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Young American Revolution

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March 2010
Contents
March 2010 / Issue 05

4 Editorial
Revolutionary Politics

5 Right Young Things By Daniel McCarthy

The revolution begins on campus—but beware of 23 Liberty’s Mad Men
the last generation’s mistakes By Jeff Fulcher
Madison Avenue shows us it takes more
than good ideas to sell a philosophy
8 Freedom President By Congressman Ron Paul
How to put the Constitution back in the Oval Office 25 Pitchfork Time
By Kelse Moen
12 Soviet U By Philip Christofanelli Freedom lovers should support the
Campus commissars suppress a commemoration of masses against the classes
the fall of communism
27 Profiles in Liberty
By Trent Hill
14 More Leviathan? By W. James Antle III Antiwar.com founder Eric Garris
You can’t “starve the beast”—but that’s no reason to feed it
29 Consistent Conservatism
18 Economics of the Living Dead By George Hawley By Matt Cockerill
John Maynard Keynes is still eating policymakers’ brains It’s individualist, pro-life, and antiwar

33 Ramparts’ Red Glare

21 Obama’s Big Rip-Off By Jeremy Lott By Dylan Hales
An interview with Obamanomics author Tim Carney A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short,
Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine
Changed America
31 Minister to Liberty By Norman Horn
by Peter Richardson
Edmund Opitz showed that capitalism and Christianity
are not enemies
35 The Anti-Roosevelt
By Gerald J. Russello
39 Rockin’ in the Free World By John Payne The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft
The top 25 libertarian rock songs by Russell Kirk and James McClellan

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Young American Revolution

Publisher
Jeff Frazee
Editorial Director
Daniel McCarthy
Deputy Editors
Edward King,
Roy M. Antoun
Art Director
Matthew Holdridge
Illustration
Shane Helm,
Anthony Rousseau
Contributing Editors
W. James Antle III, Dylan Hales,
George Hawley, Trent Hill,
Jack Hunter, Bonnie Kristian,
Jeremy Lott, Kelse Moen, John Payne
Young American Revolution is the official publication
of Young Americans for Liberty (www.YALiberty.
org). Subscriptions are $50 for one year (4 issues).
Checks may be made out to Young Americans for
Liberty and sent to PO Box 2751, Arlington, VA 22202.
Young American Revolution accepts letters to the
editor and freelance submissions. Letters should
be between 50 and 300 words. Submissions should
be between 700 and 2400 words. Letters and
submissions may be edited for length and content.
Write to us at contact@yaliberty.org or PO Box
2751, Arlington, VA 22202.
Young Americans for Liberty is the continuation of
Students for Ron Paul (SFP). In less than 8 months,
SFP established over 500 college and high school
chapters in all 50 states and over 26,000 students
joined the Ron Paul 2008 campaign.
The mission of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL)
is to train, educate, and mobilize youth activists
committed to “winning on principle”. Our goal is to
cast the leaders of tomorrow and reclaim the policies,
candidates, and direction of our government.
We welcome limited government conservatives,
classical liberals, and libertarians who trust in the
creed we set forth.
Opinions expressed in Young American Revolution
are not necessarily the views of Young Americans
for Liberty.
Copyright 2010 Young Americans for Liberty
Revolutionary Politics
O bama Girl is broken-hearted. In 2008,
Amber Lee Ettinger professed undy-
ing passion for Barack Obama in a series
of YouTube videos that went viral like the
swine flu. But now she says the affair is
off. Even the president’s former #1 fan
thinks he’s just a B- politician. That’s a lib-
eral grade—a conservative one would be
something less than a D-.
Obama’s first year has been a failure by
any measure. Bailouts, stimulus, cash for
clunkers, escalation in Afghanistan, and
Obamacare have put the president’s ap-
proval ratings on track to match the record
lows set by George W. Bush. The Ameri-
can people want real change. And so for
the first time in four years, Republicans are
looking forward to November.
It was America’s discontent with Bush
and the GOP Congress—not demand
for more government in every aspect
our lives—that propelled the Democrats
into their House and Senate majorities.
Obama’s party reaped the benefits of a
backlash. Now Republicans hope to do
the same.
But the people don’t want more of
what the Republicans are serving, either.
The public uproar against Obamacare is
not an endorsement for Romneycare—
just the opposite. As the populist tenor of
the tea parties suggests, Americans are sick
of the establishment in both major parties.
But what alternative do they have?
Third parties, sure. But ballot-access
laws are stacked against them, and most
voters, despite their discontent, still iden-
tity as either Republicans or Democrats.
The problem with politics in this country
is not that no one good can be elected on
a major-party ticket—Ron Paul would not
be in Congress if that were true. Rather,
too few righteously angry voters know
how to channel their outrage into produc-
tive action—indeed, few are even aware
that the biggest decisions about who will
represent or rule them are made long be-
fore November.
General elections give voters a choice
between Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
The primaries that pick the major parties’
nominees in the first place matter more.
And even earlier there are other qualifying
tests: the so-called money primary, for ex-
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March 2010
ample, which shows whether a candidate
can raise enough cash to make a serious
run.
Incumbent politicians hate nothing
more than being challenged in a primary.
It forces them to spend money they would
otherwise be able to use in the general
election (assuming it’s contested) or give
to other candidates to spread their influ-
ence. And the much smaller voter turnout
in primaries creates conditions in which
upsets can happen all too easily. There
have been instances where incumbents in
safe districts have even announced sudden
retirements when faced with an unexpect-
edly serious primary challenger.
Long before primary day, who con-
trols a state or local party’s political appa-
ratus can go far toward determining who
reaches elected office. Years ago, the old
Rockefeller Republican establishment was
horrified to see supporters of Pat Robert-
son—who ran for president in 1988—get-
ting involved in state and county Republi-
can committees. They knew that Christian
Coalition voters outnumbered Rockefeller
voters; the only thing that had kept the es-
tablishment in power for so long was that
nobody else knew how politics was really
played. Once the religious right learned,
the Rockefellers were finished.
Will the tea parties do what Robert-
son’s people did? Will constitutionalists
who supported Ron Paul in 2008 over-
throw the political establishment with its
own weapons? In a few places, this has al-
ready happened.
But knowing the rules of political war-
fare is not enough. As the religious right
learned, it does not profit anyone to gain
the world—or at least elected office—and
lose his own soul. Winning is not enough:
the goal must be winning on principle.
That’s Young Americans for Liberty’s
motto, and YAL has an indispensable role
to play in the revolution that needs to hap-
pen. Young Americans are the vanguard—
the rising leaders who will have to avoid
the errors of previous generations and
keep the flame of principle alive. If you
want to support the cause of peace, free-
dom, and the Constitution and learn what
it takes to realize those principles, go to
www.yaliberty.org and join YAL today.
 Right Young Things
The revolution begins on campus—but beware of the last generation’s mistakes

Daniel McCarthy

F rank Chodorov was a man with a plan—a

50-year plan, to be exact. He had seen vast
changes came to the country during his lifetime
(1887-1966). Yet what startled him most was
not “the replacement of the horse and buggy
by the automobile” but “the transmutation of
the American character from individualist to
collectivist.” “At the beginning of the century,”
he recalled, “the tradition of individualism that
had held up since the Revolution was still going
strong; by 1950, only the physical composition
of the individual remained, for his character had
been well washed out by the caustic of social-
ism.”
How had it happened? “The collectivist seed
was implanted in the soft and fertile student
mind forty-odd years ago,” Chodorov wrote.
“That’s how it all began. Collectivism is, after Frank Chodorov, individualist
all, an idea, and the usual way of acquiring an
idea is by learning.” From 1905 to 1922, an or-
ganization called the Intercollegiate Society of Socialists, founded are too, including those conservatives who have never been taught
by novelist Upton Sinclair, preached the gospel of government
power in the service of egalitarianism to campuses across the
nation. After the demise of ISS, other groups took up its mission.
“Truth to tell,” Chodorov observed, “those who espoused
socialism were among the most imaginative, volatile, and articu-
late students; the fact that they were ignored or derided by their
classmates simply added to their ardor.” They carried out an in-
tellectual revolution—which turned into a cultural and political
revolution. It was time, Chodorov argued, for the other side to
fight back. He proposed a “Fifty-Year Project,” beginning with
the creation of a freedom movement on campuses— an intercol-
legiate society of individualists.
Sixty years after Chodorov made his pitch, the battle for the
student soul rages on. Social democrats hold the commanding
heights, not just in English faculty lounges—the surest redoubts
of Marxism this side of Pyongyang—but even
in many economics departments, where John
Maynard Keynes remains more honored than
Ludwig von Mises. Indiana University, for ex-
ample, recently refused to host a talk by Mises
Institute senior scholar Thomas Woods Jr.—a
Columbia University Ph.D. and author of mul-
tiple New York Times bestsellers, including the re-
cent Meltdown—after the economics faculty de-
cided he lacked “sufficient academic credibility.”
Qualms about scholarly qualifications did not,
of course, stop IU from paying former senator
John Edwards $35,000 for a campus appear-
ance. At colleges around the country, different
standards apply to statists and anti-statists.
Most faculty and administrators do not think
of themselves as socialists—but what is telling
is that they cannot even conceive of an alterna-
tive to the tutelary state. They are collectivists
by habit rather than conviction. Most students
that moral and economic laws do not stop at the water’s edge.
Suckered by militarist propaganda, they believe that the U.S. gov-
ernment can do in Iraq or Afghanistan what they know it cannot
do at home.
Since Chodorov’s time collectivism has evolved from a force
for revolution into a force of inertia. It has blended into the na-
tion’s psychological backdrop, abandoning the foreign face it wore
as the philosophy of Marx and Lenin to take on a more patriotic
visage—Abraham Lincoln’s or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s. Yet
the faith in government as an all-powerful force for moral good
remains the same.
So what ever became of that 50-year project and the intercol-
legiate society of individualists? They built the conservative move-
ment. But conservatives failed to stop the ideological transfor-
mation of America because the best traditionalist and libertarian

