1. Mises’s Character and Its Influence

My association with the Austrian School of economic thought has been invaluable to me, but so have the personal testimonials as to the character of Mises. He never yielded to any temptation to soften his stand to be more acceptable to the conventional economic community, which proved him to be a man of strong will and character. If he had softened his stands, his recognition during his lifetime would have been enhanced. But his goal was economic truth, not a prestigious academic position and superficial acclaim. His determination and consistency were buoyed by the confidence that he was right, and that rectitude was all that mattered. Mises was always a gentleman, kind and considerate of all, and I have tried to emulate him. When the world of economists and politicians is going mad, it is difficult to respond with quiet and deliberate discussion. Yet this response served him well and enhanced his ability to teach. In due time, his quiet voice and those of his students will be heard, despite the shouting and demagoguery that afflicts Washington, D.C.

When exasperated with the current state of affairs, we must remember Mises’s admonishment: “No one should expect that any logical argument or any experience could shake the almost religious fervor of those who believe in salvation through spending and credit expansion.”³

But we must also remember that it is the acceptance of economic interventionism that breeds this disease of demagoguery that plagues the thinking and speech of the politicians.

After coming to believe in themselves as planners and decision-makers for consumers, businesspeople, and working people, the politicians soon can arrogantly rationalize any position for any reason. It wouldn’t be as bad if they knew they were demagogues—at least this would be honest. But this arrogance becomes a way of life, and the tool to achieve their next “important and necessary” intervention.

It is only with full assurance gained from Austrian economics, and the example of Mises’s character, that I am able to tolerate the daily circus of Congress.

Economic knowledge is not nearly as scarce in Washington as one might suspect from a superficial observation of Congress. Other Congressmen frequently express sound judgments to me privately regarding deficits and runaway expenditures. What they lack is the will to resist the pressure groups. As desperately as we need a better economic understanding, even more we need Mises’s trait of gentlemanly firmness on issues of principle. Character is more necessary than eloquence in economic theory.

Jacques Rueff described well this quality of Mises’s:

With an indefatigable enthusiasm, and with courage and faith undaunted, he has never ceased to denounce the fallacious reasons and untruths offered to justify most of our new institutions. . . . No consideration whatever can divert him in the least from the straight steep path where his cold reason guides him. In the irrationalism of our era he has remained a person of pure reason.⁴

Murray Rothbard in The Essential von Mises writes that Mises:

reacted to the darkening economic world around him with a lifetime of high courage and personal integrity. Never would Ludwig von Mises bend to the winds of change that he saw to be unfortunate and disastrous; neither changes in political economy nor in the discipline of economics could bring him to swerve a single iota from pursuing and propounding the truth as he saw it.⁵