’s approach in his own work. Union! What other motivation could he have? But this Spooner’s anti-slavery work went well beyond this is too preposterous even for them. exercise in constitutional exegesis. He provided legal ser- vices, sometimes pro bono, for fugitive slaves, and advocated jury nullification as a means of defending escaped slaves in court. His 1858 “Plan for the Abo- lition of Slavery,” called for northern-backed insur- A recent poll found about a quarter rection in the South, as well as such lesser measures of Americans sympathetic to the idea as flogging slaveholders who themselves used the whip, and encouraging slaves to confiscate their mas- of secession. ters’ property. Spooner was also a supporter of John Brown, and in fact raised money and formulated a plan to kidnap the governor of Virginia until Brown was released. Spooner was correct about all of this, needless to say. In other words, it would be difficult to deny Spoon- The war was in fact launched not to free the slaves, as er’s dedication to the anti-slavery cause. any historian must concede, but for purposes of mysti- And yet here is Spooner on the so-called Civil War. cism — why, the sacred “Union” must be preserved! On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to — and on behalf of economic interests. The regime lib- liberate slaves, but by a government that had always per- ertarian expects us to believe that the analysis we apply verted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves to all other wars, in which we look beneath the official in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slave- rationales to the true motivations, does not apply to this holders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union. single, glorious exception to the catalogue of crimes that According to Spooner, the US regime waged the constitute the story of mankind’s experiences with mili- war on behalf of the opposite principle. “The principle, tary aggression. on which the war was waged by the North, was simply Let’s turn now to the second libertarian figure. Frank this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit Chodorov, by all accounts, was one of the great writ- to, and support, a government that they do not want; ers of the Old Right. Liberty Fund published a collec- and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors tion of his writings called Fugitive Essays. Chodorov and criminals.” founded what was then called the Intercollegiate Society The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 17

of Individualists, and served as an editor of Human Events, where the early presence of Felix Morley ensured that noninterventionist voices, at least at the beginning, would get a hearing. Murray N. Rothbard considered Chodorov’s monthly publication analysis to be one of the greatest independent publications in American history. Naturally, Chodorov supported both secession and “states’ rights.” In fact, he thought every schoolchild should “become familiar with the history and theory of what we call states’ rights, but which is really the doctrine of home rule.” Ralph Raico, the great libertarian historian and Senior Fellow of the Mises Institute, has documented how the decentralized political order of Europe made possible the emergence of liberty. The lack of a single political authority uniting Europe, and to the contrary a vast multiplicity of small jurisdictions, placed a strict limit on the ambitions of any particular prince. The ability to move from one place to another meant that a prince would lose his tax base should his oppressions grow intolerable. Chodorov made the same observation: supplemented with a campaign of education on the When the individual is free to move from one juris- meaning of states’ rights, in terms of human free- diction to another, a limit is put on the extent to dom. In fact, the educational part of such a seces- which the government may use its monopoly power. sionist movement should be given first importance. Government is held in restraint by the fear of losing And those who are plumping for a “third party,” its taxpaying citizens, just as loss of customers tends because both existing parties are centralist in char- to keep other monopolies from getting too arrogant. acter, would do well to nail to their masthead this No tyrant ever supports divided or decentralized banner: Secession of the 48 states from Washington. power, which is why twentieth-century totalitarians were Now that is a libertarian speaking. such opponents of federalism. The US regime, too, has Secession is not a popular idea among the political devoted over two centuries to dismantling the barriers and media classes in America, to be sure, and regime lib- that the states once imposed to their untrammeled exer- ertarians may roll their eyes at it, but a recent poll found cise of power. As Chodorov put it, “The unlikelihood about a quarter of Americans sympathetic to the idea, of getting the states to vote themselves out of existence despite the ceaseless barrage of nationalist propaganda turned the centralizers to other means, such as bribing emitted from all sides. A result like this confirms what we the state authorities with patronage, alienating the loy- already suspected: that a substantial chunk of the public alty of the citizenry with federal subsidies, establishing is willing to entertain unconventional thoughts. And within the states independent administrative bodies for that’s all to the good. Conventional American thoughts the management of federal works programs.” are war, centralization, redistribution, and inflation. The most unconventional thought in America today is lib- Here’s how Chodorov concluded: erty. nn There is no end of trouble the states can give the centralizers by merely refusing to cooperate. Such refusal would meet with popular acclaim if it were Lew Rockwell is Founder and Chairman of the Mises Institute. 18 | January/February 2015 | The Austrian