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Young American Revolution
minds fell to fighting with one another, which cleared the way for
their mutual enemies on the social-democratic left and neo-impe-
rial right to claim total power. Today Chodorov’s plan deserves to
be rediscovered—as does the history of why it went awry.
Chodorov made his mark in the 1930s as one of the leading ex-
ponents of the ideas of Henry George, author of Progress and Pov-
erty. “George is the apostle of liberty,” Chodorov wrote in 1941,
“he teaches the ethical basis of private property; he stresses the
function of capital in an advancing civilization; he emphasizes the
greater productivity of voluntary co-operation in a free market
economy, the moral degeneration of a people subjected to state
direction and socialistic conformity.” Before Austrian econom-
ics came to the United States in the 1940s, Georgism—blended
with Jeffersonianism—supplied individualists like Chodorov and
his friend Albert Jay Nock with a theoretical foundation for their
beliefs.
Nock and Chodorov were just two of the many brilliant jour-
nalists who battled Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in magazines
small and large. But with American entry into World War II, virtu-
ally all criticism of Roosevelt ceased. Only in 1944 did important
new channels of dissent begin to emerge—the start of the con-
servative renaissance. Both Human Events and Chodorov’s news-
letter, analysis, launched that year. (And in 1951, they merged.)
Chodorov had a great deal in common with Human Events
founders Henry Regnery, Frank Hanighen, and Felix Morley—all
had opposed the war and the president’s power-grabs. He con-
tributed frequently to their journal, which in September 1950
reprinted his analysis essay “A Fifty-Year Project”—retitled “For
Our Children’s Children”—to bring it to a wider readership.
The plan would begin with a lecture bureau—speakers “would
have to be acquainted with socialistic theory as well as with the lit-
erature of individualism” to better “uproot the trend of thought.”
The speakers program would be
followed up with the organization of Individualistic Clubs
and an intercollegiate affiliation. Prizes for essays on indi-
vidualism would do much to stimulate thought; and a publi-
cation offering an outlet for articles would be a necessity. Out
of these activities would come an esprit de corps based upon
conviction and enthusiasm for a “new” idea. The individual
list would become the campus radical, just as the socialist was
forty years ago…
J. Howard Pew of the Sun Oil Company liked what he read.
He wrote Chodorov a check for $1,000—about $9,000 in today’s
money. Chodorov had no intention of cashing it; he was a journal-
ist, not a campus organizer. But Frank Hanighen convinced him
not to send the money back and instead try to make his vision a
reality. In 1952, Chodorov and Hanighen (and Hanighen’s sec-
retary, Patricia Lutz) incorporated the Intercollegiate Society of
Individualists—ISI—with a 26-year-old writer named William F.
Buckley Jr. as its president.
Chodorov, 65, was almost the last of the great old-right libertar-
ians. Buckley, who had published the bestseller God and Man at Yale
in 1951, was the rising star of a new right. The young man favored
a far more activist U.S. foreign policy against the Soviet Union
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March 2010
than did Chodorov, who remained a staunch noninterventionist.
(The older man’s answer to McCarthy-era fears about subversives
in government jobs, meanwhile, was elegantly conservative of
civil liberties: “just abolish the jobs.”)
In other respects, however, Buckley was heir to the tradition
of Chodorov and Nock (who had been a friend of WFB’s father).
Indeed, Chodorov was something of a mentor, providing editorial
guidance on God and Man at Yale. In the book, Buckley consis-
tently referred to his philosophy as individualism. “Conservatism”
would come later; it was a word that Chodorov never warmed to.
“I will punch anyone who calls me a conservative in the nose,” he
insisted in 1956, “I am a radical.”
Buckley and Chodorov hit the lecture circuit, in keeping with
the 50-year plan. But neither of them wished serve as a full-
time campus organizer or run a national membership program.
Chodorov could rely on the Foundation for Economic Educa-
tion, the first great libertarian think tank, to supply free-market
literature to students on ISI’s mailing list. But Chodorov needed
someone young and intrepid—and willing to work cheap—to
oversee recruitment, manage programs, and raise funds for the
group. He quickly found his man: 29-year-old Victor Milione, an
intensely faithful Roman Catholic and astonishingly well read for
his age—or any other.
“In a single conversation,” conservative historian Lee Edwards
relates in Educating for Liberty, a history of ISI, “Milione would
quote in extenso John Henry Newman, Alexis de Tocqueville, Sen-
eca, Jacob Burckhardt, Ortega y Gasset, James Bryce, and Richard
Weaver, his favorite modern conservative writer.” This was no ex-
aggeration, as anyone who worked for ISI before Milione’s death
in 2008 could attest. He exemplified the faith and erudition that
represented the best in postwar traditionalist conservatism.
Milione’s intellectual roots—in religion and history rather than
politics and economics—were very different from those of the
lifelong agnostic Frank Chodorov. Yet the traditionalist Milione
and libertarian Chodorov had more in common than not in the
struggle to keep liberal learning alive and constrain the Leviathan
state Franklin Roosevelt and succeeding presidents had built.
The Intercollegiate Society of Individualists flourished. As
Chodorov had planned, the society seeded young minds with anti-
collectivist knowledge, and alumni in turn led new political and
journalistic endeavors. Philosophically energized conservative stu-
dents pushed to draft Sen. Barry Goldwater for vice president at
the 1960 Republican convention. When that failed, they formed
a new activist student group, Young Americans for Freedom, to
battle left-wingers on campus and force the Republican Party to
the right. Four years later, Goldwater was the GOP’s presidential
nominee.
But something was lost in the transition from philosophy to
politics. Too often the activist campus right merely opposed the
campus left—which was also burgeoning in the 1960s—and lost
sight of original principles. YAF showed little understanding of
economics, pouring its energy into boycotting Polish hams and
protesting American companies that traded with the Soviet bloc.
Young intellectuals, meanwhile, perhaps inspired by the long-
running feud between traditionalist guru Russell Kirk (author of
The Conservative Mind) and the liberty-minded Cold Warrior Frank tism, ISI changed its name in 1966 to the Intercollegiate Studies
Meyer (National Review’s literary editor), indulged in internecine Institute.
squabbles, preferring fraction to synthesis. (Ironically, Meyer him- Cut loose from its philosophical moorings, YAF came to re-
self tried to be a conciliatory figure—his philosophy, combining semble more and more the College Republicans, who assumed
Cold War conservatism with classical liberalism, came to be called greater importance within the increasingly partisan and profes-
“fusionism.”) sionalized conservative movement. Henceforth the main stream
A crackup was coming, and it arrived at YAF’s 1969 convention of the young right would be symbolized not by people like Mil-
in St. Louis. The Vietnam War and cultural upheavals of the 1960s ione or the early Buckley, but by the likes of Karl Rove—who got
sharply divided libertarians from traditionalists and national-secu- his start in national politics as executive director of the College
rity conservatives. Drug legalization, draft resistance, and the war Republican National Committee.
itself were flashpoints, and as a In some respects, Chodorov’s
libertarian YAFer burned a fac- 50-year plan succeeded all too
simile draft card on the conven- well. The intellectual cadres nur-
tion floor, jeering—“lazy fair- tured by ISI in turn spawned a
ies!” was the anticommunists’ popular movement that changed
comeback to libertarian chants the language of American poli-
of “laissez faire!”—turned to tics. By 1996—46 years after
brawling. “For Our Children’s Children”—
Radical libertarians split from even a Democratic president, Bill
YAF, and just as ISI’s alumni had Clinton, felt compelled to say
done before, these young people that the era of big government
would build a movement of was over. But rhetoric, political
their own. Soon libertarian think reality, and philosophical sub-
tanks, magazines, even a politi- stance had come apart, so that
the Republican president who
cal party sprang up. Yet it was all
succeeded Clinton, George W.
on a far smaller scale than what
Bush, could pose as a conserva-
had been attempted by the con-
tive while increasing the federal
servative movement and gained
government’s role in education,
no political traction at all. In
expanding entitlements, and
1980, while conservative rallied
launching nation-building wars
to Ronald Reagan, the Libertar-
in Iraq and Central Asia.
ian Party fielded a presidential
Collectivists on both sides
candidate who described his phi-
of the political spectrum now
losophy as “low-tax liberalism.” use the rhetoric of individual-
Nobody cared, least of all the William F. Buckley Jr. (right) and L. Brent Bozell Jr. ism when it suits them—which
young. is usually whenever their party
Yet traditionalist conservatives—as opposed to young Repub- doesn’t hold occupy the White House. Antiwar liberals, so vocif-
lican careerists—fared no better than the libertarians. All along, erous during the Bush administration, are muted now. And while
traditionalists like Russell Kirk had quietly dissented from milita- tea party protesters now demand smaller government, their real
rism and the excesses of anti-communism: as historian George H. test will come during the next Republican administration—will
Nash has noted, “In 1944, Kirk predicted that New Dealers would they protest the Patriot Act, or the next incarnation of Real ID?
prolong the state of war after the Axis powers’ defeat in order to To fix this mess of philosophical confusion and bipartisan stat-
maintain prosperity. They would justify keeping men in arms (and ism will require new leadership, of the sort only young Ameri-
off the job market) by creating an enemy: Russia.” cans—particularly Young Americans for Liberty—can offer.
Young libertarians had been more willing than young tradition- Chodorov’s blueprint, updated to meet today’s needs, works. And
alists to voice their doubts—or outright opposition—to the Viet- students now have the advantage of looking to history to see what
nam War and other Cold War crusades. Together, the best minds went wrong the last time. If an effective movement against the
of both camps could have put up stiff resistance to the political welfare-warfare state is to be built, it will need libertarians who
careerists, militarists, and neoconservatives who overtook move- can understand the language and values of the great number of
ment conservatism in the Nixon years. On their own, however, religiously-minded and conservative voters in this country, and
traditionalists had little choice but to become passive partners of traditionalists who understand that centralized power is deadly
the Nixon right or drop out of politics altogether. to the civilization they cherish. Chodorov’s 50-year plan can suc-
Milione steered ISI, which had become predominantly tradi- ceed—with wiser leadership from today’s students.
tionalist, away from political entanglements, refusing contribu-
tions from donors who wanted the group to engage in partisan Daniel McCarthy [mccarthydp@gmail.com] is editorial director of Young
activities. Symbolizing both the break with Chodorov’s individual- American Revolution and senior editor of The American Conserva-
ism and a refusal to be swallowed wholesale by political conserva- tive (www.amconmag.com).
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Young American Revolution
 Freedom President
How to put the Constitution back in the Oval Office
Congressman Ron Paul
S ince my 2008 campaign for the presi-
dency I have often been asked, “How
would a constitutionalist president go
about dismantling the welfare-warfare state
and restoring a constitutional republic?”
This is a very important question, because
without a clear road map and set of priori-
ties, such a president runs the risk of hav-
ing his pro-freedom agenda stymied by the
various vested interests that benefit from
big government.
Of course, just as the welfare-warfare
state was not constructed in 100 days, it
could not be dismantled in the first 100
days of any presidency. While our goal is
to reduce the size of the state as quickly
as possible, we should always make sure
our immediate proposals minimize social
disruption and human suffering. Thus,
we should not seek to abolish the social
safety net overnight because that would
harm those who have grown dependent on
government-provided welfare. Instead, we
would want to give individuals who have Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Photography by M.
come to rely on the state time to prepare Holdridge
for the day when responsibility for provid-
ing aide is returned to those organizations best able to administer
compassionate and effective help—churches and private charities.
Now, this need for a transition period does not apply to all
types of welfare. For example, I would have no problem defund-
ing corporate welfare programs, such as the Export-Import Bank
or the TARP bank bailouts, right away. I find it difficult to muster
much sympathy for the CEO’s of Lockheed Martin and Goldman
Sachs.
No matter what the president wants to do, most major changes
in government programs would require legislation to be passed by
Congress. Obviously, the election of a constitutionalist president
would signal that our ideas had been accepted by a majority of the
American public and would probably lead to the election of sev-
eral pro-freedom congressmen and senators. Furthermore, some
senators and representatives would become “born again” consti-
tutionalists out of a sense of self-preservation. Yet there would
still be a fair number of politicians who would try to obstruct our
freedom agenda. Thus, even if a president wanted to eliminate ev-
ery unconstitutional program in one fell swoop, he would be very
unlikely to obtain the necessary support in Congress.
Yet a pro-freedom president and his legislative allies could make and procedures for the federal bureaucracy to restore respect for
8
March 2010
tremendous progress simply by changing
the terms of the negotiations that go on in
Washington regarding the size and scope
of government. Today, negotiations over
legislation tend to occur between those
who want a 100 percent increase in fed-
eral spending and those who want a 50
percent increase. Their compromise is a 75
percent increase. With a president serious
about following the Constitution, backed
by a substantial block of sympathetic rep-
resentatives in Congress, negotiations on
outlays would be between those who want
to keep funding the government programs
and those who want to eliminate them out-
right—thus a compromise would be a 50
percent decrease in spending!
While a president who strictly adheres
to the Constitution would need the con-
sent of Congress for very large changes
in the size of government, such as shut-
ting down cabinet departments, he could
use his constitutional authority as head of
the executive branch and as commander in
chief to take several significant steps to-
ward liberty on his own. The area where
the modern chief executive has greatest ability to act unilater-
ally is in foreign affairs. Unfortunately, Congress has abdicated
its constitutional authority to declare wars, instead passing vague
“authorization of force” bills that allow the president to send any
number of troops to almost any part of the world. The legislature
does not even effectively use its power of the purse to rein in the
executive. Instead, Congress serves as little more than a rubber
stamp for the president’s requests.
If the president has the power to order U.S. forces into combat
on nothing more than his own say-so, then it stands to reason he
can order troops home. Therefore, on the first day in office, a
constitutionalist can begin the orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces
from Iraq and Afghanistan. He can also begin withdrawing troops
from other areas of the world. The United States has over 300,000
troops stationed in more than 146 countries. Most if not all of
these deployments bear little or no relationship to preserving the
safety of the American people. For example, over 20 years after
the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. still maintains troops in Ger-
many.
Domestically, the president can use his authority to set policies
the Constitution and individual liberty. For example, today manu-
facturers of dietary supplements are subject to prosecution by the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or Federal Trade Com-
mission (FTC) if they make even truthful statements about the
health benefits of their products without going through the costly
and time-consuming procedures required to gain government ap-
proval for their claims. A president can put an end to this simply
by ordering the FDA and FTC not to pursue these types of cases
unless they have clear evidence that the manufacturer’s claims
are not true. Similarly, the president
could order the bureaucracy to stop
prosecuting consumers who wish to
sell raw milk across state lines.
A crucial policy that a president
could enact to bring speedy improve-
ments to government is ordering
the bureaucracy to respect the 10th
Amendment and refrain from under-
mining state laws. We have already
seen a little renewed federalism with
the current administration’s policy
of not prosecuting marijuana users
when their use of the drug is con-
sistent with state medical-marijuana
laws. A constitutionalist administra-
tion would also defer to state laws
refusing compliance with the Real
ID act and denying federal author-
ity over interstate gun transactions.
None of these actions repeals a fed-
eral law; they all simply recognize a
state’s primary authority, as protected
by the 10th Amendment, to set poli-
cy in these areas.
In fact, none of the measures Ron Paul addressing a crowd of over 10,000 people in
Minneapolis, MN
I have discussed so far involves re-
pealing any written law. They can
be accomplished simply by a president exercising his legitimate
authority to set priorities for the executive branch. And another
important step he can take toward restoring the balance of pow-
ers the Founders intended is repealing unconstitutional executive
orders issued by his predecessors.
Executive orders are a useful management tool for the presi-
dent, who must exercise control over the enormous federal bu-
reaucracy. However, in recent years executive orders have been
used by presidents to create new federal laws without the con-
sent of Congress. As President Clinton’s adviser Paul Begala in-
famously said, “Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool.”
No, it is not “kinda cool,” and a conscientious president could go
a long way toward getting us back to the Constitution’s division
of powers by ordering his counsel or attorney general to comb
through recent executive orders so the president can annul those
that exceed the authority of his office. If the president believed a
particular executive order made a valid change in the law, then he
should work with Congress to pass legislation making that change.
Only Congress can directly abolish government departments,
but the president could use his managerial powers to shrink the
9
Young American Revolution
federal bureaucracy by refusing to fill vacancies created by retire-
ments or resignations. This would dramatically reduce the number
of federal officials wasting our money and taking our liberties.
One test to determine if a vacant job needs to be filled is the
“essential employees test.” Whenever D.C. has a severe snow-
storm, the federal government orders all “non-essential” federal
personnel to stay home. If someone is classified as non-essential
for snow-day purposes, the country can probably survive if that
position is not filled when the jobholder quits or retires. A con-
stitutionalist president should make
every day in D.C. like a snow day!
A president could also enhance
the liberties and security of the
American people by ordering federal
agencies to stop snooping on citizens
when there is no evidence that those
who are being spied on have com-
mitted a crime. Instead, the president
should order agencies to refocus on
the legitimate responsibilities of the
federal government, such as border
security. He should also order the
Transportation Security Administra-
tion to stop strip-searching grand-
mothers and putting toddlers on the
no-fly list. The way to keep Ameri-
cans safe is to focus on real threats
and ensure that someone whose
own father warns U.S. officials he’s
a potential terrorist is not allowed to
board a Christmas Eve flight to De-
troit with a one-way ticket.
Perhaps the most efficient step a
president could take to enhance travel
security is to remove the federal road-
blocks that have frustrated attempts
to arm pilots. Congress created provi-
sions to do just that in response to the attacks of September 11,
2001. However, the processes for getting a federal firearms license
are extremely cumbersome, and as a result very few pilots have
gotten their licenses. A constitutionalist in the Oval Office would
want to revise those regulations to make it as easy as possible for
pilots to get approval to carry firearms on their planes.
While the president can do a great deal on his own, to really
restore the Constitution and cut back on the vast unconstitution-
al programs that have sunk roots in Washington over 60 years,
he will have to work with Congress. The first step in enacting a
pro-freedom legislative agenda is the submission of a budget that
outlines the priorities of the administration. While it has no legal
effect, the budget serves as a guideline for the congressional ap-
propriations process. A constitutionalist president’s budget should
do the following:
1. Reduce overall federal spending
2. Prioritize cuts in oversize expenditures, especially the
military
3. Prioritize cuts in corporate welfare
 4. Use 50 percent of the savings from cuts in overseas Traditionally, the battle to reduce the federal role in educa-
spending to shore up entitlement programs for those who tion has been the toughest one faced by limited-government ad-
are dependent on them and the other 50 percent to pay vocates, as supporters of centralized education have managed to
down the debt paint constitutionalists as “anti-education.” But who is really anti-
5. Provide for reduction in federal bureaucracy and lay out education? Those who wish to continue to waste taxpayer money
a plan to return responsibility for education to the states on failed national schemes, or those who want to restore control
6. Begin transition of entitlement programs from a sys- over education to the local level? When the debate is framed this
tem where all Americans are forced to participate into one way, I have no doubt the side of liberty will win. When you think
where taxpayers can opt out of the programs and make about it, the argument that the federal government needs to con-
their own provisions for retirement and medical care trol education is incredibly insulting to the American people, for
it implies that the people are too stupid or uncaring to educate
If Congress failed to produce a budget that was balanced and
their children properly. Contrary to those who believe that only
moved the country in a pro-liberty direction, a constitutional-
the federal government can ensure children’s education, I predict
ist president should veto the bill. Of course, vetoing the budget
a renaissance in education when
risks a government shutdown. But
parents are put back in charge.
a serious constitutionalist can-
The classroom is not the only
not be deterred by cries of “it’s
place the federal government
irresponsible to shut down the
does not belong. We also need
government!” Instead, he should
to reverse the nationalization of
simply say, “I offered a reasonable
local police. Federal grants have
compromise, which was to gradu-
encouraged the militarization of
ally reduce spending, and Con-
law enforcement, which has led
gress rejected it, instead choosing
to great damage to civil liberties.
the extreme path of continuing
Like education, law enforcement
to jeopardize America’s freedom
is inherently a local function, and
and prosperity by refusing to tame
ending programs such as the By-
the welfare-warfare state. I am the
rne Grants is essential not just to
moderate; those who believe that
reducing federal spending but also
America can afford this bloated
to restoring Americans’ rights.
government are the extremists.”
Obviously, a president con-
Unconstitutional government More than 1,000 people came to listen to Ron Paul at Ari-
cerned with restoring constitution-
spending, after all, is doubly an zona State University last year
al government and fiscal responsi-
evil: it not only means picking the
bility would need to address the
taxpayer’s pocket, it also means subverting the system of limited
unstable entitlement situation, possibly the one area of govern-
and divided government that the Founders created. Just look at
ment activity even more difficult to address than education. Yet it
how federal spending has corrupted American education.
is simply unfair to continue to force young people to participate
Eliminating federal involvement in K-12 education should be
in a compulsory retirement program when they could do a much
among a constitutionalist president’s top domestic priorities. The
better job of preparing for their own retirements. What is more,
Constitution makes no provision for federal meddling in educa-
the government cannot afford the long-term expenses of entitle-
tion. It is hard to think of a function less suited to a centralized,
ments, even if we were to reduce all other unconstitutional foreign
bureaucratic approach than education. The very idea that a group
and domestic programs.
of legislators and bureaucrats in D.C. can design a curriculum
As I mentioned in the introduction to this article, it would be
capable of meeting the needs of every American schoolchild is
wrong simply to cut these programs and throw those who are
ludicrous. The deteriorating performance of our schools as fed-
dependent on them “into the streets.” After all, the current recipi-
eral control over the classroom has grown shows the folly of giv-
ents of these programs have come to rely on them, and many are
ing Washington more power over American education. President
in a situation where they cannot provide for themselves without
Bush’s No Child Left Behind law claimed it would fix education
government assistance. The thought of people losing the ability
by making public schools “accountable.” However, supporters of
to obtain necessities because they were misled into depending on
the law failed to realize that making schools more accountable to
a government safety net that has been yanked away from them
federal agencies, instead of to parents, was just perpetuating the
should trouble all of us. However, the simple fact is that if the
problem.
government does not stop spending money on welfare and war-
In the years since No Child Left Behind was passed, I don’t
fare, America may soon face an economic crisis that could lead to
think I have talked to any parent or teacher who is happy with the
people being thrown into the street.
law. Therefore, a constitutionalist president looking for ways to
Therefore, a transition away from the existing entitlement
improve the lives of children should demand that Congress cut
scheme is needed. This is why a constitutionalist president should
the federal education bureaucracy as a down payment on eventu-
propose devoting half of the savings from the cuts in wars and
ally returning 100 percent of the education dollar to parents.
other foreign spending, corporate welfare, and unnecessary and
10
March 2010
unconstitutional bureaucracies to shoring up Social Security,
Medicare, and Medicaid and providing enough money to finance
government’s obligations to those who are already stuck in the
system and cannot make alternative provisions. This re-routing
of spending would allow payroll taxes to be slashed. The eventual
goal would be to move to a completely voluntary system where
people only pay payroll taxes into Social Security and Medicare
if they choose to participate in those programs. Americans who
do not want to participate would be free not to do so, but they
would forgo any claim to Social Security or Medicare benefits after
retirement.
Some people raise concerns that talk of transitions is an excuse
for indefinitely putting off the end of the welfare state. I under-
stand those concerns, which is why a transition plan must lay out
a clear timetable for paying down the debt, eliminating uncon-
stitutional bureaucracies, and setting a firm date for when young
people can at last opt out of the entitlement programs.
A final area that should be front and center in a constitutional-
ist’s agenda is monetary policy. The Founders obviously did not
intend for the president to have much influence over the nation’s
money—in fact, they never intended any part of the federal gov-
ernment to operate monetary policy as it is defined now. How-
ever, today a president could play an important role in restoring
stability to monetary policy and the value of the dollar. To start,
by fighting for serious reductions in spending, a constitutionalist
administration would remove one of the major justifications for
the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies: the need to monetize
government debt.
There are additional steps a pro-freedom president should pur-
sue in his first term to restore sound monetary policy. He should
ask Congress to pass two pieces of legislation I have introduced
11
Young American Revolution
in the 110th Congress. The first is the Audit the Fed bill, which
would allow the American people to learn just how the Federal
Reserve has been conducting monetary policy. The other is the
Free Competition in Currency Act, which repeals legal tender laws
and all taxes on gold and silver. This would introduce competition
in currency and put a check on the Federal Reserve by ensuring
that people have alternatives to government-produced fiat money.
All of these measures will take a lot of work—a lot more than
any one person, even the president of the United States, can ac-
complish by himself. In order to restore the country to the kind of
government the Founders meant for us to have, a constitutionalist
president would need the support of an active liberty movement.
Freedom activists must be ready to pressure wavering legislators
to stand up to the special interests and stay the course toward free-
dom. Thus, when the day comes when someone who shares our
beliefs sits in the Oval Office, groups like Young Americans for
Liberty and Campaign for Liberty will still have a vital role to play.
No matter how many pro-freedom politicians we elect to office,
the only way to guarantee constitutional government is through
an educated and activist public devoted to the ideals of the liberty.
For that reason, the work of Young Americans for Liberty in
introducing young people to the freedom philosophy and getting
them involved in the freedom movement is vital to the future of
our country. I thank all the members and supporters of YAL for
their dedication to changing the political debate in this country, so
that in the not-too-distant future we actually will have a president
and a Congress debating the best ways to shrink the welfare-war-
fare state and restore the republic.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is author of End the Fed and The Revolution:
A Manifesto.
 Soviet U
Campus commissars suppress a commemoration of the fall of communism

