The Irrepressible Rothbard

Summing up the work of libertarian economist and historian Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) and noting its stunning range, philosopher David Gordon once wondered "if there are really three, four, or five geniuses writing under his name." The lively essays collected in The Irrepressible Rothbard display one of those geniuses: Rothbard the journalist, cultural critic, political observer, and movement organizer. Even more remarkable, they represent just a fraction of what he wrote in his spare time, for just one publication, and in just the last few years of his life.

His articles combined libertarian antigovernment economics, decentralist local patriotism, antiwar isolation, and a dissident/reactionary cultural outlook that saw the growth of government as the key to the loss of the Old Republic. He defended land-rights groups against environmentalists, citizen militias against gun grabbers, isolationists against imperialists, paleoconservatives against neoconservatives, populists against party regulars, anti–New World Order conspiracy theorists against the establishment, nationalists against internationalist planners, states' righters against libertarian centralists, the Christian Right against its own leadership, and much more.

These essays show not only Rothbard's intellectual vigor but the complete joy with which he embraced life, and how his extreme optimism made even the most severe setbacks tolerable. He experienced great disappointments and great successes, but through it all he was heroic, undaunted, and irrepressible.

This volume displays Murray Rothbard's late political writing as an intellectual model for those who long for liberty, and work for it in our times. 431 pp. (hb)

This volume's eighty-five essays address political strategy, war, nationalism, culture, feminism, and much more. They include

• A Strategy for the Right
• Frank Meyer and Sydney Hook
• The Religious Right: Toward a Coalition
• A New Strategy for Liberty
• Right-Wing Populism
• Pat Buchanan and the Menace of Anti-Anti-Semitism
• Working Our Way Back to the President
• Gang-Stabbing the President: What, Who, and Why
• The "Watershed" Election
• Education: Rethinking "Choice"
• New York Politics `93
• The Bringing Down of Liz Holtzman
• Within a Month! The Bringing Down of Bobby Ray Inman
• The Apotheosis of Tricky Dick
• The New York Political Circus
• Big-Government Libertarians
• The November Revolution and Its Betrayal
• A Rivederci Mario
• 1996! The Morning Line
• Stop NAFTA!
• Why the Pro-NAFTA Hysteria?
• Mr. Bush's War
• The Post-Cold War World
• Mr. Bush's Shooting War
• Notes on the Nintendo War
• Lessons of the Gulf War
• Why the War? The Kuwait Connection
• U.S., Keep Out of Bosnia!
• The December Surprise
• "Doing God's Work" in Somalia
• Hands Off the Serbs!
• Where Intervene Next?
• Korean War Redux?
• Invade the World
• The Nationalities Question
• Yugoslavian Breakup
• Welcome, Slovenia!
• The Cyprus Question
• Ex-Czechoslovakia
• The New York Times, Communism, and South Africa
• Ethnic Fury in the Caucasus: Sorting It Out
• But What About the Hungarians?
• Hutus vs. Tutsis
• On Resisting Evil
• Guilt Sanctified
• "Tolerance," or Manners?
• Exhume! Exhume! Or, Who Put the Arsenic in Rough-n-Ready's Cherries?
• Behind Waco
• America's Most Persecuted Minority
• Hunting the Christian Right
• The Menace of the Religious Left
• Saint Hillary and the Religious Left
• Kulturdampf!
• From the Bench--Down With De-e-e-fense
• The Right to Kill, With Dignity?
• Wichita Justice? On Denationalizing the Courts
• The J.F.K. Flap
• Bobby Fischer: The Lynching of the Returning Hero
• Fluoridation Revisited
• Never Say "JAP"!
• Some Reflections on the Olympics
• I Hate Max Lerner
• Max Lerner: Again?!
• The Evil Empire Strikes Back
• Liberal Hysteria: The Mystery Explained
• King Kristol
• The Women/Ladies/Girls/Spoiled Brats of Mills
• Sports, Politics, and the Constitution
• The Great Thomas & Hill Show: Stopping the Monstrous Regiment
• "Date Rape" on Campus
• The Kennedy "Rape" Case
• Marshall, Civil Rights, and the Court
• Their Malcolm... And Mine
• "Debauchery! Debauchery!" At Tailhook
• Race! That Murray Book
• The Clintonians: "Looking Like America"
• Coping With the Inaugural
• Is Clinton a Bastard?
• Clintonian Ugly
• Those Awards
• PC Cinema: Psychobabble Gets Nasty
• The Oscars
• A French Masterpiece