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Painting: Emma Goldman is marched to the deportation barge in the snow, Ellis Island, 21 December 1919

Lecture series · recorded 2010–2011

The Libertarian Tradition

The Libertarian Tradition is a free lecture series (81 recordings, 27.1 hours) you can stream or download at freecapitalists.org, with Jeff Riggenbach.

A podcast by journalist, author, editor, broadcaster, and educator, Jeff Riggenbach (1947–2021).

BiographiesWorld HistoryMedia and Culture

Cover painting: Emma Goldman is marched to the deportation barge in the snow, Ellis Island, 21 December 1919. See every painting in the art gallery.

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Recorded lectures

Lectures

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  1. 01

    A History of Ayn Rand 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:35 · 6.8 MB · Recorded 6 January 2010

    Ayn Rand's books sell between eight hundred thousand and a million copies a year. Her first novel We the Living was admired by Mencken. Night of January 16th opened on Broadway. Her major novel The Fountainhead (1943) was "masterful". Atlas Shrugged (1957) was Rand's magnus opus.

    Political TheoryBiographiesWorld History

    Read the transcript 2,478 words

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  2. 02

    Ayn Rand and the Early Libertarian Movement 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 20:30 · 7.2 MB · Recorded 12 January 2010

    In Ayn Rand and the World She Made Heller goes to bat for Rand as a fiction writer. Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns is a poorer book because it is confused.

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 2,595 words

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  3. 03

    A Toast to Lysander Spooner 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 20:42 · 7.2 MB · Recorded 19 January 2010

    Spooner was an American individualist anarchist with radical opinions on everything. His true calling was writing pamphlets and books on issues of the day. His most famous work was The Unconstitutionality of Slavery. No Treason is his most anarchistic political tract (1867).

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 2,673 words

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  4. 04

    J.R.R. Tolkien as Libertarian 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:04 · 6.0 MB · Recorded 26 January 2010

    Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is thought to be the greatest work of the 20th century with 150 million readers. The book's thesis - Evil power cannot be defeated by power - is libertarian.

    BiographiesWorld History

    Read the transcript 1,951 words

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  5. 05

    Isabel Paterson: Early Libertarian 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:16 · 6.0 MB · Recorded 2 February 2010

    Autodidactic influential libertarian, Isabel Paterson is best known for The God of the Machine (1943). Ayn Rand contributed ideas to it but continued to learn from Paterson both politics and history. Rand rescued the book and promoted it.

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 2,109 words

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  6. 06

    Conspiracy Theories, History, and The State 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 22:03 · 7.7 MB · Recorded 9 February 2010

    Obama's White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is run by Cass Sunstein. Sunstein and Vermeule's paper on conspiracies theories, e.g. JFK, TWA 800, global warming fraud, MLK killed by feds,concludes that some theories create problems for government to solve.

    Political TheoryBiographies

    Read the transcript 2,702 words

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  7. 07

    Yevgeny Zamyatin: Libertarian Novelist 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:59 · 7.0 MB · Recorded 16 February 2010

    Ultimately, he and the woman are caught, imprisoned, and tortured. In the end, he is sincerely repentant of his crimes and is completely devoted to the all-encompassing government that has done him all this harm.

    BiographiesMedia and Culture

    Read the transcript 2,479 words

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  8. 08

    Thomas Paine: From Pirate to Revolutionary 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 28:12 · 9.8 MB · Recorded 23 February 2010

    Paine became a privateer in 1753 to locate and rob enemy ships in order to escape his family business - corset making. The blunt but brilliant Paine was helped by Benjamin Franklin to join the American Revolution as editor and writer. Common Sense was a huge success...

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 3,721 words

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  9. 09

    Mr. Libertarian, Murray N. Rothbard 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 23:26 · 8.2 MB · Recorded 2 March 2010

    Five figures starred in Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty: Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Rand, and Rothbard. But, by the 1970s the irrepressible Rothbard became the indisputable Mr. Libertarian.