Philip Christofanelli

E arly in the morning on a

cool day last November, sev-
eral young activists gathered at
a loading dock on the campus
of Washington University in St.
Louis. Twenty years earlier, across
the world in Berlin, like-minded
young people had joined forces
to tear down a wall that had sep-
arated markets from planning,
self-expression from regulation,
freedom from tyranny. Now a U-
Haul backed into the dock and
quickly eight advocates of liberty
began carting wood structures to
the center of the heavily trafficked
campus. Within 30 minutes, a large YAL member dressed as Soviet guard
prison camp had been erected on
the once serene lawn of this Mid-
western university.
Men dressed as Soviet guards began to patrol the structure.
Weary students in prisoners’ uniforms languished inside the camp,
forced to listen to Soviet propaganda and songs of national great-
ness.
“What has the Fatherland provided for you?” the guard yelled
in a thick Russian accent.
“Everything!” replied the prisoners.
“Back to work!” he shouted.
Crowds of onlookers began to gather around the camp. “What
is this?” they asked. An indignant student approached.
“Is this about healthcare?” he asked angrily. “Obama is trying
to save our country, you know!” he insisted. “He’s providing us
with jobs!”
He stormed off, never bothering to learn about the purpose of
the display. His outburst spoke volumes about what first comes to
mind when someone sees a Soviet-style gulag.
A student with flyers came by. “These are the results of Social- were not instigating any sort of rebellion.
ism!” he announced.
The flyers discussed the plight of those who suffered in the
prison camps of the Soviet Union. One flyer noted that socialism
had killed over 200 million people in the 20 century. Historical
th
information was provided on the lives of prisoners in the gulags
and the victims of socialism in Soviet Russia.
KMOX, the local radio station, arrived on the scene. They
began to interview Dirk Doebler, president of the Washington
University Young Americans for Liberty.
“There are a lot of people who
sympathize with socialist and com-
munist ideas on campus,” he said.
“We are trying to show that social-
ism inevitably leads to commu-
nism, which inevitably leads to this,
because any kind of large statist
government can’t allow dissenters.”
Groups of angry professors be-
gan to gather around the perimeter
of the gulag. One was overheard
telling a student, “Don’t worry;
we’ll get this shut down. I’ll make
some calls.”
Sure enough, it was not long
before the first university bureau-
crat waddled out to the scene and
began asking questions. He pro-
claimed himself the Washington
University Safety Supervisor and insisted that the protesters show
him their papers. Having seen in a movie how this sort of situa-
tion ends, Dirk quickly provided him with the group’s identifica-
tion and documentation. Dirk had been sure to acquire all the nec-
essary permits to use the space on campus, and he was confident
that all requirements had been met. The bureaucrat waddled away,
undoubtedly disappointed that his life would remain uneventful
that day.
The professors, still firm in their resolve despite this first fail-
ure, began to take a more extreme approach to ending the display.
An hour or so later, a police officer arrived stating that she had
been called to investigate the gulag by a Washington University
employee. She went on to say that as long as the protesters were
not being violent, she was powerless to remove the camp. The
sign on the gulag reading “Peaceful Social Re-Education Center”
seemed to indicate quite clearly that no violence was intended.
Nevertheless, Dirk had to convince the officer that his friends
Present at the event was the controversial James O’Keefe, mas-
termind of the ACORN undercover interviews (and who would
be arrested in New Orleans two months later while investigat-
ing Sen. Mary Landrieu). With his signature tie-camera, O’Keefe
posed as a disgruntled student and asked several administrators
what they planned to do about the display.
“We’ll get it shut down,” one said in true bureaucrat-speak,
“They’ve got amplified sound. They’re past the amplified-sound
time and they were never in an amplified sound location.”

12
March 2010
 “Sergeant Mark is on the way,” said the to be the response of the community at large.
other. Several descendents of gulag victims contact-
“Oh excellent!” another replied haughtily. ed YAL to thank them for the display. Former
Before long, two administrators walked up Washington University professor Dr. Gregory
to the camp flanked by two armed police offi- Nikiforovich, who lived in the Soviet Union
cers. They instructed Dirk to come speak with for many decades, was so grateful for the event
them, and he complied. that he offered to give a lecture on the tyranny
“You’re going to have to take this down” of socialism to any who wanted to attend. The
said the administrator. gulag was discussed on many local media out-
She went on to cite several policy viola- lets and the front pages of websites such as
tions, such as the use of unapproved power Campaign for Liberty and Andrew Breitbart’s
tools and the erection of structures without Big Government. The evidence seems to sug-
safety helmets. gest that the offended parties were not former
The second administrator said, “There’s a Soviet citizens, but rather, American socialists
new policy on campus that they did not in- who disliked the frank portrayal of a statist
form you of. There’s a process you need to go ideology.
through.” The moral of this story is that despite
“Where can one find this process?” Dirk Washington University’s antagonism, YAL
asked. came out the victors. Yes, the administration
“It’s on the … that’s the problem, and that shut down the event, but it took their bureau-
may be the reason you didn’t get it … it’s on … cracy so long to do so that the event was prac-
A poster displayed on the YAL Gulag tically over anyway. In an irony of unintended
it’s called the, um, the art installation policy,”
he replied hesitantly. consequences, the campus administration’s at-
tempts at stifling free speech only resulted in more publicity for
Dirk instructed the group to begin to take down the camp as
YAL and the gulag. As always, freedom triumphed over interven-
directed, with the same unapproved power tools and without hel-
tionism, and YAL’s message was heard.
mets. The irony was that the university’s bureaucratic system took
so long to figure out what to do that by the time they acted, the
event was essentially over. Philip Christofanelli is a student of Political Science at Washington Uni-
The situation faced by Washington University’s Young Ameri- versity in St. Louis. His other writings can be found at www.liberty-2day.
cans for Liberty reveals an unfortunate truth about the state of blogspot.com. He can be reached at pchristofanelli@gmail.com.
academic freedom in our nation’s universities. Between the heck-
ling bureaucrats, the armed inspectors, the citation of obscure
regulations, and the stifling of free expression, the administration
of Washington University could not have done a better job of
behaving like the government of Soviet Russia.
While it is sad that students cannot be provided with an open
environment to express their ideas, the bias with which Wash-
ington University and other colleges implement their policies is
worse. Only those with right-of-center views seem to fall prey to
the “new policies” which Washington University invents on a reg-
ular basis. When leftists on campus constructed an Iraqi graveyard
to greet Karl Rove, they seemed to be unaffected by the “art instal-
lation policy.” When students recreated Abu Ghraib in response
to a visit by Alberto Gonzales, they were not harassed by campus
police. Only those who seek to protest socialism seem to be held
to every rule and regulation the administration can contrive.
Washington University is a private institution. Its administra-
tors were well within their rights to ask YAL to leave. Yet it is
important to recognize that just because an institution can do
something does not mean that it should—especially when said
institution, nominally private, is always first in line to snatch up
any public funds it can get its hands on. Washington University
should respect the same rights of freedom of expression which
the government must observe in the public sphere. Universities
should be examples to the world of the benefits of free expres-
sion, not models of tyrannical governments.
While many students proclaimed that YAL’s display was of-
fensive to people who suffered in Soviet gulags, this did not seem
13
Young American Revolution
 14“Destruction of Leviathan”. 1865 engraving by Gustave Doré.
March 2010
 More Leviathan?
You can’t “starve the beast”—but that’s no reason to feed it
W. James Antle III
I n a classic “Saturday Night Live” skit, Christopher Walken plays
a record producer helping the rock band Blue Oyster Cult cut
their blockbuster hit “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Walken’s solution to
every problem in the recording session is to increase the volume
of the cowbell, no matter how loudly it is already clanging in the
background, to the consternation of the band members playing
the other instruments.
“I’ve got a fever,” Walken memorably declared, “and the
only cure is more cowbell.” Similarly, no matter how much self-
described conservative Republicans grew the federal government
and ballooned the national debt under George W. Bush, when the
GOP came upon hard times at the ballot box the wise men who
write magazine articles and op-ed pieces assured us that there was
only one cure: more government.
Sam Tanenhaus may have been exaggerating when he titled
his book last year The Death of Conservatism, but he did believe
that conservatism had a fever: “Today, conservatives seem in a
position closer to the one they occupied during the New Deal,”
Tanenhaus told Newsweek. “The epithets so many on the right
now hurl at Obama—‘socialist,’ ‘fascist’—precisely echo the ac-
cusations Herbert Hoover and ‘Old Right’ made against FDR in
1936.” The reader can guess as to the fever’s only cure.
Never mind that the conservatives who had just lost power cre-
ated the biggest new entitlement program since the Great Society,
expanded the federal role in education, rolled back the reductions
in farm subsidies that had been among the greatest Republican
achievements of the 1990s, and launched two unfunded wars. The
conservatism of George W. Bush and its Sarah Palin-ized after-
math was, according to Tanenhaus, indistinguishable from that of
the Old Right. It is the sort of political analysis that, well, deserves
to be analogized to a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
A little over a year into the big-government liberal presidency
of Barack Obama, this analysis also seems spectacularly wrong.
With the tea parties and revivified Internet activism, a much more
antistatist right now buzzes with the energy conservatism so con-
spicuously lacked during the sclerotic Bush years, save for the im-
mediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on American soil.
15
Young American Revolution
Vocal opposition to “socialism” and “fascism,” however impre-
cisely those terms have been defined, doesn’t seem to have alien-
ated sensitive swing voters. If anything, it has galvanized them.
At the ballot box, the right and center have joined forces
against trillion-dollar bailouts and government takeovers. They
have said no to a federal takeover of the American health care
system that seems designed to prove P.J. O’Rourke’s quip, “If you
think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs
when it’s free.” They first balked at the stimulus package’s $787
billion price tag—really $1.2 trillion once the added interest on the
national debt is factored in—and then became even angrier when
this massive borrowing didn’t even stimulate.
This is not to say that the Republicans who have been elected
as a result of these outrages are themselves principled antistatists.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie,
and Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown all have their faults, to put
it mildly. One of the Republicans’ favorite arguments against the
Democratic health care plan is that it would cut Medicare spend-
ing, pitting one entitlement against another. Brown contended
that Massachusetts didn’t need universal health care from the fed-
eral government because the commonwealth already had it cour-
tesy of Romneycare.
But when Republicans can win elections in Virginia, New
Jersey, and “Taxachusetts” by running, however inconsistently,
against big government, it falsifies the argument that such a strat-
egy is a political loser. To be sure, other issues—and the candi-
dates’ own personalities and campaigns—played a role in each of
these races. Nevertheless, no more vibrant constituency exists for
a conservative political revival than the hard-working Americans
who have been quietly paying their bills, raising their families, col-
lecting few benefits from the welfare-warfare state—and who are
now fed up with being screwed.
It’s true: cutting taxes is more popular than cutting govern-
ment spending, just as promising “free” government-provided
health care is more popular than raising taxes to pay for it. But at
some point government programs must be paid for; at some point
taxes must either rise or fall to the level of government provided.
Liberals are willing to bet Democratic majorities on “tax, spend,
and elect.” Conservative boosters of the GOP seem less confi-
dent a tax-cutting party could survive commensurate reductions
in government.
That’s why post-New Deal Democrats enjoyed such a substan-
tial advantage over their Republican counterparts: the Democrats
were handing out new federal benefits while the Republicans were
preoccupied with paying for them. It was austerity versus redis-
tribution. Newt Gingrich summed up the political problem well
when he memorably dismissed his tax-raising GOP colleague Bob
Dole as a “tax collector for the welfare state.”
The context of the Gingrich-Dole spat was an intraparty de-
bate between “supply-siders” and “deficit hawks.” From a political
as opposed to economic perspective, the former wanted to em-
phasize growing the economy through reductions in marginal tax
rates while the latter wanted to keep the focus on balanced bud-
gets. “My feeling is that if you have a contest between Scrooge—
pure budget-cutting—versus Santa Claus, which is what the Left
offers, Scrooge loses,” the late supply-sider Jack Kemp told author
David Frum back in the 1990s. “My view is that growth is the
only political model that can compete with the Santa Claus of
the Left.”
Ironically, the most sophisticated exponent of reorienting con-
servatism toward paying liberalism’s bills was an early supply-side
theorist and former congressional aide to Kemp (and, even earlier,
to Ron Paul). Bruce Bartlett was a rare conservative critic of ex-
cessive federal spending back when George W. Bush and the Re-
publicans were in power. His most recent book, The New American
Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward, urges
conservative Republicans to eschew government-cutting and in-
stead seek to “design a new tax system better able to raise higher
revenues at the least possible cost in terms of economic growth
and political freedom.”
Of course, Bartlett’s book isn’t really about the “failure of Rea-
ganomics”—he argues that Ronald Reagan’s economic program
worked just fine in the context of its time. Nor is the following
argument he advances really a “new way forward”: “In the end,
the welfare state is not going away, and it will be paid for one way
or another,” Bartlett concludes. “The sooner Republicans accept
that fact, the sooner they will regain political power.”
Bartlett does get to the nub of why the supply-siders failed
conservatives, however: They misapplied supply-side theory to a
very different set of economic circumstances than those of the
Reagan era, and even in Reagan’s time they had begun coming up
with contradictory justifications for tax cuts unmatched by spend-
16
March 2010
ing reductions. Want to cut taxes? Well, it will inevitably increase
revenues, no matter where marginal rates lie on the Laffer Curve,
so tax cuts pay for themselves. Want to cut spending? Fine, we’ll
pass the same tax cut and reduce revenues, thereby “starving the
beast.”
Christopher Walken has returned. This time he has a fever
and the only cure is more tax cuts. Unfortunately, neither “starve
the beast” nor the idea that all tax cuts increase revenues has the
benefit of being true. The GOP’s fiscal policy was thus reduced
to borrow-and-spend economics, little different from what the
Democrats practice when they lack the courage to tax and spend.
Bartlett’s prescription may be more intellectually honest than
the “tax cuts + war + high spending + low interest rates = pros-
perity” equation of the modern GOP. Politically, however, tax-
and-spend conservatives are no more viable than budget-cutters.
Much less so, in fact: tax cuts and jobs-producing economic
growth are what make a conservative agenda of limited govern-
ment politically attractive. Balanced budgets and spending control
are what make it mathematically possible. The supply-siders and
deficit hawks are both partially correct.
Offering spending cuts without tax reductions is like raising
taxes without providing government benefits—a sure political los-
er. (The fact that the costs of the Senate Democrats’ health care
plan take effect before the benefits kick in is a major contributor
to the legislation’s unpopularity.) It is self-defeating in other ways:
Though “starve the beast” is false, its opposite is mostly true:
arming a government with new revenues will inevitably tempt it
into more spending.
No matter what the Sam Tanenhauses and David Brookses
say, high-tax conservatism has no larger constituency than a Lib-
ertarian Party advocating low-tax liberalism. A strategy of limiting
government must feature less taxes, less spending, less borrowing,
and less inflating of the money supply. Pace Mitt Romney, that is
the four-legged stool upon which a sound conservatism must rest.
That’s not to say the task of cutting the federal government
back down to constitutional size will be easy, or that genuine anti-
statists are anything close to a majority in this country. The essay-
ist Joseph Sobran wisely joked that if a president tried to obey his
oath of office by following the Constitution, he would probably
be impeached. But even this challenge is politically more feasi-
ble—and surely more valuable—than becoming tax collectors of
the welfare state.
W. James Antle III is associate editor of The American Spectator.
 17
Young American Revolution
 Economics of the Living Dead
John Maynard Keynes is still eating policymakers’ brains

