Preface

In 2006 Turkey sounded like an exotic place to a naive guy of midwestern upbringing. The only common reference to the country from friends was Midnight Express. It was Hollywood’s interpretation of a Turkish prison where the guards spoke no English and everything was chaos. Turks were portrayed as brutes or corrupt.

So much for Hollywood. The movie featured no shimmering Bosphorus, no crystal clear Aegean sea, no ancient ruins of Ephesus. Describing modern Turkey, the late Norman Stone, who was a frequent speaker at Property and Freedom Society salons and an eminent scholar, in his book Turkey: A Short History, wrote, “Turkey had become an important place again, and, be it said the only country between Athens and Singapore where, judging by the refugees, people actually wanted to live.”1 (To my surprise and delight, I discovered this tattered copy of my friend Norman’s book in the guest cabin of local boat some friends and I chartered for a three day excursion on the Aegean Sea following the 2023 PFS meeting.)

Professor Hoppe and Gülçin did everything right, and have done so for twenty years now. The food, the mood, a Philosopher in Black, Turkish baths, belly dancers, boat rides, and for me, barbers.2 Deanna and I fell in love with the place. Bodrum was immediately home away from home. The Doctors Hoppe would hold a lavish wedding ceremony for us at the Karia Princess five years later during the 6th annual PFS.

Hans’s salon idea of conference, conversation and relaxation makes PFS the best event of its kind anywhere.3 It can’t be replicated. Invites are prized. Yes, and there are speeches as well.

I suppose the racket idea came to me first when I read Murray Rothbard’s 1961 memo “What Is to Be Done?,” in Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard.4 This is a book of immense treasure that most Rothbard fans have not read. The opening memo, “What is to be done?”, is Murray candidly speaking his mind. Murray liked clear thinkers of whatever stripe. He had no use for toadies. One of our textbooks for the U.S. Economic History he taught us at UNLV was Gabriel Kolko’s The Triumph of Conservatism about the progressive era.5 Kolko, who was no fellow traveler, wrote in a letter to Reason,

I have been a socialist and against capitalism all of my life, my works are attacks on that system, and I have no common area of sympathy with the quaint irrelevancy called “free market” economics.”6

I can hear Murray cackling; he often cited Kolko to buttress his case that “big business” in America often leapt into bed with the state for favors and protection from competition.7 In the new William F. Buckley biography, author Sam Tanenhaus writes,

Thoughtful critics on the right, including the libertarian Murray Rothbard, a sophisticated and serious writer, had joined critics on the left in calling Panama a boondoggle, “the treaty that Wall Street wrote,” a “covert bailout operation” for the Panama government, which was heavily indebted to “a handful of US banks.”8

Brian Doherety wrote in the foreword,

Intellectually, [Rothbard] was the most prolific and active advocate and scholar for the ideas and concerns that most vividly mark libertarianism as a distinct tendency and movement; he brought together Austrian economics, natural-rights ethics, anarchist politics, and a burning interest in history—in the actual facts of the intellectual heritage of antistate thinking, and of how and why in specific incidents governments oppress and rob the bulk of the populace.9

Strictly Confidential was started before I arrived at the Institute. The book was classy, hard cover, with a bold title and cover. It did not sell. We tried mightily to give the books away. In fact, we placed one at each place setting at an award dinner one year. That year I thought the award winner would surely donate back the considerable monetary prize. But not only did the recipient want the money, he insisted it be in cash. Scrambling ensued late that Friday afternoon in Auburn. At the end of the night it was as if no one could be bothered hauling their gifted hardback copy of Strictly Confidential home with them. I scooped up what seemed like a hundred books and hauled them back to the Institute.

More than a decade after reading Rothbard’s memo, an idea for a speech at PFS came together after reading about Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center and the fracas at Hillsdale College.

After working at the Mises Institute, I worked short stints at two financial newsletter publishers. When I read Helaine Olen’s Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry and Alan Pell Crawford’s How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain,10 combined with my personal experience, I knew I had a follow up to the How Movements Are Turned Into Rackets speech (ch. 1), which became chapter 2. Teaching the unteachable (ch. 3) had been gurgling in my head for years as entrepreneurial studies began to grow and many Austrians associated with the Institute were pumping out books and teaching classes about entrepreneurship.