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 3,007 words

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  10. 10

    Harry Browne and Andrew J. Galambos 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 23:22 · 8.1 MB · Recorded 9 March 2010

    Browne is known as the libertarian investment guru who wrote books like How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.Galambos was the unknown libertarian, but those who met him and the students in his courses seemed profoundly effected by him and his Free Enterprise Institute.

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 3,003 words

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  11. 11

    Standards and Textbooks 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 18:31 · 6.5 MB · Recorded 16 March 2010

    Textbook commissions, especially from Texas, decide what ideas will be within any book. Political pressure now makes textbooks promote special interest groups.

    Read the transcript 2,233 words

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  12. 12

    Timothy Ferris and Lynn Hunt: The Cause of Liberty 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 22:14 · 7.8 MB · Recorded 23 March 2010

    Ferris' book The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature is about the symbiotic relationship between science and liberalism. He thinks science caused liberty. Lynn Hunt's Inventing Human Rights posits that rights are self evident. She thinks the novel caused liberty.

    Read the transcript 2,553 words

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  13. 13

    Roger MacBride and Rose Wilder Lane: A Libertarian Legacy 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 27:02 · 9.4 MB · Recorded 30 March 2010

    Ultimately, when Rose died — it was in 1968, she was 81 — Roger MacBride inherited everything she owned, including the fabulously valuable rights to the Little House books ostensibly written by her mother...

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 3,605 words

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  14. 14

    Benjamin Tucker: American Individualist Anarchist 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 23:00 · 6.7 MB · Recorded 7 April 2010

    Tucker was a proponent, in the 19th century, of American individualist anarchism. He opposed war because it destroyed liberty, but he favored the allies. Tucker's contribution was as much through his publishing as his own writing.

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 3,032 words

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  15. 15

    John Holt: Libertarian Outsider 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 20:36 · 6.0 MB · Recorded 14 April 2010

    "Holt, in effect, reasoned his way to libertarianism from his relentless, dogged analysis of what worked and didn't work in education, in the schoolroom."...

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 2,957 words

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  16. 16

    More Free or Less Free? 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:19 · 5.1 MB · Recorded 20 April 2010

    Do we have perennial libertarian problems, like losing our freedoms year after year? The long view of liberty shows that overall Americans are more free, but getting our ideas out there is required. The remnant exists and they will find us.

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 2,283 words

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  17. 17

    William Godwin (1756–1836) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 25:40 · 7.5 MB · Recorded 28 April 2010

    "I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others; but that exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service." —William Godwin

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 3,591 words

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  18. 18

    Karl Hess and the Death of Politics 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:26 · 5.7 MB · Recorded 6 May 2010

    "Some may wonder why it took Hess 20 years to notice all this, why it took a man this obviously intelligent so long to grasp that the Republicans were pretty much the same as the New Deal Democrats he opposed, but with window dressing."...

    Biographies

    Read the transcript 2,773 words

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  19. 19

    Robert Anson Heinlein (1907–1988) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 20:53 · 6.1 MB · Recorded 18 May 2010

    But because of his interaction with Robert LeFevre in Colorado in the '50s and '60s, libertarian ideas were among those he toyed with and dramatized in certain of his stories...

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  20. 20

    Leonard Read and the Love of Liberty 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:49 · 5.8 MB · Recorded 27 May 2010

    Liberty does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being.

    Read the transcript 2,623 words

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  21. 21

    The New Libertarian Generation 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:44 · 5.2 MB · Recorded 3 June 2010

    The fact is that, exactly as Mark Lilla fears, when people distrust authority in a generalized way and start thinking for themselves, often without much relevant information to guide them, they'll make many decisions that they'll later regret. But whose decisions are they to make?...

    Read the transcript 2,363 words

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  22. 22

    Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 24:04 · 7.0 MB · Recorded 8 June 2010

    Freethought, de Cleyre wrote, was "the right to believe as the evidence, coming in contact with the mind, forces it to believe. This implies the admission of any and all evidence bearing upon any subject."...