George Hawley

I deas have consequences. Unfortu-

nately, ideas are not always conse-
quential in proportion to their cogen-
cy. This is perhaps best demonstrated
by the continuing influence of John
Maynard Keynes (1883-1946). In an
era of government bailouts, deficit
spending, and all-but-nonexistent in-
terest rates, there can be little doubt
that Keynes is the intellectual godfa-
ther of our world’s economic policy-
makers. Unfortunately, the influence
of Keynesianism is inversely related
to its perspicacity; Keynesian thinking
has repeatedly led to laughably errone-
ous predictions and terrible economic
outcomes.
Distilled to its essence, Keynesian-
ism holds that free-market economies
inevitably trend toward underemploy-
ment and underinvestment. Without
the deft management of economic
experts, Keynesians say, interest rates
will typically be too high and invest-
ment will be too low. According to this
view, depressions result from a lack of
aggregate demand. It is therefore the
government’s job to stimulate that John Maynard Keynes (right) and Harry Dexter White
demand by cutting interest rates and at the Bretton Woods Conference.
increasing spending. It is easy to see
why members of our political class—who view themselves as the
saviors of mankind—find Keynesianism so alluring. Unfortunate-
ly, the basic premises of Keynesianism are simply wrong. As the
great economist Henry Hazlitt said in regard to Keynes’s General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money: “In spite of the incredible diction as late as 1989.
reputation of the book, I could not find in it a single important
doctrine that was both true and original. What is original in the
book is not true; and what is true is not original.”
Left unchallenged, bad ideas can long maintain intellectual he- become the dominant philosophy.” This first requires us to read
gemony. Fortunately, a group of tenacious scholars are working
tirelessly to expose the errors of Keynesian economics. “The Fail-
ure of the Keynesian State” was the subject of the recent Mises
Circle meeting in Houston, sponsored by the Ludwig von Mises
Institute. At this sold-out event, 600 people from 16 states met
at the Hilton Houston Post Oak to hear some of the finest liv-
ing economic minds refute the premises of Keynesian econom-
ics and explain why Keynesian solutions to economic downturns
18
March 2010
inevitably fail.
Douglas E. French, president of
the Mises Institute, began the pro-
gram by pointing out recent failures
of Keynesian economics. Although
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Ber-
nanke, Time’s “Person of the Year,”
is hailed as an economic genius and
savior of the world economy, his re-
sponse to America’s financial crisis
bears a striking resemblance to anoth-
er effort to reverse an economic col-
lapse. When the Japanese asset bubble
finally popped in the early 1990s, the
Japanese responded with stimulus
packages, interest rate cuts, and new
government spending. The result was
more than 17 years of economic stag-
nation. Obama and Bernanke are now
following the same playbook, which
will only lead to similar results.
Thomas E. Woods, author of the
recent New York Times bestseller Melt-
down, pointed out the terrible track
record of Keynesian economists
when it comes to economic forecast-
ing. Most notable were the hysterical
Keynesian predictions that the end of
the Second World War would inevita-
bly result in a return of Depression-
era economic conditions and the stubborn insistence of Keynes-
ians that the Soviet Union was economically sound and would
inevitably overtake the United States as the world’s largest, most
robust economy—Arthur Okun, for example, stood by this pre-
In the face of resurgent Keynesianism, education is perhaps
the most important task of antistatists. As Congressman Ron Paul
noted in his address, “Congress eventually will follow when we
and understand the main critiques of Keynesian economics. To
further that end, David Gordon, a senior fellow at the Mises In-
stitute, provided an indispensable reading list for all who seek the
intellectual firepower needed to refute Keynesian economics.
Gordon provided a short list of books that provide free-
market refutations of Keynesian arguments. Where Keynes Went
Wrong (2009), by Hunter Lewis, provides an excellent introduc-
tion to the subject and explains how Keynes earned a reputation
for brilliance despite his tendency to write
utter nonsense. Gordon also recommended
The Failure of the New Economics (1959) by
Henry Hazlitt. This book examines all of
Keynes’s main arguments and systematically
takes them apart. Critics of Keynesian Eco-
nomics (1960), which was edited by Hazlitt,
provides some of the finest anti-Keynesian
essays ever written. Gordon advised read-
ers to give special attention to the essays by
Jean-Baptiste Say and Ludwig von Mises.
Rounding out Gordon’s list were The Keynes-
ian Episode (1979) by W.H. Hutt and Man,
Economy, and State (1962) by Murray Roth-
bard.
Quoting Charles Mackay, Douglas
French noted, “Men think in herds, go
mad in herds, but recover their senses one
by one.” Despite its failures, Keynesianism
remains the dominant economic ideology
in the world today. The Mises Circle, how-
ever, provided reason to hope that this may
be changing. One by one, many people are
regaining their senses. Attendance at the Henry Hazlitt, outspoken critic of Keynes
Mises Circle more than doubled from the
previous year’s Houston meeting. As Dr.
Paul stressed, an increasing number of young people are express-
ing interest in Austrian economics and non-statist solutions to
societal problems.
We face a real opportunity for change. Throughout the coun-
19
Young American Revolution
try, more and more people are becoming
receptive to Austrian insights. Rejecting
conventional wisdom, unprecedented
numbers of individuals are recognizing
that economic downturns are a result of
malinvestments stemming from easy credit.
They are accepting the premise that inter-
est rates should be set by the unhampered
market rather than arbitrarily lowered by
the government. They are recognizing that
any growth spurred by government stimu-
lus is ephemeral at best.
Despite his many errors, dethroning
Keynes as the world’s most influential
economist will be no easy task. Educating
ourselves is the first step we must take in
order to achieve that goal. To that end, all
freedom-loving individuals should familiar-
ize themselves with the Ludwig von Mises
Institute and its many scholars. Education
is not sufficient, however, if we wish to re-
gain our liberties. At the close of the Hous-
ton Mises Circle, Lew Rockwell, founder
and chairman of the institute, disclosed the
second crucial step: “Never miss an oppor-
tunity to tell the truth.” If we follow this
advice, a revolution is possible.
George Hawley [hawley.gs@gmail.com] is a graduate student at the Univer-
sity of Houston.
 20
March 2010
 Obama’s Big Rip-Off
An interview with Obamanomics author Tim Carney
Jeremy Lott
V ery few people are better at showing us
how D.C. really works than the Wash-
ington Examiner’s K Street editor, Timothy
P. Carney. Twice a week in his columns and
regularly on the paper’s blog, he follows the
money to show readers how companies,
lobbyists, and politicians of both parties
collude to fleece American taxpayers and
limit our choices—often in the name of
some greater good. Carney’s first book was
appropriately titled The Big Ripoff: How Big
Business and Big Government Steal Your Money.
It won the 2008 Templeton Enterprise
Award.
Carney learned how to think different-
ly about politics from his mentor, the late
Robert Novak, who wrote in the introduc-
tion to The Big Ripoff that the author was
perhaps “the best political reporter out of
the outstanding young men and women
who worked for me,” a “fabulous political
handicapper” with formidable “skills as an
investigative reporter” who had produced K Street muckraker Tim Carney
an “extraordinary book.”
Ron Paul penned the introduction to
Carney’s recently released sophomore effort, Obamanomics: How
Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, “young people”—the same voters who went for Obama in
Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses. He praised it as an exposé of
corporatism in our time and a necessary reality check. “Every lib-
ertarian and free market conservative who still believes that large
corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty,”
Dr. Paul wrote, “needs to read this book.” I spoke with Carney in
January about bailouts, tea parties, and Obama’s cozy relationship
with corporate America.
You’re not a fan of George W. Bush in this book. If it wasn’t
so much of a tongue twister, it could almost be called Bush-
obamanomics.
Bushobamanomics would be a great title. I think Bush’s bailouts
were something of an economic blueprint for Obama—not just
Big Government, but government interventions previously un-
imaginable; and of course, it was to the benefit of Big Business,
but pitched as being crucial for the whole economy.
How is Obama’s approach to government different from
Bush’s approach?
Obama is more thorough and more aggressive in his belief
21
Young American Revolution
in the power of government. I think Bush
was just really bad at being a limited-gov-
ernment president. I think Obama is a Big
Government guy to the core.
Why did Obama push for a stimulus bill
before he tried to reform health care?
The stimulus, unlike climate legislation
or health care overhaul, was easy to pass
because the only people who are hurt by it
are future taxpayers and future borrowers.
As far as the special interests go, everyone
won from the stimulus. Hi-tech guys: here’s
a broadband slush fund. Bricks and mortar
guys: roads and buildings, galore. Green en-
ergy companies: all you can eat buffet. Coal
guys, you’re not left out, either: a billion-
dollar earmark—just call it “clean coal.”
The stimulus was Obama’s chance to be
Santa Claus to the entrenched interests, and,
of course, the lobbyists loved it, too. It’s like
when a guy is dating a widower or divorcee
with children, and the first time he meets
the kids, he gives them candy.
When you say “future taxpayers” I hear
huge numbers in 2008. Why did the kids prove so eager to
vote for a politician who would only put them much, much
deeper in debt?
I think much of Obama’s appeal to the youth was the open-
government, reformer talk—which is exactly the talk he belies
with his backroom PhRMA deals, his labor-union carve outs, and
his corporatism. It will take quite an effort for Democrats to re-
capture that enthusiasm.
Did you expect Scott Brown to win in Massachusetts?
I did not. I was not surprised, however, to see the lobbyist cash,
PAC cash, and drug-industry cash flow in to save Martha Coakley
once she got in trouble. I think the K Street-PhRMA push to save
Coakley, health care reform’s 60th vote [in the Senate], makes it
clear as day that “reform” was a corporatist turd-burger.
Is health care reform finally dead?
No. Health care reform could come back in a more modest
incarnation.
How modest?
Not too modest. They might stick to the deal offered by the
health insurers: health insurers can’t reject customers for pre-ex-
isting conditions, and they can’t discriminate too much on price.
In exchange, everyone would be forced to buy health insurance.
How cynical is Obama?
In my books, columns, and interviews, I avoid claiming knowl-
edge of anyone’s intentions or desires. I just read the actions. That
said, whenever I watch Obama talk, I understand perfectly the
impulse that drove Rep. Joe Wilson back in September.
Has covering efforts to lobby his administration and Con-
gress for the Washington Examiner made you more cynical?
I’m a bit more skeptical than a year ago, but working for Bob
Novak helped turn my heart into a dark abyss at a young age, so I
didn’t have too far to go. Together with my good friend and col-
league David Freddoso, I formed a rule of understanding Wash-
ington: the most corrupt possible explanation is probably correct.
With Obama, the big difference is that so many people be-
lieved he was a real reformer. They should have read Freddoso’s
book, The Case Against Barack Obama. I hope Obama makes the
whole country as cynical about politics as I am.
Obama claims to be an enemy of corporate interests. Is he?
Ha!
You pointed out early on that Obama claimed to be against
the insurance companies when in fact the insurance com-
panies were pretty happy with the version of health care
reform that he endorsed.
Let me put it this way: The drug companies were in bed with
ObamaCare. As far as the insurers and ObamaCare, I think their
Facebook status would be “It’s Complicated.” Obama originally
opposed the individual mandate and supported a public option.
Then he flipped on both of those, coming around to the insur-
ers’ side.
Insurers still had problems with the bill that passed the Sen-
ate, but the independent analyses I read all said that the subsi-
dies, mandates, and barriers to entry in the Senate bill would have
meant more profits for insurers.
Liberals like to scoff at the tea party movement, but it
seems to be having a real effect on American politics. How
has such a diverse group of people with little political experi-
ence managed to muscle its way into the debate?
The tea parties are a manifestation of anger at the elites. They
have had some impact because they have been independent from
either political party and from any politicians. They scare Repub-
licans while making some liberals realize that the left no longer
owns populist outrage.
To what extent do you think the tea partiers built on Ron
Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign?
I don’t know. But this much is common between the tea par-
22
March 2010
tiers and Paulistas: They both channeled anti-elite, anti-govern-
ment passion, and they both lacked logical coherence. Ron Paul’s
followers included people of all stripes politically, often united
more by a feeling—disenfranchisement and distrust—than by
shared goals or principles.
Several mainstream Republican politicians are seeking to
co-opt the tea party movement. Do you think they’ll suc-
ceed?
Yes, in a sense. All institutions and movements get co-opted
and exploited by those with money and power. Thankfully, the
tea parties are more movement than institution, and so they will
probably be destroyed by the co-optation. The politicians will sink
the ship by boarding it.
The Supreme Court recently gutted many campaign finance
laws. What effects might that have on lobbying?
The ruling is bad for K Street. Lobbyists, PACs, parties, and
politicians are all indirect ways for business to influence politics.
After the ruling, businesses enter politics more directly. All told,
though, I think the impact will be minimal.
How long did you work for Bob Novak?
I worked on Novak’s staff for three years, covering the 2002
and 2004 elections. Then a few months after the 2006 elections, I
returned to writing the Evans-Novak Political Report as a contractor
of sorts, and I covered the 2008 elections. When he got sick and
had to retire in the summer of 2008, I took over the newsletter full
time, and we folded it two months after the election.
Did his conversion to Catholicism influence you?
Yes. I was heading towards Catholicism when I began working
for him, and he put me in touch with a priest, with whom I began
meeting regularly. My faith was bolstered by the fact that a major-
ity of the peers, bosses, mentors, and role models I was finding in
D.C. were Catholic—with many being converts, like Novak.
Your educational background is odd for a political reporter.
You attended the classics-heavy St. John’s College. How did
that help prepare you for Washington, D.C.?
St. John’s gave me an excellent liberal-arts education that
helped hone my critical-thinking skills, foster a deep curiosity, and
give me the skills and confidence to take on any subject matter.
One of professional journalism’s endemic flaws is that writers
have little or no expertise in an area, and they don’t even try to
gain it. That’s related to the He-Said/She-Said formula that acts
as if actual facts are just matters of opinion. I’ve “scooped” the
mainstream many times by doing actual math, or learning a tiny
bit of actual science.
I think my liberal arts training helped convince me that (a) a
journalist can understand some math, science, and history; and (b)
truth is attainable. I think that makes me a better political reporter.
Jeremy Lott is an editor at Capital Research Center and author of The
Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presi-
dency.
 Liberty’s Mad Men
Madison Avenue shows us it takes more than good ideas to sell a philosophy

