Introduction

In his talk entitled “Emulate Ron Paul” delivered to the Alabama state convention of Young Americans for Liberty in Auburn, Alabama on April 6, 2013, Lew Rockwell mentioned five points. The first of them, the most important one in my view, was: “The subject of war cannot, and should not, be avoided.” In this regard Lew went on to say:

First and foremost, Ron is a critic of the warfare state. The war in Iraq, which was still a live issue when Ron first ran for the Republican nomination, had been sold to the public on the basis of lies that were transparent and insulting even by the US government’s standards. The devastation — in terms of deaths, maimings, displacement, and sheer destruction — appalled every decent human being.

Yes, the Department of Education is an outrage, but it is nothing next to the horrifying images of what happened to the men, women, and children of Iraq. If he wasn’t going to denounce such a clear moral evil, Ron thought, what was the point of being in public life at all?

Still, this is the issue strategists would have had him avoid. Just talk about the budget, talk about the greatness of America, talk about whatever everyone else was talking about, and you’ll be fine. And, they neglected to add, forgotten.

But had Ron shied away from this issue, there would have been no Ron Paul Revolution. It was his courageous refusal to back down from certain unspeakable truths about the American role in the world that caused Americans, and especially students, to sit up and take notice.

While still in his thirties, Murray Rothbard wrote privately that he was beginning to view war as “the key to the whole libertarian business.” Here is another way Ron Paul has been faithful to the Rothbardian tradition. Time after time, in interviews and public appearances, Ron has brought the questions posed to him back to the central issues of war and foreign policy.

Worried about the budget? You can’t run an empire on the cheap. Concerned about TSA groping, or government eavesdropping, or cameras trained on you? These are the inevitable policies of a hegemon. In case after case, Ron pointed to the connection between an imperial policy abroad and abuses and outrages at home.

Inspired by Ron, libertarians began to challenge conservatives by reminding them that war, after all, is the ultimate government program. War has it all: propaganda, censorship, spying, crony contracts, money printing, skyrocketing spending, debt creation, central planning, hubris — everything we associate with the worst interventions into the economy.

I have already contributed my love letter to Ron Paul in my 2012 book Yes to Ron Paul and Liberty; I mention this only to explain the organization of the present book. It has five sections: I. Foreign Policy, II. Economics, and III. Personal Liberties, and IV. Libertarian Theory. Of course, the five are interconnected. But, if I had to single one out, and I did, I would choose as first and foremost as did Rockwell, and Rothbard, foreign policy. “War is the health of the state,” said Randolph Bourne, and no words ever said are truer than those. War mongering has implications for economic policy; it is not for nothing that the government engages in debauchment of the currency: it helps them raise more funds than would otherwise be possible for their favorite pastime: throwing their weight around the world. It has implications for personal liberties, too. In no small part is the mischievous war on drugs a handmaiden of imperialism. I place the economics section second, since I tend to see the world more through those eye glasses than any other. The third section of the book focuses on personal liberties, surely an all important subject for all libertarians. The fourth section is about the medical issues that are needful of thought. The final section concerns the backbone of libertarian thought, its theories and core.

I thank Lew Rockwell for inviting me to put together a series of columns I wrote for LewRockwell.com over the years. I thank Stephan Kinsella and William Barnett II for their permission to include in this book essays I have co-authored with them, respectively.

Ron Paul, and Lew Rockwell for that matter, are hardly the only ones who have “been faithful to the Rothbardian tradition.” Murray, my friend for many years, my mentor, my teacher, my inspiration, has motivated an entire generation of libertarians, and Austrian economists, to promote the glorious Austro-libertarian philosophy. This book is in a small way devoted to that goal. This book is dedicated to the memory of that great man, Murray N. Rothbard.

Walter Block

New Orleans, 2014