    Read the transcript 3,149 words

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  23. 23

    Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell (1903–1950) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 20:14 · 5.9 MB · Recorded 16 June 2010

    One doesn't have to read far into the works of George Orwell to discover that he had no understanding of economics whatsoever and was not personally a libertarian in the sense we have in mind when we use that word today...

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  24. 24

    Vince Miller and the International Libertarian Movement 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 15:40 · 4.6 MB · Recorded 23 June 2010

    "In 1982, Vince moved on to building a nonprofit organization to host a series of international libertarian conferences — the Libertarian International."

    Read the transcript 2,084 words

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  25. 25

    Emma Goldman (1869–1940) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 27:36 · 8.0 MB · Recorded 29 June 2010

    No other woman in America ever had to suffer such persistent persecution.

    Read the transcript 3,667 words

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  26. 26

    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:04 · 5.6 MB · Recorded 8 July 2010

    What Thoreau was defending here, in 1849, was essentially the same concept the English philosopher Herbert Spencer defended two years later, in his book Social Statics , as "the right to ignore the State."...

    Read the transcript 2,585 words

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  27. 27

    Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 18:17 · 5.3 MB · Recorded 15 July 2010

    American libertarians would be particularly interested in Peake's great novel, since the perspective on the individual and society that pervades it is very libertarian in the broadest sense of that word...

    Read the transcript 2,329 words

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  28. 28

    Samuel Edward Konkin, III: The New Libertarian 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 24:06 · 8.4 MB · Recorded 20 July 2010

    "The more controls and taxation a State imposes on its people," Sam wrote, "the more they will evade and defy them...

    Read the transcript 3,162 words

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  29. 29

    Was Classical Liberalism a "Strife of Interests Masquerading as a Contest of Principles"? 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 15:28 · 5.4 MB · Recorded 27 July 2010

    As Barnes noted, there were a number of "middle-class writers" who took more or less this line, but "by far the most influential" of them "was the 17th-century English philosopher, John Locke. Many of his theories were taken up and popularized in America by Thomas Jefferson...

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  30. 30

    The English Civil War and the First Libertarian Movement 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 21:37 · 7.5 MB · Recorded 5 August 2010

    Whatever their motives may have been, whatever at any given moment they thought of themselves as doing, Anthony Ashley Cooper and John Locke advanced the libertarian idea, just as John Lilburne did. All three of them are part of the libertarian tradition.

    Read the transcript 2,975 words

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  31. 31

    Roger J. Williams and the Science of Individuality 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 24:33 · 8.5 MB · Recorded 11 August 2010

    But the most effective mechanism ever devised for making effective pooling of our faculties as easy as it can be — the free market — is also the natural result of reducing general laws to a bare minimum and leaving people free to make their own choices about their own values...

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  32. 32

    Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 15:56 · 4.7 MB · Recorded 17 August 2010

    Fahrenheit 451 acknowledges that powerful impulses toward mindless conformity and suppression of deviation exist in the population itself — that, on a deep level, many, many people want to be "protected" by the state from the risk of being offended and from the necessity of thinking...

    Read the transcript 2,175 words

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  33. 33

    The Milgram Experiment 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 16:30 · 4.8 MB · Recorded 24 August 2010

    Milgram reflected on Etienne de La Boetie's key insight about the politics of authority, the will to bondage, and the eager embrace of voluntary servitude. He devised an ingenious test for their influence on the ordinary individual...

    Read the transcript 2,065 words

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  34. 34

    Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 22:22 · 6.5 MB · Recorded 31 August 2010

    "As long as the easy, attractive, superficial philosophy of Statism remains in control of the citizen's mind, no beneficent social change can be effected, whether by revolution or by any other means."...

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  35. 35

    Edgar Z. Friedenberg: Deference to Authority 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:44 · 5.2 MB · Recorded 8 September 2010

    Friedenberg was among those who regarded US participation in the Vietnam War as an abomination. He had begun expressing his outrage in print in the mid-'60s, though most of it was directed at American public schools rather than at American foreign policy...