Jeff Fulcher

F ighting for liberty can be a frustrat-

ing thing. Years of history have
proved our economic theories correct.
We have thousands of books that out-
line the necessity and mechanics of
a free society. The libertarian Hall of
Fame is filled with Nobel Prizes, award-
winning novels, and the ashes of many a
failed statist government. Yet still there
are people out there who aren’t with us.
I’m going to suggest something a
little radical: Maybe we need a little less
Milton Freidman and a little more Don
Draper.
For those of you out of the loop,
“Mad Men” is AMC’s hit show about
the self-destructive glamour of 1960s
Madison Avenue. It’s sort of like
“Leave it to Beaver” meets “Desperate
Housewives.” It’s where fortunes are
built and destroyed on one good pitch,
where words and ego make the sell. At
the center of every smoke-filled scene
is Don Draper, the best ad man in the
business.
We can do without all the rampant
womanizing and ego, but the liberty
movement needs to embrace what Madison Avenue, New York City, looking north from care that the Constitution doesn’t pro-
Madison Avenue has known for a long 41st street. Photography by Leif Knutsen
time: people make decisions emotion-
ally, they only justify them rationally.
People don’t go to McDonald’s because it has the best ham-
burger. Nobody buys Nike shoes because they provide the best
value. And few Americans vote for a politician because of the
specifics of his platform. Don’t get me wrong here—you’ll hear
talk about the issues and specifics. But the decision to chose one
product over another is much more guttural.
People don’t buy shoes, they buy a lifestyle, and Nike knows it. excited about the product. It reaches into a person’s emotional
That’s why they spend millions on Kobe and LeBron. You’re not
buying a shoe. You’re being like Mike. You’re living the life of a
sports star. You’re cooler than everyone else.
Selling a product—and liberty is as much a product as ham-
burgers—is all about tapping into the emotional needs of your
audience, making them feel safe, valued, and important. Advertis-
ers define lifestyles with that simple idea. We need to take their
techniques and apply them to the ways we sell liberty.
As Draper reminds us in the first episode of the series, “Ad-
vertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what
23
Young American Revolution
happiness is? Happiness is the smell of
a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a
billboard on the side of the road that
screams with reassurance that whatever
you’re doing is ok. You are ok.”
Advocates of freedom must tap
into that emotional side. We need to re-
assure people it is ok to be for liberty.
That our free society will take care of
their children. That, at the end of the
day, freedom will keep them secure, put
money in their pockets, and let them
live the best possible life. But we can’t
access the emotional side if all we focus
on are theories and statistics.
We know the features of our phi-
losophy. Some of us can recite Rand,
Hayek, and Friedman as if all our lives
we’ve been preparing to debut them
at Carnegie Hall. But when we lay our
thesis in front of our would-be recruits,
their eyes glaze over. The reason most
people don’t fall head over heels when
we share our ideas with them is simple:
They. Don’t. Care.
They don’t care how the Fed’s mon-
etary policy drives inflation. They don’t
vide for government bailouts. They
don’t care that there are 700 American
military bases around the globe. What
they do care about is how all those things actually intersect with
their daily experience and make their lives better. We often focus
on the details of liberty. We talk about the mechanics and theories
of freedom. But we leave out how those pieces come together to
benefit the person we’re trying to bring into the fold.
A benefit is user-focused. It gives the buyer a reason to get
center. But it is rarely ever about the product itself—the benefit is
about what the product represents.
People don’t buy drills. They buy holes. The drill is just the
way to get what they want. In the same way, people don’t vote
for policies and theories. They vote for security, prosperity, and
happiness. Our challenge is translating the specifics of liberty into
a benefit.
There’s an old advertising mantra: “Tell me about my grass,
not your seed.” You might sell seeds that will grow the greenest
grass in the world, but people don’t buy grass because it’s green.
They buy it because it is greener than their neighbors’. They are
buying all the compliments and envy of having the best lawn on
the block. Your seed might be strong and sturdy, but people don’t
buy sturdy grass. They buy the convenience, money, and time that
come with not having to drag a sprinkler back and forth all sum-
mer.
As we sell liberty, it is essential we remember people don’t buy
lower taxes, military non-intervention, civil liberties, or health
care. Their desires are more personal, more emotional. Psycholo-
gists tell us human beings are motivated primarily by the need for
security, the need for acceptance, and the need to feel important.
People don’t care about the specifics of privatizing Social Security.
They want to know they can live that fulfilled retired life they see
in commercials. As evangelists for liberty we have to make sure
we satisfy the public’s needs instead of running off frustrated that
our “idiot” classmates refuse to accept the finer points of mon-
etary policy.
Even the flashiest advertisements won’t sell a bad product.
Luckily for us, liberty is a great one. But even the best product
doesn’t sell itself. Someone has to take it to the public and show
them why they can’t live without it. You don’t have to be a hard-
drinking 1960s ad man to sell liberty. You just have to make sure
to focus on how liberty makes your audience’s life better. Give
them the benefits, not the features.

Jeff Fulcher is the Director of Programs at the Advocates for Self-Govern-

ment. He rocks a pocket square like nobody’s business.

24
March 2010
 Pitchfork Time
Freedom lovers should support the masses against the classes

Kelse Moen

I n modern society there are three

economic classes: the rich, the very
poor, and everyone else. The rich are
those with insider access to centers
of political power and the ability to
weather almost any economic depres-
sion. The very poor are those who live
without knowing where their means
of subsistence will come from and
whose lives are to a great extent de-
termined by macroeconomic factors
outside their own control. “Everyone
else” is just that.
The fourth key player in modern
society is the leviathan state: the in-
Times have changed since the French Revolution
trusive, redistributionist entity that
has taken upon itself to regiment as
much of our daily lives as it can get
away with. Ceteris paribus, the rich and the very poor will be friends make it up are distinguished chiefly by their ordinariness, we can
of the state. The very poor will not have time to worry about
abstract concepts like the loss of liberty that goes along with big
government, nor will they have the luxury of looking to long-term
consequences like increased inflation and debt. Their needs are
material and immediate, so it makes sense for them to support any
entity that promises quick relief, as the modern state does. On the
other hand, the rich see in the state the opportunity to make them-
selves even richer. Wall Street financiers who can rely on federal
bailouts if they make too many bad loans are getting a pretty great
deal: if their business plans succeed, they reap huge profits, but if
they fail the federal government will cover the damage, and their
business is no worse off than it was to begin with. Then there are
the companies that get awarded no-bid contracts (i.e., the govern-
ment awards a contract to a favored business without allowing any
competition) to rebuild places like Iraq—places that other well-
connected businessmen made billions of dollars manufacturing
bombs to blow apart.
These two classes make up a very small segment of society.
“Everyone else” is the much larger group. It is also the group that
pays the most for big government and benefits from it the least.
It pays the greatest amount of taxes in proportion to its income.
It is most vulnerable to inflation; not politically well connected, it (For those who haven’t read Atlas Shrugged, we see a lot of para-
does not have initial access to newly printed money, but only gets
new money after the bank notes have been trickling through the
economy and prices have correspondingly increased. Worse, as
a fiscally prudent, “saver” class, in an inflationary economy this
group will be faced with the choice of either spending without re-
straint or seeing its savings vaporized. Inflating the money supply,
25
Young American Revolution
of course, is a tool that the Federal
Reserve has recently used to bail out
its friends in the financial sector.
The political and economic inter-
ests of the vast majority stand against
those of a small minority. Naturally,
these groups are not monolithic ideo-
logical blocs. The individuals within
them will have non-material, philo-
sophical beliefs regarding the proper
role of government. But from a pure-
ly material standpoint, it makes sense
that the rich and the very poor are
naturally allied with big government
and that the middle group should
stand against it. Since this middle
group represents a clear majority of
the country, and since the people who
call their interests populist. Likewise, we can call the interests of
the others elitist, since they either promote the economic inter-
ests of the rich or the intellectual predispositions of fashionable
modern philosophes—predispositions such as those toward univer-
sal healthcare, public schooling, and social-welfare schemes. Many
of these programs are touted by intellectual servants of the rich
as being for the benefit of the poor; in practice, everyone else
pays the bill.
From this preliminary analysis, it might seem that the obvious
ally for the defender of liberty is the populist common man. But
historically this has not been the case. In an essay in Capitalism: The
Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand called the businessman—by whom she
meant the steel tycoon and the captain of industry, not the Main
Street storeowner—“America’s most oppressed minority.” The
businessman, who rises by his own hard work and intelligence
without recourse to coercion, is weighted down, Rand argued, by
mountains of onerous regulations created by mediocre bureau-
crats who could never come close to duplicating his achievements.
This might be a tough idea to accept in 2010. When we look at the
auto, newspaper, and banking industries—to name only the most
obvious—we see a lot of Wesley Mouchs but no Hank Reardens.
sites but no individualists.) I haven’t heard of any business leader
who accepted the meltdown with the stoic detachment of a Ran-
dian hero, admitting that he made bad decisions and now had to
face the consequences. But there were plenty who were willing to
go to Washington, hat in hand, to plead for just a few billion dol-
lars and to promise they would never make those same mistakes
again.
Rand is not the only libertarian to side with the elites against
the masses. Quite the contrary, elitism has historically played a
central role in libertarian philosophy, most notably in the works
of such writers as Albert Jay Nock, H.L. Mencken, and Herbert
Spencer. And libertarian elitism is also wholeheartedly endorsed
by statists and social democrats. It plays into their caricature of
the capitalist as the rich, obese bon vivant with a human chessboard
outside his estate. (It does not help that Ayn Rand wrote a book
called The Virtue of Selfishness.) In the propaganda of the social
democrats, it is they who, in creating the intrusive, redistribution-
ist state, demonstrate their concern for the interests of the com-
mon man, whereas the capitalists and the libertarians would al-
low him to starve. Thus, Franklin Roosevelt extolled the virtues
of “the forgotten man,” left behind in a heartless, laissez-faire
world—one which the New Deal government would instill with a
new dignity and sense of purpose.
Ironically, the term “forgotten man” was coined by the late
19th-century libertarian and Yale sociology professor William Gra-
ham Sumner. He coined it in reference to an archetype mentioned
earlier in this essay: the ubiquitous blue-collar worker extorted
into paying for the elites’ “philanthropic” welfare programs. May-
be Roosevelt’s speechwriters had never heard of Sumner. But if
they had—which seems more likely—they were certainly dishon-
est in stealing his terminology in order to claim that laissez-faire
libertarians were opposed to the populist mindset that Sumner
used that very term to support.
A good rule of thumb is that it is always safe to believe the
opposite of whatever Franklin Roosevelt believed. That goes even
for dating advice—lest we forget, Franklin did marry his cousin.
So when he claims that populist ends can best be served by drasti-
cally expanding the scope of the central government—the very
government whose expansion will harm the masses of forgotten
men—I am disinclined to believe him.
Of course, the libertarian elitists did not adopt elitism because
the social democrats had already taken populism. They foresaw
the attraction that populist ideals promoted through govern-
ment power could exert over the masses. They knew that any
demagogue could drastically increase his power by promising the
masses heaven on earth, all without any discernible price tag. The
masses would be too dumb to understand that the real cost—in
debt, inflation, and loss of liberty—comes later. In this respect,
the libertarian elitists were very prescient. Roosevelt and his later
incarnations in Kennedy, Johnson, and Obama were able to elicit
strong support from the masses by doing just that. The Yankee
Roosevelt was even able to find a strong base of support in the
agrarian South—a region that, still remembering the Civil War and
Reconstruction, had little trust for northern politicians—by shift-
ing the tax burden to the manufacturing sector in the North and
using those revenues to pay for new jobs programs in the South.
Nevertheless, in today’s world, the masses are much less dan-
gerous than the elites. The reason is not that the masses now
read—or have ever heard of—Murray Rothbard or because they
are somehow predisposed to libertarianism. They are not. But
with the power structure as it exists, more and more of the regu-
lar, forgotten inhabitants of fly-over country are realizing that, as
far as Washington is concerned, they don’t matter and the plethora
26
March 2010
of new government programs that emanate from Washington will
do nothing to help them—in most cases, those programs will
actively harm them. As long as the masses understand this, they
should be our allies.
In Democracy: The God That Failed, Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote
that a critical problem with democracy is that it gives everyone the
illusion that he owns a share of government, meaning people will
be much more tolerant of an intrusive state, since they consider
themselves part of the system. Of course, they really aren’t a part,
but believing the contrary will keep them placated. Hoppe further
wrote that monarchy—though bad for other reasons—is actu-
ally preferable to democracy because, the line between rulers and
ruled being explicitly delineated, everyone realizes exactly where
his interests lie. The commoners will be far more willing to fight
back when the king tries to encroach on their liberty and property.
This keeps government power in check.
America is increasingly actualizing these benefits of monarchy.
With the growth of the Internet, the masses are more educated
than ever about the conflict between their interests and those of
the state. You don’t need an Ivy League education to get exposed
to monetary theory anymore; now there is LewRockwell.com and
Mises.org. Ordinary citizens are less likely to be bought off by
short-term perks today; they are much more aware of the insidi-
ous long-term effects of inflation and debt. And despite their ten-
dency to regress into partisan Republican-boosting, the tea parties
and the 9/12 March on Washington indicate that the masses are
awakening to the fact that they are the losers in a statist system.
We might some day say that Barack Obama was the best thing
that ever happened for decentralist libertarians. As a walking cari-
cature of the sanctimonious liberal statist, he plays the part of the
medieval king and dispels any illusions about the predatory nature
of the state.
Before the modern state emerged, it was probably advisable to
be an elitist—back when religion and tradition were more potent
ideas than the curative impulses of a few central planners, one
could very well dismiss anyone who wanted to overturn society
for some abstract good. But that world is gone. The ideas that first
motivated the 18th-century revolutionaries—Enlightenment ratio-
nalism, egalitarianism, statism—triumphed over the ancien regime
and became the system itself. Centuries later, we are living in the
brutal world those revolutionary ideals created. The revolutionar-
ies have cleaned up a lot; now they have well-funded think tanks
and endowed chairs at Harvard and Yale. But they are still, to para-
phrase Victor Hugo, the “civilized men of barbarism.” How else
to describe a group that writes cavalier position papers advocating
an invasion of some sovereign country, or who calmly appear on
C-SPAN to explain the government’s need for more of your in-
come, which ultimately will be extorted from you at gunpoint? To-
day’s masses might be primarily motivated by self-interest, but at
least they see that their self-interest pits them against these men of
barbarism. The masses might want a weaker central government
and more powerful localities because that would benefit them-
selves—yet at least they want decentralization. No side is perfect,
but in the choice between the populists and the elites, any 21st-
century libertarian’s response should be, “Where’s my pitchfork?”
Kelse Moen is a recent graduate of Emory University.
 Profiles in Liberty
Eric Garris
Trent Hill

