Murray Rothbard versus the Progressives; Misunderstanding Mises, Again; EU Warns Twitter Not To Restore Free Speech Protections After Calls From Clinton & Other Democratic Leaders
Blog posts are sent from the Mises building, Auburn, Alabama, today, November 2, 2022. JRD
Murray Rothbard versus the Progressives
“When communism fell with the USSR, Murray Rothbard realized that the greater threat to liberty was social democracy. Events of the past few years have proven him correct.”
Social Democracy: Identifying the Enemy
“After the collapse of communism, and with Nazism and fascism “long dead and buried,”2 Rothbard argued that social democracy was the only remaining statist program, and its advocates were hell bent on making the most of their ideological monopoly. In the “new post-communist world,” Rothbard wrote:
The Enemy of liberty and tradition is now revealed full-blown: social democracy. For social democracy in all of its guises is not only still with us ... but now that Stalin and his heirs are out of the way, social democrats are trying to reach for total power.3
Not only is social democracy still with us in its many variations, but it has managed to define “our entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left over to neoconservatism on the right.”4 Make no mistake about it, Rothbard warned, “on all crucial issues, social democrats however they label themselves, stand against liberty and tradition and in favor of statism and Big Government.” Furthermore, social democracy is far more insidious than other forms of statism because it claims “to combine socialism with the appealing virtues of ‘democracy’ and freedom of inquiry.”5 As shrewd observers of the political scene for a century and a half, social democrats—or left liberals in the American political lexicon—are indeed seriously committed to democracy. As Rothbard explained:”
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Misunderstanding Mises, Again
“After praising Mises for his work on socialism, Tyler Cowen goes on to claim Human Action is "cranky and dogmatic." "Brilliant and insightful" would have been more truthful.
“In a recent blog post on the Marginal Revolution blog, Ludwig von Mises is categorized as an underrated thinker. That’s undoubtedly true, especially when considering his many groundbreaking contributions to economics. Mises was also one of the first to be named a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association in 1969. His contributions to economic theory were many and significant and were largely recognized by his contemporaries. But while they are difficult to deny, Mises still gets very little recognition today.
“Mises is frighteningly often dismissed as a “crank” or “ideologue” by present-day know-it-alls who are clearly ignorant of recent history of economic thought. The blog post at “MR,” which comments very briefly on Mises’s main works, is therefore an important reminder of Mises’s strong legacy. But it is also interesting because it provides insight into how a non-Austrian who is (or at least should be) well aware of Austrian economic theory sees Mises’s work.
The blog post is written by Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University who has recently gained online notoriety as a columnist, blogger, and podcast host. As a longtime colleague with Austrian economists, both faculty and graduate students, in the GMU economics department, many would assume Cowen to know much about this tradition and, especially, its main works.”
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EU Warns Twitter Not To Restore Free Speech Protections After Calls From Clinton & Other Democratic Leaders
“..called upon her European counterparts to pass a massive censorship law to ‘bolster global democracy before it’s too late.’”
“We have been discussing how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign companies to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. The EU has responded aggressively to warn Musk not to allow greater free speech or face crippling fines and even potential criminal enforcement. After years of using censorship-by-surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.”
[Communism fosters state control over people removing the free wills given by God, and always use censorship of people as a means of control; and those mentioned are in that category of beliefs. - JRD]