    Read the transcript 2,403 words

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  36. 36

    The Ignorance of the New Yorker 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 16:47 · 5.9 MB · Recorded 15 September 2010

    It is Republicans, not libertarians, who favor handouts to and special privileges for big corporations. And Republicans are not libertarians.

    Read the transcript 2,147 words

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  37. 37

    Rudolf Rocker (1873–1958) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 25:09 · 8.8 MB · Recorded 23 September 2010

    Rocker was awful on economics, but his focus was not on that. He wrote about nationalism and culture, and here Rocker is fantastic. "States create no culture; indeed, they are often destroyed by higher forms of culture."

    Read the transcript 3,379 words

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  38. 38

    The Elitist Individualism of H.L. Mencken 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:45 · 6.2 MB · Recorded 28 September 2010

    Mencken saw the implications of where his thinking was leading him and he acknowledged those implications frankly. "I am," he wrote in The Smart Set in 1922, "a libertarian of the most extreme variety."...

    Read the transcript 2,391 words

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  39. 39

    Anarchism and Terrorism in the '90s 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 15:11 · 5.3 MB · Recorded 5 October 2010

    The wave of bombings and assassinations perpetrated by anarchists during the 1890s was largely a fiction. To some extent, it was frankly invented by sensation-mongering writers who hoped to sell newspapers.

    Read the transcript 1,928 words

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  40. 40

    John T. Flynn: Liberal 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 23:18 · 8.1 MB · Recorded 12 October 2010

    Flynn was a liberal - a classical liberal. He held to the delusion that the state can be reformed. He gradually became more libertarian, more individualist. He was considered a member of the old right, while never being on the right...

    Read the transcript 3,227 words

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  41. 41

    John T. Flynn: Revisionist Journalist 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:49 · 6.9 MB · Recorded 19 October 2010

    John T. Flynn was, if not the very first, then one of the very first few, of the revisionist journalists to write about the New Deal, focusing on both its domestic and its foreign policies. He is the beginning of historical revisionism where the New Deal is concerned.

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  42. 42

    Joseph A. Labadie (1850-1933) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:51 · 6.2 MB · Recorded 26 October 2010

    Though he devoted much of his life to writing, editing, publishing, and political activism, it isn't really for any of these activities that Jo Labadie should be remembered fondly by libertarians in the 21st century. Rather it was his tendency never to throw anything away.

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  43. 43

    Henry Hazlitt and the Rising Libertarian Generation 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 22:24 · 7.8 MB · Recorded 2 November 2010

    Part of the experience of reading Newsweek in the early 1960s was a weekly column called "Business Tides." It offered wide-ranging and insightful commentary on just about anything that had anything to do with the economy or with economics.

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  44. 44

    R.C. Hoiles (1878–1970) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 18:27 · 6.5 MB · Recorded 9 November 2010

    R.C. wouldn't tolerate news stories that referred to the "public schools," for example. His reporters were required to refer to them as "government schools." R.C. himself preferred the phrase "gun-run schools" and used it liberally on the editorial page.

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  45. 45

    Robert Nozick (1938–2002) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 18:17 · 6.4 MB · Recorded 17 November 2010

    When he was in his 20s, having newly discovered libertarian ideas, having read Rand, Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, and others, having met Rothbard and conversed with him at length, Nozick was fired up with excitement.

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  46. 46

    Ira Levin (1929–2007) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 21:34 · 7.5 MB · Recorded 24 November 2010

    Ira Levin died just over three years ago, on November 12, 2007, at the age of 78, the largely unsung author of one of the top half-dozen libertarian novels ever published in our language. This Perfect Day has been out of print in recent years, so largely unsung is it.

    Read the transcript 2,938 words

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  47. 47

    James C. Scott: The Art of Not Being Governed 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 24:33 · 8.5 MB · Recorded 30 November 2010

    If Scott can excoriate most of his fellow historians for confounding "civilization" with "state-making," he himself can be excoriated for confounding statelessness with lack of government.