W e members of the liberty movement

often criticize “the media” for various
reasons, including the fact that our more pro-
liberty viewpoints do not often get a hearing.
But what would you say if there was one man
whose three pro-liberty websites had topped
10.5 million pageviews last month? The story
of Eric Garris is a picture-perfect account of a
libertarian who has used the Internet to spread
the message. He is the longtime webmaster of
two of the most well-read pro-liberty websites
on the Internet: LewRockwell.com and Anti-
war.com, as well as the less visited, but no less
important, Ballot-Access.org.
Garris founded, and is now the manag-
ing editor of, Antiwar.com. This is easily the
most popular and influential antiwar website
on the Internet. Each day the site aggregates
a number of links concerning wars, conflicts,
and military events from all over the world.
At Antiwar.com, one can get a perspective on Antiwar.com founder Eric Garris
conflicts ranging from Indonesia to Ireland,
Sri Lanka to El Salvador, Mexico to Mongo-
lia—all in the space of minutes. Add to this
the hard-hitting, sardonic, original commentary of Justin Raimon-
do, the site’s editorial director, and you have a recipe for success. ple who were most influential on Garris in those early days were
To hear Garris talk about Antiwar.com, you’d think the struggle
against war was already won. His enthusiasm for peace is palpable
and contagious—I found myself willing conflicts to an abrupt end
when he spoke against them, both with force and passion. This
optimism for the future was, however, at times tempered with a
pragmatic recognition of history. He repeatedly pointed to the
Vietnam era as one that galvanized pro-peace forces, but he la-
mented the fact that a war had to be claiming the lives of Ameri-
can boys in order for Americans to strive for peace.
Antiwar.com was founded in 1995, but at first resembled a
hobby more than a vital source of breaking news. For the first
years of its existence, the site was updated sporadically. It is no
coincidence that the site became a more serious endeavor in 1999,
when President Clinton rashly involved America in the Kosovo
War. It was then that the site began updating daily, as well as
breaking stories on the conflict. Garris and his website were fea-
tured on PBS and in the Washington Post, which resulted in a surge
in popularity.
LewRockwell.com is a website most people in the liberty
movement are at least familiar with. Garris is a webmaster and
occasional blogger there, too. This site has the largest audience of said that this was a precursor to the Ron Paul movement, which
any of his projects, as well as a constant stream of original content is now in the process of doing the same thing. When asked about
27
Young American Revolution
from some of the movement’s most recogniz-
able names. Ballot-Access.org, meanwhile,
is the website of Richard Winger, nationally
renowned ballot-access expert. Though this
website is much less frequented than the other
projects Garris works on, it has been of vital
importance to keeping political third parties
on ballots around the country. Garris called
what Winger does to advance fair election
laws “heroic and thankless.” One might apply
similar words to Garris’s efforts.
The San Francisco-based webmaster
would demur with humility if someone were
to call him a luminary or leader of the free-
dom movement, but that he certainly is. In
fact, Eric Garris has been in the forefront
of the libertarian movement since the early
’70s. Living in California, Eric worked for the
presidential campaign of Benjamin Spock, a
pediatrician, author, and explicitly socialist
Peace and Freedom Party nominee. Garris got
involved in the antiwar movement, where he
soon came into contact with libertarians who
were also against the war and were able to
convert him to a more pro-liberty point of view. Among the peo-
Gene Berkman, owner of Renaissance Books, and Willis Stone,
the founder and director of the Liberty Amendment Commit-
tee. It was around this time that he realized, “the way to stop war
isn’t more government, it is much, much less government.” His
conviction that “economic and personal freedom are inseparable”
led him to thinkers like Murray Rothbard. However, his time in
the Peace and Freedom Party was not yet over—in 1974 he and
a group of similarly converted members took over the party and
rewrote the platform to reflect their libertarian views. This dem-
onstrates the two sides of Garris’s nature: he is both a principled
ideas-man and an individual upon whom the liberty movement
can depend on for action.
Garris was a leader in Students for a Libertarian Society in the
’70s. He recognized early on the importance of student organiza-
tions like Young Americans for Liberty. He was an alliance-builder
from the start. In 1986 he helped to found the Libertarian Repub-
lican Organizing Committee. This was meant to be a vehicle by
which libertarians could run in elections as Republicans. Of this
effort, Garris said, “We won a lot of primaries and were able to
get a lot of our candidates running as Republicans.” It could be
the Ron Paul presidential campaign he remarked enthusiastically
that it was “the most successful libertarian movement that I have
seen in my lifetime. Ron Paul is so unique in electoral politics.”
Garris has known Ron Paul since the ’70s, but is still every bit as
impressed with him as the day he met him. As my conversation
with him was burgeoning on two hours already, Garris began to
describe to me how much he appreciated the leadership of Ron
Paul and what set him apart from every other elected official. His
faith, he says, is not put in “particular people or politicians,” but
in ideas and alliances. This makes a great deal of success, too, if
one examines Garris’s history. He ran for office several times and
never made significant headway, but he served as director of Re-
publicans for Proposition 215, a medical-marijuana initiative that
passed in 1996. Similarly, his alliance-building efforts through An-
tiwar.com and idea-disseminating endeavors with LewRockwell.
com and Students for a Libertarian Society were quite successful.
LewRockwell.com is host to an article by Garris called The In-
ternet vs. the State. It begins with an anecdote in which Timothy
Leary, the famous guru of hallucinogenic substances, speaks to
a Libertarian Party convention and tells them about “something
called the Internet.” Virtually everyone in the room, Garris said in
his retelling of the story, was doubtful about the positive influence
this “Internet” could have on the pro-liberty movement. Garris
now admits that it has done what Leary said it would and much
more. Although he was skeptical, and Justin Raimondo called it “a
passing fad,” Garris is certainly glad it exists now:
The Internet really is the destined home for libertarian-
ism, and our greatest hope for freedom. On it we see the free
market of ideas and services flourish even as the politicians
try to stamp out civil society in real space. On it we see the
truth win out over the political and media establishment. On
28
March 2010
it we see the spirit of liberty.
The state cannot catch up to, it cannot match, and it can-
not begin to comprehend the full power of the Internet. Pol-
iticians are baffled by it because it doesn’t conform to their
assumptions about the world, about human organization,
about the need for central planning. The glorious Internet
is a major source of confusion for all with a statist mindset.
The net is revolutionizing society, all toward more volun-
tary, civil, and efficient methods of organization. It has given
us all a way to participate in speaking the truth and standing
up to the state. The Internet is ours—it belongs to the people
and especially the friends of freedom and peace who feel so
at home online because it is so free and so much the way we’d
like to see the rest of the world.
Garris is right, the Internet functions as a microcosm of the
type of world we liberty activists envision: it is without (much)
government intervention and thrives as a constant example of
the spontaneous order that arises when men are left to deal with
each other. Though Garris has long worked in the background of
the movement, he should be held aloft as an example. He is both
intelligent and active, humble and accomplished, assertive and tol-
erant. Though he has worked on hundreds of campaigns since his
teenage years, he says, “I feel like the work I am doing now is the
most important I’ve done in my life.” While his reputation may
not match his accomplishments, because of his discomfort with
the spotlight, Eric Garris is anything but a minor character in the
history, and future, of the liberty movement in America—as well
as the antiwar movement worldwide.
Trent Hill [thill19@lsu.edu] is a history major at Louisiana State Univer-
sity and the editor of IndependentPoliticalReport.com.
 Consistent Conservatism
It’s individualist, pro-life, and antiwar
Matt Cockerill
“It is strangely absurd to suppose that a mil-
lion human beings, collected together, are not
under the same moral laws which bind each of
them separately.”
So said Thomas Jefferson, in words
that demonstrate his belief that gov-
ernment is not above the moral law.
That principle lies at the heart of the
American tradition—a tradition of
individualism. The Constitution’s pro-
tections for such fundamental liberties
as freedom of speech, freedom of re-
ligion, the right to assemble peaceably,
and the right to keep and bear arms are
well known. But the Bill of Rights also
acknowledges—in its crowning glory,
the Ninth Amendment—an overall
presumption of liberty, declaring, “The
enumeration in the Constitution, of
certain rights, shall not be construed to
deny or disparage others retained by the
Pay heed to Thomas Jefferson
people.”
The Framers believed that those
rights came naturally to everyone be-
cause of our shared humanity. They are not granted by king, par-
liament, or any other sort of government institution. Indeed, to
deprive any individual of these rights unduly would be criminal-
ity on the part of the government. After all, if an individual has
no right to use violence to stop his neighbor from expressing his
opinion, why should a group of individuals acting through the
government have the right to censor nonviolent speech?
Conservatism is properly defined in the American context as a
movement seeking to “conserve” the Constitution and our found-
ing principles of individual rights. But the political leaders of the
modern conservative movement have frequently failed to protect
the individual rights they claim to support. Only in rhetoric have
they dissented from the openly collectivist left. Too many conser-
vatives have internalized a collectivist ideology that puts govern-
ment above the people and allows the state to commit acts that
would be considered criminal if carried out by private individuals.
These inconsistent conservatives permit government to behave
in a manner that directly violates the moral law binding the rest
of society.
To be sure, collectivism and statism—the opposites of indi-
vidualism and constitutionalism—have a long history. Politicians
have since time immemorial tried to justify their violations of
the people’s rights by claiming their actions are for the collective
good. As early as 1798, The Alien and Sedition Acts criminal-
29
Young American Revolution
ized nonviolent speech on the pretext
of promoting national unity and pre-
venting “sedition” or any revolution-
ary attempt “to oppose any measure
or measures of the government of
the United States.” Under the guise
of “Protection to American Industry,”
the Morrill Tariffs of the Buchanan
and Lincoln presidencies obstructed
the right of individuals to trade freely.
Indeed, President Lincoln, who knew
that slavery was an inexcusable evil,
justified continuing this gravest of all
violations of individual rights for de-
cades on a collectivist moral basis, ar-
guing in his 1852 eulogy to Henry Clay
that “a greater evil, even to the cause
of human liberty itself,” would come
from slavery’s abolition.
Immoral policies carried out by our
government today are justified with a
similar collectivist ideology. In prac-
tice, our leaders have rejected the prin-
ciple of inalienable rights in favor of a
special standard for themselves which includes privileges ordinary
citizens will never see. They believe that they can violate the rights
of regular people as long as good results are likely to come from
doing so—the ends justify the means.
That left-wing statists employ this logic should not be surpris-
ing. But it is disheartening to see conservatives also accept these
premises. What kind of principled argument for economic liberty
can be made when one is simultaneously advocating the use of
force to crack down on nonviolent personal habits, such as drug
use, allegedly for the offender’s “own good”? Slogans about small
government and individual rights are rendered meaningless when
conservatives encourage the state to violate the natural law bind-
ing human behavior. That law says force may only be used defen-
sively, to protect rights.
Following the implications of natural law and the natural rights
outlined in the Constitution to their logical end will lead to con-
clusions some on the right might find unpleasant. The philosophy
of individual rights affirms the things conservatives hold most
dear, including the sanctity of life and of personal property. But
consistent individualism leaves no room for the War on the Drugs
or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To understand what it means to uphold individualism con-
sistently, conservatives need look no further than the arguments
they employ against legalized abortion. The fact that abortion is
subsidized and sanctioned by the U.S. government doesn’t make
it morally permissible. Nor does the claim in the 2005 bestseller
Freakonomics that abortion reduces the crime rate tilt the scales in
its favor. That abortion is state-sanctioned and is claimed by some
as a net gain to society is irrelevant; abortion is murder. Period.
Conservative Rep. Ron Paul has taken the pro-life argument
and applied it consistently, thereby deriving a truly antiwar posi-
tion. Paul, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, has written, “whether it
is war or abortion, we conceal the reality of violent acts through
linguistic contrivances meant to devalue human lives we find in-
convenient.” Innocent civilians killed as a direct result of modern
warfare, which cannot pinpoint legitimate aggressors, are “ratio-
nalized away on the Leninist grounds that to make an omelet you
have to break some eggs.”
Again, the government is held to a different standard than the
rest of society. If someone were to launch an “anti-crime” bomb-
ing of an American city that killed several violent criminals as well
as a few innocent bystanders, all of private society would consider
that vigilante a criminal. Neither his motives nor even the pros-
pect that his action may have wound up saving more innocent
lives than it took would matter a whit.
Yet when the military does the same thing and innocents are
killed in the so-called War on Terror, inconsistent conservatives
shrug their shoulders and call that “collateral damage.” This dou-
ble standard is readily swallowed by the likes of Sarah Palin, Rush
Limbaugh, and John Hagee, who while harshly condemning many
other government programs apparently believe that the Penta-
gon should be held to a different moral standard than the rest
of humanity. Regarding these ideologically muddled “pro-lifers
for murder,” devout Catholic and bestselling conservative author
Tom Woods quips, “And these are the people who lecture the
world about moral relativism!”
By dismissing the deaths of innocent people as necessary sac-
rifices for the collective good, supporters of aggressive wars per-
petuate moral relativism and reject the sanctity of human life. I
refuse to do that, and I expect you do too, in practice if not in
rhetoric. If you regard your life, the memories that have touched
and changed you, and the loved ones that keep you motivated to
be of limited value—able to be quantified and culled like sheep or
cattle—then why bother living at all?
Conservatives ought to fight for peace because it is the phil-
osophically consistent and morally right thing to do. Individual
rights ought to be defended on the basis of a deep and abiding
principle; we cannot quantify the value of an individual. Contem-
porary conservative “hawks” who nonetheless pay lip-service to
a pro-life position demonstrate a deep intellectual inconsistency
by supporting the War on Terror. They betray their principles
through their mindless disregard of the thousands innocent men,
30
March 2010
women, and children this big-government venture has maimed
or killed.
Those on the right who oppose withdrawing from Iraq and
Afghanistan and the legalization of “victimless crimes” (or more
properly understood, the outlawing of government violence
against nonaggressors) are looking at these matters the wrong
way. This confusion is partly attributable to our political culture,
which regards virtually no area of life as outside the realm of
government. In these times, upholding liberty and opposing all
non-defensive violence seem almost irrelevant. But it should not
be so—at least, not for people who take our traditions of respect
for rights, liberty, and limited government seriously.
Unfortunately, many proponents of withdrawal from Iraq or
of decriminalization of marijuana are unfriendly to liberty as a
general goal. They would just as readily launch an aggressive in-
vasion of Darfur under the banner of “humanitarianism” or tax
legalized drugs to fund their preferred social cause. Conservatives
are right to be skeptical of such political agendas. But conserva-
tives must realize that just as valuing freedom of religion does not
mean endorsing every religion, promoting freedom to drink beer
or smoke cannabis does not mean endorsing either practice. To
argue for the legalization of victimless crimes and for a noninter-
ventionist foreign policy does not mean one is a counterculture
pacifist. An antiwar, pro-freedom position upholds traditional
American values, rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethic, which em-
phasize the inalienable rights and infinite value of each and every
person.
To provide a consistent, credible alternative to the openly col-
lectivist left, the conservative movement must uphold individual-
ism—consistently, coherently, and unashamedly—and apply this
principle to every political issue. Today this means opposing so-
cialism at home and President Obama’s wars—and yes, they are
his wars now—abroad.
Young people have a leading role to play in returning conserva-
tism to consistent indivdiualist principle. Just as a previous genera-
tion of students brought about the end of conscription and seg-
regation, ours can work to force the agents of the state to respect
the inalienable rights and infinite value of every human being. The
idealism latent in every young person is more powerful than any
conventional political tool. This idealism has fallen into a slum-
ber of cynicism of pragmatism because of partisan, unprincipled,
and inconsistent conservative leaders. But as resistance to Obama
mounts and the lessons of Bush’s failures sink in, young Ameri-
cans are returning to the true individualist path of Jefferson.
Matt Cockerill [MatthewCockerill@Creighton.edu] is a student of philoso-
phy and economics at Creighton University.
 Minister to Liberty
Edmund Opitz showed that capitalism and Christianity are not enemies
Norman Horn
I f a patron saint for the libertarian movement were to be cho-
sen, at the top of the list would be Rev. Edmund A. Opitz, min-
ister and theologian for liberty. He was a good friend of Murray
Rothbard and many others in the freedom movement—he was
present from the beginning and knew almost everyone. From the
1950s through the 1990s, Opitz called the church to an integrated
understanding of religion, economics, and individual liberty. He
passed away in 2006, creating a void yet to be filled but leaving this
world much better than he had found it.
Opitz trained for Christian ministry at Andover Seminary and
initially ministered in the Unitarian Church. But during his early
years of ministry Unitarianism became more and more influenced
by liberal Protestantism and the social gospel, whereas Opitz con-
sistently grew more theologically conservative. He eventually left
the Unitarian Church for the Congregationalist denomination and
continued to promote conservative values and a thoroughly free-
market outlook upon social life.
Religion, Opitz would say, is far more than an academic exer-
cise in one subject among many others; rather it is the fundamen-
tal way one approaches, understands, and evaluates all subjects.
One’s religion, or worldview, makes all the difference in how one
interacts with the world. Opitz’s Christian faith led him to the re-
alization that liberty was the only reasonable organizing principle
for society. Liberty and faith are not merely compatible—they are
inseparable. “Liberty rests upon the belief that all proper authority
for man’s relationships with his fellow men comes from a source
higher than man—from the Creator … . Each person has a rela-
tion to his Maker with which no other person, not even the ruler,
has any right to interfere.” Reciprocally, Opitz believed a philoso-
phy of liberty presupposed a background of Christian philosophy.
Whether or not one accepts this notion, certainly Western civiliza-
tion is indebted to Christendom for the understanding that natural
law provides an absolute rather than relative standard—that there
is something higher than the whims of men.
Opitz understood this philosophy of liberty as the true mean-
ing of individualism. He repeatedly emphasized the importance
of individual liberty in religious conviction: “Men must be free in
31
Young American Revolution
society because each person has a destiny beyond society which
he can work out only under the conditions of liberty.” The con-
cept of individualism is often lost in the modern church. One fre-
quently hears in religious circles that “individualism has no place
in the life of the church,” but this constitutes a misunderstanding
of the word itself. At its core, individualism means the individual
is responsible for his own actions, in particular before God, and
thus individual liberty is necessary for living out the dictates of
conscience. Opitz would agree that one cannot be in Christ (Ga-
latians 3:28) without the body of Christ—the church—but many
Christians take this much too far and find themselves promoting
collectivism rather than community. Individualism is not social
atomism: “We have no inclination to be hermits; we are social
creatures, and we achieve our full humanity only in association, in
mutuality, and in community.” Voluntary action is the very essence
of community, and thus the collectivist is actually acting against
the spirit of community he seeks to promote.
The natural outgrowth of holding a consistent philosophy of
political liberty is supporting a free-market economy. Opitz under-
stood that the free market was absolutely essential to maintaining
a free society. “Economic freedom is to be cherished for itself, just
as we cherish every one of our liberties. But economic freedom
is doubly important because it sustains all the rest… . Economic
freedom represents our livelihood, and whoever controls our live-
lihood has acquired critical leverage over every other aspect of our
lives as well.” In this insight, Opitz recognized that Christianity,
which mandates a free society where individuals can peacefully
fulfill their responsibilities before God, and capitalism, which sup-
ports and maintains the free society, are not enemies in the least.
Rather, they are critical allies, the best of friends. Opitz elaborates
upon this topic at length in his appropriately titled book, Religion
and Capitalism: Allies, Not Enemies.
But how can individual freedom be protected from tyranny?
The solution, according to Opitz, lies in returning to classical-
liberal political ideals. “There is a place for government in the
affairs of men, and our Declaration of Independence tells us pre-
cisely what that place is. The role of government is to protect
individuals in their God-given individual rights. Freedom is the
natural birthright of man, but all that government can do in be-
half of freedom is to let the individual alone, and it should secure
him in his rights by making others let him alone.” Thus, if govern-
ment is to have any purpose at all, it is only to secure the rights of
individuals in their persons and property. Anything else is nothing
short of criminal, for the standard of morality does not change
when one dons a government uniform. Opitz saw the American
governmental system as a unique solution in the history of man
that had yet to be matched. To him, minimal government was the
best way to restrain tyranny.
With these principles in mind, it is no surprise that Opitz was
patently opposed to the so-called “social gospel” that was popular
in the church for much of the 20th century. The central tenet
of the social gospel was that the chief function of the church
was to provide for the physical needs of the destitute by all pos-
sible means. Though charity is indeed a great part of the Christian
way of life, social-gospel activists in effect renounced charity and
condoned the use of force to achieve their meta-goals of social
and economic equality through government programs and wealth
transfer. Opitz’s keen outlook on history and philosophy led him
to write scathing critiques of the actions of social-gospel propo-
nents, and in many respects he single-handedly turned much of
the tide against this deviant theological point of view. (See his
book The Libertarian Theology of Freedom for an excellent history of
the social gospel.)
Opitz’s strong belief in freedom was coupled with action.
Early in his career, he helped form and manage a group called
Spiritual Mobilization, which disseminated newsletters promoting
free-market ideas to over 20,000 ministers nationwide. Following
the dissolution of Spiritual Mobilization, Opitz joined the Foun-
32
March 2010
dation for Economic Education (FEE) as a senior staff member
(and resident theologian). While at FEE, he founded the Nockian
Society, which helped keep Albert Jay Nock’s writings in print, and