I’d been skeptical. After all, as Rothbard wrote in Man, Economy, and State,

This necessity of guessing the course of the relevant conditions and their possible change during the forthcoming action is called the act of entrepreneurship. Thus, to some extent at least, every man is an entrepreneur. Every actor makes his estimate of the uncertainty situation with regard to his forthcoming action.11

In other words, every student choosing to take an entrepreneurship class or any other class or skip class is already an entrepreneur.

Health issues have kept me from returning to Bodrum to deliver the third speech. Brain surgery, what was I thinking? The Mises Institute published the entrepreneurship piece and it is included here to complete the trilogy. The idea for this small book came from the PFS impresario Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Stephan Kinsella selflessly did all the hard work putting it together. Jeffrey Tucker’s preface was written quickly and brilliantly, giving me fond memories of working next to him and being constantly amazed at his talents. Juan Carpio provided a dandy cover. I thank all of you.

Douglas E. French

Las Vegas, July 2025

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1. 1 Norman Stone, Turkey, A Short History (Thames & Hudson, 2010), p. 177.

2. 2 Douglas French, “A Haircut in the Turkish Style,” Laissez Faire Books (Oct. 3, 2012; https://perma.cc/WJ9B-HL4X). For my reflections on the first PFS meeting in 2006, see idem, “Hoppe Talks Turkey,” LewRockwell.com (May 30, 2006) and idem, “Property and Freedom,” LewRockwell.com (June 21, 2006). Other pieces about the PFS and its annual meetings may be found at www.propertyandfreedom.org/press.

3. 3 For more on this, see the PFS “History and Principles,” available at www.propertyandfreedom.org/about.

4. 4 Murray N. Rothbard, “Rothbard’s Confidential Memorandum to the Volker Fund, ‘What Is to Be Done?’”, in idem, Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard, David Gordon, ed. (Auburn, Al.: Mises Institute, 2010; https://perma.cc/Q5NV-SNYG).

5. 5 Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1977). My and other former students’ memories of Rothbard as a teacher are the subject of two panel discussions I participated in: Douglas E. French et al., “Memories: Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) as Mentor and Teacher,” Property and Freedom Society 2015, Bodrum, Turkey (Sep. 11, 2015), available at “PFP129 | Memories: Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) as Mentor and Teacher, Hoppe, DiLorenzo, French, Iglody (PFS 2015),” Property and Freedom Podcast (May 20, 2022; available at www.propertyandfreedom.org/pfp), and Douglas E. French et al., “Murray Rothbard as a Teacher: The UNLV Years—A Panel with Rothbard’s Former Students,” Austrian Economics Research Conference 2023, Auburn, Alabama, Mises Institute (Oct. 7, 2017), available at “PFP252 | Bonus: Murray Rothbard as a Teacher: The UNLV Years—A Panel with Rothbard’s Former Students (AERC2023),” Property and Freedom Podcast (Oct. 2, 2023; available at www.propertyandfreedom.org/pfp).

6. 6 Gabriel Kolko to Manuel Klausner (Feb. 27, 1973), reprinted in Jesse Walker, “Gabriel Kolko, RIP,” Reason (May 20, 2014; https://perma.cc/39NH-PRTG).

7. 7 See Murray N. Rothbard, “Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal,” Rampart Journal 6, no. 11 (June 15, 1968): 48–52, reprinted as idem, “Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal,” Mises Wire (March 2, 2022; https://perma.cc/3WJP-EPQM); see also idem, “Origins of the Welfare State in America,” J. Libertarian Stud. 12, no. 2 (Fall 1996; https://perma.cc/8PQA-M7VC): 193–232, reprinted in idem, The Progressive Era (Auburn, Al.: Mises Institute, 2017; https://mises.org/library/book/progressive-era).

8. 8 Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2025), p. 802, quoting Murray N. Rothbard, “The Treaty That Wall Street Wrote,” Inquiry 1, no. 2 (Dec. 5, 1977; https://perma.cc/3DZT-HBC7): 9–14.

9. 9 Brian Doherty, “Foreword,” in Rothbard, Strictly Confidential, p. ix.

10. 10 Helaine Olen, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry (Penguin, 2013); Alan Pell Crawford, How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain (Mariner Books, 2017).

11. 11 Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market, Scholars ed., 2d ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2009; https://perma.cc/XU3J-NRTQ), p. 64 (second emphasis added). See related references in ch. 3.

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