    Read the transcript 3,145 words

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  48. 48

    The Auctioneer 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 14:53 · 5.2 MB · Recorded 7 December 2010

    Joan Samson was a Depression baby, born in 1937. In 1975, the year before her death, she published her only novel, The Auctioneer . This seems to be just about the sum total of what is publicly known about her, and that is a damn shame.

    Read the transcript 1,994 words

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  49. 49

    Frank Chodorov, Non-Voter 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:34 · 6.8 MB · Recorded 15 December 2010

    If we don't seek to use the vote to steer American society away from the direction in which it has been moving for all these many decades, what do we do instead? For Chodorov, that was a question very easily answered: we put our efforts into education.

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  50. 50

    Frank Chodorov, Educator 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 18:23 · 6.4 MB · Recorded 22 December 2010

    You have only a few years to live and cannot hope to remake society in so short a time. Nobody now living will see a free society in America. But, in fighting for it, one can have a lot of fun. Consider the effort as a legacy to your great-grandchildren.

    Read the transcript 2,458 words

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  51. 51

    Joan Kennedy Taylor (1926—2005) 2010

    Jeff Riggenbach · 18:30 · 6.5 MB · Recorded 28 December 2010

    Joan Kennedy Taylor first became involved in the libertarian movement in the early 1960s, when she was a student at the Nathaniel Branden Institute in New York City. As a student of Objectivism, she espoused the political views of Ayn Rand.

    Read the transcript 2,628 words

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  52. 52

    Joan Kennedy Taylor and the Rediscovery of Libertarian Feminism 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:43 · 6.9 MB · Recorded 12 January 2011

    Reclaiming the Mainstream was Joan's book that placed the origins of the American feminist movement in the abolitionist movement of the 19th century...

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  53. 53

    Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 24:20 · 8.5 MB · Recorded 12 January 2011

    Childs was mightily impressed by what he read inside the covers of Rothbard's books and by what he heard from Rothbard himself in that famous living room. And he was determined to pass his enlightenment along to the students of Objectivism.

    Read the transcript 3,349 words

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  54. 54

    The Ignorance of 'New York Magazine' 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:37 · 6.9 MB · Recorded 19 January 2011

    Christopher Beam did his homework in authoring The Trouble With Liberty, but he needs a firmer grasp of history. Bombs are not libertarian.

    Read the transcript 2,508 words

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  55. 55

    Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 14:02 · 4.9 MB · Recorded 26 January 2011

    If you abjure all violence, you must abjure the state. Thus, while not all libertarians are pacifists, all pacifists are libertarians, whether they realize it or not (and, admittedly, a great many pacifists have not realized it). Gandhi, it appears, did realize it.

    Read the transcript 1,788 words

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  56. 56

    Libertarian Science Fiction 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 20:23 · 7.1 MB · Recorded 1 February 2011

    Sci-fi novels are an important means of spreading the libertarian anti-state word.The Great Explosion by Eric Frank Russell and the Weapon Shops of Isher by A.E.van Vogt are two that deserve notice.

    Read the transcript 2,816 words

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  57. 57

    A Renegade History of the United States 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 18:31 · 6.5 MB · Recorded 9 February 2011

    Thaddeus Russell's Renegade History is highly recommended for showing, among many other things, that both individualism and Puritanism thrived in America even while they were political antagonists.

    Read the transcript 2,497 words

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  58. 58

    The First American Anarchist: Josiah Warren 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:52 · 6.9 MB · Recorded 17 February 2011

    Warren rejected Owen's communist colonies like New Harmony, Indiana, because he saw that the individual would be stifled by the common property scheme...

    Read the transcript 2,679 words

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  59. 59

    Mutual Aid: The Anarchism of Peter Kropotkin 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 20:20 · 7.1 MB · Recorded 23 February 2011

    Kropotkin, the founder of anarchist communism, defended the key ideas of libertarianism - social cooperation and rejection of coercion - and was the chief influencer of Murray Bookchin...