“the Remnant,” a small fellowship of conservative and libertarian
ministers named after the theme of Nock’s essay “Isaiah’s Job.”
He spent 37 years at FEE, retiring in 1992.
He made a great impact upon the freedom movement through
his writing. The paper trail of his thoughts is voluminous. While
a part of Spiritual Mobilization, Opitz was a frequent contributor
to the magazine Faith and Freedom. He left an indelible mark upon
FEE’s publication, The Freeman, with his numerous book reviews
and articles. Religion and Capitalism is considered a classic text in
both economics and theology. His manner of writing matched his
manner of person—gentlemanly, persuasive, and humble—wor-
thy traits that all friends of liberty should emulate.
Opitz could see the ramifications of the war of ideas that has
been fought for centuries between liberty and tyranny. He saw
the trajectories of the prominent ideas of his day—social gospel,
collectivism, socialistic economic policy—and he used his abilities
to promote what was good and right. “With how little wisdom do
we organize our lives, especially in the areas of government and
the economy. We’ve been going by dead reckoning for too long,
and our dumb luck has just about run out,” he wrote in the August
1992 Freeman. Libertarian Christians should remember that Opitz
helped pave the way for us to make a difference. Let us honor
his legacy by telling Christians in America that the answer to the
problems society faces is not the State, but rather liberty and faith.
Norman Horn is a graduate research assistant in the Department of Chemi-
cal Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
Ramparts’ Red Glare
A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America
Peter Richardson, The New Press, 272 pages
Dylan Hales
W riting a history of Ramparts is no easy
task. Starting with a staff that was an
eclectic combination of anti-communist as-
sociates of the John Birch Society and tradi-
tionalist opponents of the modern world, the
magazine eventually morphed into a defiant
opponent of America’s core institutions, run
by self-proclaimed “revolutionaries.” In its
relatively short life as a periodical (with an at
times truly “periodical” distribution sched-
ule) Ramparts hosted symposiums on smut
literature, exposed numerous cases of CIA
malfeasance, employed and promoted Black
Panthers, and defended the firebombing of
banks. Helmed by spendthrifts and publici-
ty-seekers, the journal featured some of the
hardest-hitting reporting in American history,
but ultimately collapsed when their financiers
got fed up with the fast-living, devil-may-care
attitude that defined Ramparts for most of its
existence.
Peter Richardson’s A Bomb In Every Issue is a well-written ac-
count of all of the above and then some.
When Ramparts began in 1962 as a highbrow Catholic journal
its sole founding father was California businessman Edward Keat-
ing. Early issues specialized in a sort of prudish cultural criticism.
Sporadically published and heavily reliant on the personal inheri-
tance of Keating’s wife, the upstart magazine narrowly averted
death many times over the years and only averted irrelevance
when Keating hired a one-eyed alcoholic named Warren Hinckle.
If Keating was a caricature of a ’50s Catholic convert, Hinckle
was a caricature of the eccentric reporter. A hard-drinking self-
promoter with a flare for the dramatic, Hinckle would eventually
be responsible in some form for most of the journalistic coups
that the magazine was able to pull off. Within months of his first
Ramparts article Hinckle was making waves in a multitude of ways
and was quickly brought on as an executive editor. His first duty
was to secure money, a task Hinckle would prove to be up to.
Unfortunately for Ramparts, he was even better at spending it. But
before the bankruptcy there was the bombast.
Jet-setting the country while carelessly burning fuel and cash is
not a model for publishing longevity, but it proved an exceptional
approach for developing readership. With a new layout and new
mission, the Hinckle-directed Ramparts became the premier muck-
raking magazine of the New Left.
It was Ramparts that first took on the CIA and its involvement
in funding various student groups and publications as a perverse
Cold War tactic. At the time the CIA was still regarded as a trusty
33
Young American Revolution
weapon in the war against the Red Menace;
Beltway insiders and political outsiders alike
viewed it as the “liberal” wing of the foreign-
policy establishment. Ramparts revealed that
the agency was funding the National Student
Association, a confederation of student gov-
ernments on American college campuses.
Although the CIA may have been more con-
cerned about international conferences mem-
bers of the association attended—such events
were good recruiting grounds for foreign
sources—the exposure of agency’s involve-
ment in a domestic group raised troubling
questions about espionage activities at home.
The agency’s “outing” at the hands of Ram-
parts proved to be the first of many exposés
that would ultimately cast the CIA in a more
suspicious light.
Building on the success of the CIA stories,
Ramparts branched out even further, becom-
ing a vehicle for a radical cultural criticism and
political critique that was drastically at odds with its own religious
roots. Inspired by the revolutions in Cuba and China, Ramparts
staffers wound up becoming some of the most trenchant critics
of the American empire. Perhaps the most hard-nosed of all was
Robert Scheer.
The quintessential “street fighting man” of leftist lore, Scheer
had a take-no-prisoners style that was well suited for the always
confrontational Ramparts. Having visited both Vietnam and Cuba,
Scheer was uncompromising in his criticisms of American in-
volvement in both regions. This ultimately led Scheer to run as a
decidedly antiwar Democratic candidate for Congress, a race he
nearly won. Openly and uncritically aligned with the enemies of
the warfare state, Scheer became the public face of the magazine,
even appearing on William F. Buckley’s show “Firing Line” in one
of the most contentious episodes in the program’s 33-year history.
Though the magazine was accused of being sexist and narrow
in its coverage of the burgeoning counterculture, it was one the
first major publications to do a feature on women’s issues, and it
regularly featured essays and commentary on sex, drugs, and rock
‘n’ roll. Uncovering the government’s role in the creation of LSD,
the magazine kept the trippy world of Haight Asbury at arms
length, but it was clear whose side they were on. After all, straight-
laced publications don’t have pet monkeys in the newsroom or
future High Times writers on the payroll.
By the end of the 1960s, Ramparts had become a virtual propa-
ganda arm of the Black Panther Party (led by ex-con and Ramparts
staffer Eldridge Cleaver), a consistent opponent of the Vietnam
War years before it was “cool,” and the only major periodical to
have any active presence at the bloody Democratic Convention
of 1968. Taking a unique approach to the coverage of the “po-
lice riot” at the convention in Chicago, Hinckle and company re-
leased daily double-sided “posters” chronicling the events of the
day. Activists on the ground who also acted as contributors to
the fact-sheet placed the “newspaper” deep within the maelstrom.
They were making the news they were reporting on—the van-
guardists of journalistic revolution were now doubling as political mirror the views and reporting of neoconservative David Horow-
vanguardists. After Chicago, the direction of the New Left and
Ramparts would never be same.
In many ways the radicaliza-
tion of Ramparts closely paral-
lels the radicalization of the New
Left. Originally rooted in a some-
what utopian American liberalism,
both Ramparts and the activists of
the New Left steadily but surely
evolved into harsh parodies of the
authoritarian Left. Hedonistic to a
fault and uneconomical in almost
every sense of the term, the New
Left in general and Ramparts in par-
ticular settled into a rigid unifor-
mity and ideological orthodoxy that
rendered the revolutionary fervor
they represented totally irrelevant
to most Americans. But however
dispiriting the destination proved to
be, in the Ramparts story the stops
along the way are where one finds
real value. A tale more of ups and
downs than departure and destina-
tion, A Bomb In Every Issue is a grip-
ping account of an exceptionally
turbulent environment.
Perhaps the most remarkable
thing about A Bomb In Every Issue
is its tone. While there have been The New Left took an increasingly violent turn after 1968
many books written about magazines,
almost all of them have been written by editors or owners of pub-
lications looking to toot their own horns, or else by ex-employees
with axes to grind. Richardson’s neutrality, coupled with ability to parts came to exemplify would become a staple for later reporters
convey the exuberant style exemplified by Ramparts, results in a
spirited and evenhanded account.
This approach pays off greatly when outlining the many twists
and turns the magazine took over the years. Richardson went to
great lengths to track down many of the key players involved—
at times a laborious task. Even in a book filled with the exploits
of drug-addled reporters and revolutionary hijinks, some of the
more amusing passages are stories Richardson tells about attempt-
ing to locate various figures associated with Ramparts. Journalistic for thought and as both a blueprint and a warning of sorts for
objectivity is largely a myth, but Richardson’s success in staying
above the fray and conveying a compelling story is remarkable.
His willingness to go the extra mile to retrieve the obscure and
seemingly inane from the dustbin of history is even more impres-
sive.
34
March 2010
Unfortunately, this evenhandedness and careful cultivation
of sources produces some blind spots, primarily in Richardson’s
treatment of the broader New Left. The Black Panthers are por-
trayed as violent race hucksters with absolutely no redeeming
value. Though attempts to paint the Panthers as a misunderstood,
peace-loving bunch are equally absurd, the almost entirely nega-
tive portrait painted by Richardson is at odds with much of the
available literature on the group. Not surprisingly, it does closely
itz, who in his radical days was a Ramparts editor; Horowitz serves
as a primary source for Richardson’s account.
Such cavils should not dissuade
one from reading the book. As a
history of an extremely influential
American periodical, A Bomb In Ev-
ery Issue is both valuable and unique.
Though it is a relatively small book,
it is hard to imagine a longer volume
being any better. In fact, if not for
the tireless efforts of Richardson it
is doubtful the history of Ramparts
would ever have been written at all.
The publication of Che Gue-
vara’s diaries in Ramparts and the
magazine’s role as a launching pad
for Eldridge Cleaver would prove
to be the beginning of the end for
Hinckle’s experiment. As it grew
too radical to draw advertisers and
remained too independent to con-
form to the dictates of donors, the
unprofitable became the impractical
and the impractical ultimately be-
came extinct. Most revolutions end
badly, and Ramparts was no excep-
tion.
Though it died a slow death,
Ramparts left behind a large legacy.
It was the Velvet Underground of
magazines and inspired numerous
writers and editors. Both Rolling Stone and Mother Jones were direct
offshoots founded by former Ramparts staffers, and the style Ram-
and polemicists. A home to both the godfather of gonzo Hunter
S. Thompson and the future neoconservative publishing kingpin
Peter Collier, the depth of the influence Ramparts had on the intel-
lectual class in America has been woefully underappreciated.
Though not a template for a successful magazine, the fero-
cious spirit that defined Ramparts is an example that should be
followed by writers, critics, and commentators of all political per-
suasions. For young readers, A Bomb In Every Issue serves as food
authentic radicals interested in using the power of the pen to roll
back the power of the State.
Dylan Hales is a writer in Charleston, South Carolina.
The Anti-Roosevelt
The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft
Russell Kirk and James McClellan, Transaction Publishers, 243 pages
Gerald J. Russello
T he Republican Party today is in a situa-
tion similar to the one it experienced in
the 1930s, when the Depression caused a na-
tion to turn to Franklin Delano Roosevelt as
its savior and the GOP was saddled with the
image of causing the national economic col-
lapse.
As in 1932, the presidential election of
2008 brought a supposed savior to the presi-
dency. Barack Obama is doing the same
things that Roosevelt did, but on a scale that
even FDR could not have imagined: with a
Democratic majority in Congress, Obama
seems set to extend the reach of government
power in every field imaginable, from health
care to the capitalist bastions of Wall Street.
And as in Roosevelt’s time, there are some
in the president’s cabinet and Congress who
would go even further.
Republicans deserve much of the blame.
Too often, they share the unspoken premise
that the purpose of government is to alleviate any perceived suf-
fering, no matter the cost in dollars or liberties lost. And while the
frenzy surrounding the election of Obama was unique, Repub-
licans too have suffered from presidential hero-worship. When
government programs are deemed inefficient or corrupt, the dis-
appointing answer from the GOP is too often not to end the pro-
grams but to make them “better.” This is arguing on liberalism’s
own turf, and fails to offer a legitimate conservative alternative to
the centralized welfare state.
This lack of an alternative is especially evident in foreign poli-
cy, where Republicans since September 11, 2001 have been vocif-
erous supporters of government power in the name of “protect-
ing the homeland” or “preserving democracy.” George W. Bush
had campaigned for the White House as an opponent of nation-
building and an advocate of a “humble foreign policy,” but in the
wake of the terrorist attacks he adopted an interventionist mental-
ity that continues to split conservatives. Even now, some Republi-
cans speak of expanding into new “theaters” of the War on Ter-
ror, adding to their targets countries such as Yemen that pose no
real strategic threat and without heed to the economic and human
costs of military operations. The Republicans’ endless overseas
adventures, either against “terror” or to impose democracy, differ
only in rhetoric from the worst leftist excesses. The interventions
in Bosnia, Somalia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq all are shrouded
in the same language of exporting the American way of life and
making the world safe for democracy—language descended from
the rhetoric of one of the most centralizing presidents of the 20th
35
Young American Revolution
century, Woodrow Wilson.
There is another way, however, one that
was charted out in the 1940s and 1950s by
that era’s greatest Republican opponent of
big government: Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio.
Taft’s name has appeared on the fringes of
recent conversations over the future of the
Republican Party, as well it should. More than
any other Republican statesman, Taft articu-
lated the profound skepticism toward national
government power that is rooted in the Amer-
ican political tradition, a tradition the elites—
of both the left and right—would have us for-
get. Now Transaction Books has published a
new edition of the classic 1967 study of Taft
by Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative
Mind, and political scientist James McClellan.
Its appearance should cause conservatives to
reassess their recent past and chart a new way
forward to the 2010 elections and beyond.
Taft (1889-1953) was the scion of a promi-
nent political family that had been rooted in Ohio, but whose in-
fluence eventually reached nation’s capital. Taft’s father, William
Howard Taft, was the 27th president of the United States and later
became chief justice of the Supreme Court. Robert served in the
United States Senate from 1939 through 1953, after terms as a
state legislator and a career as a lawyer in Ohio. He became Senate
majority leader in 1951, only to die two years later. Throughout his
career in the Senate, Taft battled Democrats and Republicans alike
who would compromise constitutional principles for political ex-
pediency. (Perhaps this is why he lost bids for the Republican pres-
idential nominations in 1940, 1948, and 1952.) In his time, Taft
was widely recognized as one of the great American legislative
leaders, whose influence, even before he became Senate majority
leader, was substantial. He was also the most noted conservative
of his time—even earning the nickname “Mr. Republican.” Taft is
a name that once was used as metaphor for a range of Republican
positions that seem alien in today’s post-September 11 world. His
principles, which built the conservative wing of the GOP, are in
need of rediscovery.
This may not be easy. American political culture before the
1960s is hard to reconstruct. Before truly national television net-
works, before the Internet, before Reagan, before Gingrich, be-
fore Coulter and Rush, the nation had distinct political regions
that brought different concerns and perspectives to politics in
Washington, D.C. Even with blogs and social networks, that var-
ied political culture of old, based on local differences, history, and
ethnic or religious communities, is difficult to replicate. The great
dislocations caused by World War and McClellan explain in their
II were only partially eased by the book, through deep analysis of
supposedly placid 1950s. The fed- the actual legislation before Con-
eral leviathan in D.C. had grown gress, knowledge of parliamentary
great during the 1930s and 1940s, procedures, and, most important,
and the nation was becoming ac- a guiding set of principles, Senator
customed to turning toward the Taft crafted a real alternative to the
Potomac for orders. By the 1960s, liberal view of government. With-
social upheavals and technologi- out rejecting government action in
cal innovations acted together to the abstract, Taft held government
shape a new nation with very dif- to strict standards of efficacy and
ferent mores and attitudes than adherence to the principle of pro-
those of the previous generation. tecting liberty. Too often, legisla-
For the Republican Party after tion is passed to make a statement
World War II, there were at least or to express some passing popu-
two important regional contin- lar emotion. Such action is not, on
gents. The first was the Republi- Taft’s view, consistent with Ameri-
can establishment, the supporters can traditions of self-government.
of Thomas Dewey and Wendell Taft faced the twin threats to
Willkie, which was aligned with liberty of government growth
the great financial interests of the at home and the use of foreign
East Coast. The second contin- threats—in his day, international
gent was a Midwest conservatism, Communism—as excuses for
of which Taft was the outstand- expanding government power
ing exemplar. This Midwestern abroad. In judging legislation, Taft
conservatism shared certain of asked the most crucial question:
the principles embodied by what Robert A. Taft, conservative mastermind does it preserve or increase the
writer Bill Kauffman has called the liberty of Americans? Taft saw that
“front porch republic,” an American increased government spending, of
political culture dating back to the Founding. It is defined by po- any kind, would work to enrich the state to the detriment of the
litical humility, a reliance on local communities, and a suspicion people. This is as true in domestic spending as in defense. They
both of national politics and the financial interests that influence are different sides of the same coin, and must be analyzed ac-
national politics. Later on, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan cording to the same measure. A policy wonk before the term was
were to add the Sunbelt states to the originally Midwestern con- invented, Taft began a full-fledged assault on the New Deal begin-
servative coalition. ning in the mid-1930s by poring over the legislation and pointing
Taft was no political philosopher, but as Kirk and McClellan out its absurdities and excessive costs. While he lost these indi-
explain, he was a great party leader. He saw the futility of liberal vidual battles more often than he won (the labor legislation known
Republicanism on the national stage, and he did not think conser- as the Taft-Hartley Act, which restricted the coercive power of
vative Republicans had made their principles clear (sound famil- unions, being a major exception), he set the stage for a principled
iar?). But it is important to note what this meant for Taft. For him, Republican opposition that still had life in it as late as 1980 and
party government should be government through principles, not the election of Reagan.
through interest groups or ideology. Indeed, Taft recognized early Foreign policy and defense are areas traditionally close to the
on that big government creates the interest groups that feed off Republican heart, yet even they must be considered in light of the
of it, doling out special privileges in return for financial support, principles of federalism and liberty. His 1951 book, A Foreign Poli-
with the result that voters fade in importance. How many voters cy for Americans, explains Taft’s view of America’s role in the world.
today read or understand the health care bills? For that matter, In its major themes, the book is a direct descendant of President
how many congressmen read them? George Washington’s directive to avoid foreign entanglements. It
Taft was unusual even in his own time for closely reading legis- is simply not the job of the United States to impose democracy
lation before it was voted upon. He saw clearly that in the absence abroad or improve living standards or do anything other than pro-
of an engaged and disciplined electorate, interest groups fill the tect American interests. The cost in lives and treasure is simply too
vacuum in Washington. The effect, he said, is to “reduce the effect great for anything more than that. Taft acted repeatedly on this
of political principles as a force for the determination of public belief, almost single-handedly defeating a plan by President Tru-
policy. … Perhaps the people have lost their sense of moral integ- man to impose universal military training on American citizens.
rity because their leaders have lost it, but I don’t think so. … Most This proposal was supported by polite opinion, Democrat and
people have a sense of hopelessness in trying to change what Republican alike, but Taft saw it for the threat that it was.
seems to have become government’s accepted practices.” As Kirk Taft is often called a representative of the “isolationist” tradi-
tion in American foreign policy. This is misleading: Taft was not
36
March 2010
opposed to foreign actions or joining alliances, as long as such
actions were taken in the defense of American interests. Too of-
ten, however, American leaders confused interests with ideology,
or dreamy self-projection of beneficence, a tendency encouraged
by the liberal press. As Kirk writes, “[i]n international affairs, Taft
declared, the New Dealers forever tilted, like so may Quixotes,
against windmills. Their objects never well defined even in their
own minds, they talked of perpetual peace and the ‘Four Free-
doms;’ they dreamed of universal democratic order on the Ameri-
can model; they conjured up stereotypes of nations, and sought to
make alliance with—or wars upon—those simulacra.” Those New
Dealers remain with us still, in both parties.
Conservatism favors peace, for the conservative knows that
war is, in Kirk’s words, “the enemy of constitution, liberty, eco-
nomic security, and the cake of custom.” Permanent military
commitments have no place in the Constitution, and the prospect
of a “garrison state,” in which empire abroad is matched by de-
creased liberty at home, was not the aim of Taft’s Republicanism.
Even when he voted for military spending or foreign interven-
tions, Taft maintained it was a congressional duty to keep a strict
watch over executive actions, a monitoring that has become even
more important in the 21st century. The ability of the state spy on
its citizens, to infringe on their liberty, or to secretly maintain mili-
tary engagements abroad, is greater then ever. Republicans would
be smart to place Congress at the center of their attention, as the
necessary institutional check on executive power.
Presidential plans to make the world perfectly safe and demo-
cratic always translate into lesser liberty back home. Railing against
the Roosevelt administration, Taft warned that “[i]n our efforts
to protect the freedom of this country against aggression from
without, we are in a situation today where we must constantly
be on guard against the suppression of freedom in the United
States itself ….” This lesson is even more important today, when
the threat of terrorism—which by its nature can occur any time,
anywhere—provides a convenient excuse to curtail our liberties.
Taft would have resisted both Obama’s health care “reform”
and the Patriot Act, to say nothing of the invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan. Taft waged a battle against the health care “reform”
in his day, another lesson, if another were needed, that govern-
ment overreach is always a real danger. Taft was not opposed to
government action to help the needy, but he understood grand
proposals for reform for what they were: an effort to exert cen-
tralized control over the actions of free people out of an ideologi-
cal devotion to an abstract equality.
The next election cycle is shaping up to have great potential for
Republicans to take back many seats in the Congress. But to what
end? Winning seats to continue the same policies of big govern-
ment that the last GOP Congress enacted—like the prescription
drug plan for Medicare and the Iraq War—is not worth a candle,
and will lead simply to more voter disillusionment. Republicans
must, in Kirk’s words, “offer the people a reasoned defense of the
American heritage; and its principles must reflect love of Ameri-
can traditions.” Taft provides the outline of such a defense, one
young conservatives would be wise to follow.