DAVID GORDON Many hoped that the presidency of Barack Obama CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9 would change matters for the better; but unfortunately Napolitano’s aims in the book go beyond historical he continued and extended the policies of his prede- inquiry. He wishes to combat the gross violations of lib- cessor. “The president has claimed a new and awesome erty which have accompanied the “war on terror”; and power. President Obama claimed the unnatural and he devotes nearly half of the book to this endeavor. After unconstitutional right to decide unilaterally which the 9/11 attacks, “the executive branch, through the use American shall die. . . . Using his fleet of drones, Obama of the noble lie and the organs of state powers, would killed four U.S. citizens between 2011 and 2013.” So far abjure liberties in the guise of fighting a War on Terror, as programs that invade privacy are concerned, Napoli- starting with our ostensible enemy, then moving on to tano mordantly inquires: “Does a president who mur- personal vendetta and perpetual, aimless war.” ders care about privacy?” Napolitano justifies to the hilt this severe indictment. Faced with this melancholy record, we must ask, is The NSA’s program of electronic eavesdropping, pro- the cause of liberty hopeless? Napolitano does not think mulgated by George W. Bush, “was the broadest known so. “Jefferson himself predicted that in the long march of expansion of presidential spying powers in history.” In history, power and order would become concentrated in its ceaseless efforts to gather information useful to it, the government, and the personal liberty of individuals the Bush administration did not shrink from torture. would be diminished. In this book, I have attempted to “Detainee treatment at Abu Ghraib [in Iraq] became demonstrate not the inevitability of Jefferson’s predic- public in 2004 . . . causing immeasurable global damage tion, but the need for eternal vigilance — another warn- to the credibility of the United States as a defender of nat- ing he gave us.” ural and civil liberty. According to the initial Abu Ghraib Judge Napolitano has given us a comprehensive investigator, Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the survey of the dangers to liberty we face today. He is a prison’s MP engaged in . . . ‘torture, abuse, rape and every jurist of great distinction and provides an expert account indecency.’” Napolitano concludes that “even under the of the legal issues in a vast number of key cases. I espe- broadest reading of the Constitution, war powers do not cially recommend his analysis of Judge Learned Hand’s permit the president and his military agents knowingly reformulation of the “‘clear and present danger’ rule to or even negligently to permit torture. The president and adopt a balancing test for First Amendment constitu- his senior officials enormously expanded war powers to effect inhumane and shameful treatment upon U.S. tionality.” Suicide Pact is an indispensable weapon in the prisoners ... while concentrating power in the hands of a battle for liberty. nn few depraved individuals who carried out this systematic regime of torture under an ideological, imperial, unitary David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, and presidency.” editor of The Mises Review.

DEATH AND TAXES describe much of anything within Marco Polo as favorable to the idea of laissez faire. For CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11 example, the least sympathetic character beyond Sidao is Marco’s father who, as a merchant, is portrayed as greedy and even inept, escaping execution only thanks to Marco’s efforts. The merchant trade is not a vir- tuous trade, the series tells us, and for Marco, abandoned by his own father who seeks riches instead, true virtue is to be found in service to the Khan. Also prominent within the series is taxation, and those who collect and count taxes are three-dimensional and largely sympathetic characters in Marco Polo. Meanwhile, those who actually generate the taxes — merchants like Marco’s father — are either self-serving or “simply nameless rabble.” nn

Ryan McMaken is editor of The Austrian and Mises Daily. s Daily. The Austrian | January/February 2015 | 19

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