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  60. 60

    Libertarian Science Fiction II 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 20:14 · 7.1 MB · Recorded 2 March 2011

    Riggenbach finds individualism and anti-state themes in the works of four authors who would not call themselves libertarians: Anthony Burgess of A Clockwork Orange fame, Philip K. Dick in four of his novels, G. William Domhoff in Who Rules America, and Carroll Quigley in Tragedy & Hope...

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  61. 61

    The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 15:33 · 5.5 MB · Recorded 11 March 2011

    Author Jill Lepore's view is that it would be better if the Tea Partiers got their facts right. They seem to be just disaffected Republicans.

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  62. 62

    Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 21:29 · 7.5 MB · Recorded 17 March 2011

    The Clarence Darrow of 1902 was on pretty much the same wavelength as the Murray Rothbard of 80 years later. They both rejected the statist means.

    Read the transcript 2,795 words

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  63. 63

    Stephen Pearl Andrews (1812–1886) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:42 · 6.9 MB · Recorded 25 March 2011

    Andrew's contribution to anarchist thought was fleeting. He was a zealot in perpetual search of a movement. "Andrews seems to have been one of those people whose mind is so open that all his brains fall out." However, Andrew did lucidly elaborate on the thought of Josiah Warren.

    Read the transcript 2,778 words

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  64. 64

    Friedrich Hayek and American Science Fiction 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 16:55 · 5.9 MB · Recorded 30 March 2011

    Seeing a Hayekian angle in William Gibson's science fiction novel, Pattern Recognition, may lead more thinkers to Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Society and his other work.

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  65. 65

    The Ambiguous Utopias of Ursula K. Le Guin and Samuel R. Delany 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:35 · 6.2 MB · Recorded 7 April 2011

    LeGuin, in The Dispossessed, and Delany, in Triton, explore various social arrangements in the search for happiness through the genre of utopian science fiction novels.

    Read the transcript 2,444 words

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  66. 66

    William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:56 · 7.0 MB · Recorded 15 April 2011

    Neither Sumner nor Herbert Spencer were social Darwinists - a moniker hung upon them both. What Social Classes Owe to Each Other answers that question with to take care of his or her own self. Minding other people's business is dangerous and wrong.

    Read the transcript 2,676 words

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  67. 67

    Jane Jacobs (1916–2006) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:11 · 6.7 MB · Recorded 22 April 2011

    Jacobs was a libertarian whether she knew it or not. The conclusions she drew were Misesian, just in a different way. Jacobs has also been compared to Hayek. Her The Death & Life of Great American Cities told essentially the same story as Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Society.

    Read the transcript 2,662 words

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  68. 68

    America Aflame 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 18:52 · 6.6 MB · Recorded 27 April 2011

    Goldfield's book fails at revisionism. The author does not grapple with the truth that the Civil War was not about slavery, that war does not boost an economy, and that Lincoln did not need to wage that war anyway.

    Read the transcript 2,506 words

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  69. 69

    Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 15:32 · 5.4 MB · Recorded 17 May 2011

    The State manuscript and Bourne's famous phrase within it - War is the health of the state -was only discovered after his death. Bourne's radical anti-war views earned him the focused wrath of the pro-war group. The Randolph Bourne Institute and the website Antiwar.com are his memorial.

    Read the transcript 2,094 words

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  70. 70

    Alan Bock: Persuasion for Liberty 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 21:59 · 7.7 MB · Recorded 25 May 2011

    As the fastest good writer, Bock was an intellectual libertarian doing the daily heavy lifting required to engage in the war of ideas.

    Read the transcript 2,966 words

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  71. 71

    Gary Chartier: The Conscience of an Anarchist 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 20:16 · 7.1 MB · Recorded 3 June 2011

    Chartier credits Rothbard more than Rand in shifting him from a statist to an anarchist. He deliberately does not use the L-word...