Gerald J. Russello is the author of The Postmodern Imagination of

Russell Kirk.

37
Young American Revolution
 38
March 2010
 Rockin’ in the Free World
The top 25 libertarian rock songs
John Payne
I n the summer of 2006, National Review pub-
lished a list by John J. Miller of the top 50
conservative songs. It was a fun article that
generated a great deal of discussion and criti-
cism in the blogosphere during what must
have been a slow news week. I intended to join
that discussion by writing up a list of the most
libertarian rock songs, without borrowing any
of Miller’s choices. Now, three and a half years
later, here is your libertarian countdown:
25. “Sweet Cherry Wine” by Tommy
James and the Shondells. One of the ulti-
mate pop bands of the 1960s try their hands
at writing an antiwar song and knock it out of the park. The lyrics
place a very libertarian emphasis on the inviolability of human
life, declaring, “Only God has the right/ To decide who’s to live
and die.”
24. “Copperhead Road” by Steve Earle. This classic of the
country rock genre tells the story of three generations of out-
laws trying to make a living in defiance of the nanny state. The
protagonist’s (John Lee Pettimore’s) father and grandfather make
moonshine before their still burns. Because
they “draft the white trash first,” Pettimore
volunteers for the Army, and later applies the
skills he learns flying choppers in Vietnam to
smuggle contraband into the country.
23. “Open up the Border” by Clutch.
Although you should never take the lyrics to
a Clutch song too seriously, the stoner rock
group seems to be celebrating the numerous
possibilities offered by free trade. The pro-
tagonist travels around the world trading in-
cessantly, and the song’s metal rumble makes
39
Young American Revolution
trade sound like an unstoppable force of na-
ture.
22. “Big Brother” by Stevie Wonder.
The song sounds sweet enough—and what
doesn’t with Stevie’s mellifluous voice in the
mix?—but it is actually a vituperative attack
on politicians who use the disadvantaged to
advance their careers with no intention of ac-
tually changing things for the better.
21. “Breaking the Law” by Judas Priest.
It’s no treatise on Austrian economics or the
nonaggression axiom, but the good old-fash-
ioned visceral disrespect for authority this metal classic conjures
up is just what every libertarian needs sometimes.
20. “Prison Song” by System of a Down. This is one of the
few songs of any genre that tackles the rapid growth of America’s
prison population, due in large part to the War on Drugs. The
song suggests that by imprisoning so many of our people, we are
turning our whole society into a prison.
19. “Gasoline Dreams” by Outkast. Probably the closest
Outkast comes to a traditional rock song with
its cutting electric guitar, “Gasoline Dreams”
describes a collapsed American Dream, in part
ruined by the government. Andre and Big Boi
rap about relatives in prison on drug offenses,
hating their taxes, and young people who have
rightfully lost respect for the law.
18. “Long Haired Country Boy” by
Charlie Daniels. Daniels sings about a per-
son cultural warriors on both the left and right
would have you believe doesn’t exist: a pot-
smoking redneck skeptical of preachers. The
longhaired country boy provides for himself
and only asks to be left alone—a true libertar-
ian archetype.
17. “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out”
by Cat Stevens. Long before it was in annoy-
ing phone commercials, this song was featured
in the 1971 dark comedy “Harold and Maude.”
The film and song give the lesson that there
are “a million ways to go” and each can be a
path to happiness for a different person, so we
should all respect individual choices.
16. “Anarchy in the UK” by the Sex Pis-
tols. No, the anarchy advocated in this early
punk anthem is not some deeply pondered
free-market philosophy, but still the song is a powerful call to
antiauthoritarians of all stripes. Remember when Johnny Rotten
waved to Ron Paul on “The Tonight Show”? Maybe his anarchism
has matured after all these years.
15. “Mom and Dad” by Frank Zappa. This song was written
in 1968, but it eerily anticipates the Kent State
shootings of 1970. Zappa takes aim at an es-
tablishment that wantonly kills young people
for protesting and looking weird. The parents
also earn Zappa’s ire as they silently acquiesce
to the murders and encourage their children to
conform so as not to rock the boat.
14. “Going Mobile” by The Who. Set to a
jaunty Pete Townshend riff, this cut off Who’s
Next defines the pure freedom of travel. Most
of Townshend’s lyrics concern being free of
obligations and the worries of life, but he also
sticks his thumb in the eye of officious gov-
ernment agents when he promises to make
“the police and the taxman miss me.”
13. “With God on Our Side” by Bob Dylan. In his early days,
Dylan wrote a number of antiwar songs; this remains one of his
finest. The song details many of America’s wars, all fought in
the firm belief that God supported America. Of course, believ-
ing that God supports their cause could spur
America’s leaders to end war once and for all
through nuclear annihilation. Dylan, however,
sings that if God is truly on our side, he will
“stop the next war.”
12. “The Guns of Brixton” by The
Clash. This deep cut from the seminal Lon-
don Calling is one of The Clash’s best blends
of reggae into punk, and it minces no words
about the right and necessity of self-defense,
even against your own government. “When
they kick at your front door/ How you gonna
come/ With your hands on your head or on
40
March 2010
the trigger of your gun?” Joe Strummer sings,
leaving little doubt as to which he thought was
right.
11. “Into the Void” by Black Sabbath.
Even for a legendary guitarist like Tony Iom-
mi, who seems to be composed of nothing
but awesome metal riffs, the lead-in to this
song is a real bone-cruncher. After a full min-
ute, Iommi’s sludge riff finally gives way to
a faster, choppier one, and Ozzy Osbourne
bursts onto the scene to tell the tale of an in-
trepid band of space travelers fleeing a ruined
Earth for a “world where freedom waits.”
10. “Freewill” by Rush. “If you choose
not to decide, you still have made a choice.” That pretty well sums
up this song by the great Canadian power trio. Drummer and lyri-
cist Neil Peart is a well-known fan of Ayn Rand, and it shows here
as he encourages people to take responsibility for their own lives
instead of blaming bad outcomes on fate or God.
9. “Support Your Local Emperor” by
Blues Traveler. Although John Popper’s lib-
ertarian politics did not become a subject of
conversation until much later in his career, this
1991 song makes them abundantly clear. Pop-
per sings of politicians as small, vain people,
constantly in need of praise despite the fact
that they are completely ineffectual.
8. “Politician” by Cream. From the mo-
ment Jack Bruce’s menacing bass line hits, you
know that whatever this song is about, it is
evil, unsavory, and downright sleazy. The lyrics
tell of a powerful politician driving around in
a “big black car” seducing young women. Of
course, the politician has no principles, as he supports the left but
leans to the right.
6. “It’s My Life” by The Animals. Libertarianism has never
been summed up in song as quickly as this: “It’s my life, and I’ll do
what I want. It’s my mind, and I’ll think what I want.”
7. “Riki Tiki Tavi” by Donovan. This
song by the British answer to Bob Dylan (who
of course is not actually a question) begins
with some undeniably upbeat guitar strum-
ming, and although Donovan never loses his
cheerful tone, he proceeds to attack every so-
cial institution in existence. He tells us, “the
United Nations ain’t really united/ And the
organization ain’t really organized.” Those
who believe institutions like government will
solve the problems in their lives are no more
mature than someone who believes the fic-
tional Riki Tiki Tavi will kill snakes.
 5. “Symphony of Destruction” by Megadeth. This song is
not quite as beautifully simplistic as Lord Acton’s maxim about
absolute power corrupting absolutely, but it’s close. “You take a
mortal man/ And put him in control/ Watch him become a god/
Watch people’s heads-a-roll,” sings Dave Mustaine as he churns
out an almost perfectly simple metal riff. In the end, Mustaine
envisions world powers falling and peaceful men reasserting their
prerogative.

4. “Granite State Destroyer” by Scissorfight. Few people

outside of New England have heard of Scissorfight—although
I bet a lot of you Free Staters out there are big fans—but if you
have not heard them and you are at all a fan of stoner metal,
you are missing out. This song is about survivalists with the battle
cry “Live free or die” in the wilderness of New Hampshire. The
opening lyrics give you a pretty good idea of where they are com-
ing from: “Weed, guns, and axes/ We don’t pay our taxes.” And it
just gets better from there!

3. “Eye of the Beholder” by Metallica. Many of Metallica’s

early songs have a libertarian bent, but it was never as direct as on
this song from their classic 1988 album …And Justice for All. The
song begins with a slowly building riff that sounds like horses gal-
loping in from the open plains. Soon James Hetfield is imploring
us “To look inside/to each his own” and hungering “after inde-
pendence” to “lengthen freedom’s ring.”

2. “2112” by Rush. For this to be a list of top libertarian songs

and feature only two Rush songs is pretty good, so I don’t want
to hear any complaints about redundancy here. This song is over
20 minutes long and takes up the entire first side of the album of
the same name. It is essentially a rock-opera version of the Ayn
Rand novel Anthem except instead of a light bulb the protagonist
discovers a guitar. After becoming almost instantly proficient, our
hero takes his discovery to the Priests of the Temple of Syrinx,
who run the society. Naturally, they declare it to be upsetting to
the equality of society and smash the guitar to bits. Is the whole
premise kind of hokey and ridiculous? Of course. But it is musi-
cally transfixing and emotionally moving even for all its absurdity.

1. “Political World” by Bob Dylan. It should come as no

surprise that the best songwriter of the last half-century tops this
list, even if he is not commonly known as a libertarian hero. The
guitar plucking at the beginning of the song has a haunting qual-
ity—it gives the feeling of something being deeply wrong, but you
can’t be sure exactly what. As Dylan unfurls his complaints about
our overly politicized world, it becomes clear that politics has ru-
ined everything. In this world peace is “put up against the wall,”
“mercy walks the plank,” and “wisdom is thrown into jail.” Not
only could the next day be your last, but even if you try to call out
God’s name “you’re never sure what it is.” Politics isn’t just ruining
our lives; it has corrupted our souls.

John Payne is a writer in St. Louis, Missouri, and blogs at

www.rougholboy.com. Bob Dylan in November 1963

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Young American Revolution
 This much is true: You are being lied to
Don’t Weep for Me, America-How Democracy
In America Became the Prince (While We Slept)

Abraham Lincoln’s Prediction-1864

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of
my country...corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and
the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the
people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

“THIS BOOK IS THE RED PILL” –Michael Wolsey

The American public is, overall, completely ignorant of their true history. Practically everything they know about their country is a systematic, orches-
trated falsehood.

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” –William Casey, former CIA Director,
said in 1981

We are there.

What makes this book different from other books out there is the weaving in and out throughout the story of the methods of deception used to fool
the public and keep them under control, such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Plato’s Cave.

The American founders knew our republic would not last. Machiavelli would have predicted as much.
Tocqueville knew it.

The reason why the American Republic didn’t last is given by Abraham Lincoln in 1864: Ultimately, “...all wealth is aggregated in a few hands”!

Chillingly, in this provocative book, Machiavelli, Tocqueville, Orwell all come together to provide an accurate picture of America today!

Written for the heart that yearns for freedom, This must-read book is essential reading and
available from the publisher, Dorrance Publishing at:
http://www.dorrancebookstore.com/doweformeamh.html or by calling 800-788-7654.
Quantities are limited.

ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

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