    Read the transcript 2,674 words

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  72. 72

    C. M. Kornbluth (1923–1958) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:03 · 6.0 MB · Recorded 9 June 2011

    Although as a young man Kornbluth held leftist political views, he grew to share Rothbardian-style sentiments about the state. To Kornbluth the state was obviously just another criminal gang. His book The Syndic won the Libertarian Futurist Society's Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 1986.

    Read the transcript 2,412 words

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  73. 73

    Suzanne La Follette (1893 –1983) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 19:45 · 6.9 MB · Recorded 15 June 2011

    As the protege of Albert Jay Nock, La Follette's thinking reflected much of his own. Her valuable book Concerning Women stressed that the interests of the state are opposed to the interests of society and that economic freedom was needed for all not just for women.

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  74. 74

    Libertarianism and Psychology 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 14:39 · 5.1 MB · Recorded 22 June 2011

    Psychologist Timothy Leary held LSD to be therapy. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz held that mental illness was a myth. Both libertarians opposed the war on drugs.

    Read the transcript 2,010 words

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  75. 75

    Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 17:42 · 6.2 MB · Recorded 30 June 2011

    Forerunner of the Austrian School, Bastiat contributed high quality popularization of such legal and economic ideas as legalized plunder, everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else and the fable of the broken window in which what is not seen is as important or more than what is seen.

    Read the transcript 2,248 words

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  76. 76

    Libertarian Journalism in the '60s, '70s, and '80s 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 18:50 · 6.6 MB · Recorded 7 July 2011

    Ronald Hamowy and Ralph Raico were the best libertarian journalists. Their efforts included the quality publications New Individualist Review and Inquiry...

    Read the transcript 2,395 words

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  77. 77

    Libertarianism and Psychology II 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 21:31 · 7.5 MB · Recorded 14 July 2011

    Nathaniel Brandon and Sharon Presley saw the importance of psychology and the self-esteem movement for libertarians.People who lack self-confidence aren't likely to support efforts to achieve a free society, or even to understand why a free society is a desirable goal.

    Read the transcript 2,796 words

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  78. 78

    Eight Ways to Run the Country 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 16:10 · 5.7 MB · Recorded 20 July 2011

    Riggenbach's review of Mitchell's book is mixed because he does not find a fit with the political perspectives described as individualist or paleolibertarian.

    Read the transcript 2,155 words

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  79. 79

    Conjectural History 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 21:16 · 7.4 MB · Recorded 28 July 2011

    Historians must use Rand's sense of life to make their best guess of how things happened when the past facts are lost.

    Read the transcript 2,689 words

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  80. 80

    Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 27:52 · 9.7 MB · Recorded 4 August 2011

    Wilson's best known work was Illuminatus - an arcane conspiracy-based cult classic that won libertarian futurist awards. Wilson referred to his own beliefs as generalized agnosticism about everything.

    Read the transcript 3,810 words

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  81. 81

    Robert Bidinotto's 'Hunter' 2011

    Jeff Riggenbach · 24:22 · 8.5 MB · Recorded 11 August 2011

    Ayn Rand objectivists are more neocon than libertarian.

    Read the transcript 3,174 words

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People in this series

Speakers

Jeff Riggenbach.

Recording dates, summaries and topics for 81 of these 81 lectures come from the Mises Institute's page for The Libertarian Tradition, checked 2026-08-04.

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About this series

Is The Libertarian Tradition free to listen to?
Yes. All 81 mirrored recordings stream in the browser or download as audio, at no cost and with no signup.
How long is The Libertarian Tradition?
81 recordings, 27.1 hours in total.
Who lectures in The Libertarian Tradition?
Jeff Riggenbach.
When was The Libertarian Tradition recorded?
2010–2011, per the recording dates recovered for this series.
Is there a transcript of The Libertarian Tradition?
Yes. Every lecture in the series has one, 215,948 words in total, free to read on each lecture's page and searchable in the browser.

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