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The Left, The Right, and The State
Lew Rockwell's new manifesto is a clarion callcreative and thought-provoking on every pagefor a principled liberty in our time. There are very few books in which you can open up any page and immediately find a quotable and inspiring passage that will make you think hard, laugh out loud, or see things a completely new way. This is certainly one of them.
Rockwell is the founder and president of the Mises Institute, and the editor of his own site LewRockwell. He has played an important role in the shaping of libertarian theory for a quarter of a century. This book shows how and why. Subtle, radical, and compelling, Rockwell's book is a great addition to the legendary literature of political dissidents.
Rockwell is the founder and president of the Mises Institute, and the editor of his own site LewRockwell. He has played an important role in the shaping of libertarian theory for a quarter of a century. This book shows how and why. Subtle, radical, and compelling, Rockwell's book is a great addition to the legendary literature of political dissidents.
554 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
29 people are currently reading
426 people want to read
About the author
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
38 books90 followersLlewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com.
[source: lewrockwell.com]
[source: lewrockwell.com]
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 26, 2022
excellent collection of articles going back to the clinton years. for the most part the left and the right just serve as useful idiots to push the authoritarian agenda. the left was the biggest threat to the world in the 90's, then in the 2000's it was the right. it is a pendulum that swings back and forth to suit the purposes of the ruling class
May 9, 2019
This 400 page rant could have been edited down to a 100 page statement of the LIbertarian position. It's unfortunate, because the author makes some interesting points, but they're diluted by all the shit around them.
August 19, 2020
Who’s up for six hundred pages of essays on politics and economics? I read this over the course of half a year, owing to its size, its nature as a large set of independent pieces, and the common tattoo being drummed out throughout the collection. The book brings together Rockwell’s views on American politics, from the late eighties through to the 2008 election with Clinton and George W.’s admins attracting the most content. Such a massive collection of material defies summation, but I’ll give it the old college try.
Lew Rockwell has been active in political and economic circles at least since the seventies, co-founding the Mises Institute alongside Murray Rothbard, the father of anarcho-capitalism. I’m familiar with Rockwell through his frequent appearances on the Tom Woods show, and so for the most part there were few surprises here, content-wise. Rockwell is a welcome and consistent voice — if sometimes an overly acidulous one — haranguing the state for its wars, its abuse of civil liberties, its bullying of its people, its manipulation of the money, etc. Rockwell is as I mentioned consistent, sometimes astonishingly so: his essay written on September 12, 2001, was particularly impressive: here we were with a massive gaping wound in the American heart, and Rockwell says: stay calm. Don’t let the pain and righteous anger of this time carry us away into making a costly mistake in the middle east. The alterations of the American state after 9/11, its final corruption through the Patriot Act, the explosion of warrant-less surveillance, etc, were the events that began waking me up to the dangers of the modern state — and Rockwell saw them coming. He also writes — in 2003 — on the potential for mischief with oil prices because of Bush & Cheney’s interests in the industry. Not all of the content is political, though; one essay concerns Y2K and the banks, and I found the essays on historic events I remembered from the nineties on to be especially interesting, prompting me to think on how I interpreted those events then and now.
Many of the essays are Rockwell riffing off of contemporary events, or using them to argue a more pressing point. When Clinton complained that his private life was being invaded by the press, quick on the scent of the Lewinsky scandal, Rockwell chuckles in a fit of schadenfreud and points out the ways that DC has invaded the private lives of everyone. In another example, he discusses subsidiarity and secession amid the Soviet Union’s breakup, promoting the latter (especially in Europe) as self-determination. In other sections, he moves away from current-events contemporary to write more generally: reviewing the works of various economists,or discussing the role of inflation in economic busts, and the perverse effects of war on the economy. By far the weakest section is that on the environment; Rockwell dismisses conservation and hazard containment altogether, regarding progress and industrial growth as absolute goods. Although environmentalism and libertarianism are often at loggerheads over the heavy-handed ways that environmental legislation is handled, there are perfectly plausible arguments to be made for environmental concerns from the libertarian camp. The first time I saw Rockwell in person, for instance, I was attending the 2015 conference of Young Americans for Liberty, and several of the booths selling books outside were from green libertarian groups. Rockwell’s stance in this is so strident and narrow that it undermines credibility.
Despite this, Rockwell’s collection of writings here was worth plowing through over the last few months. In the beginning, I appreciated the view that libertarian-leaning individuals who work with the government to help it function better by introducing some ersatz market measure — school vouchers, say, or social security privatization — do the cause of liberty a disservice by making it the handmaiden of its enemy. Liberty, he writes early and emphasizes throughout, is not a public policy. It is the end of public policy. Despite being familiar with and sympathetic to many of Rockwell’s viewpoints, I also delighting finding a lot of content here that challenged me, like Rockwell’s defense of planned obsolescence. I still don’t like planned obsolescence, but it’s good to consider the arguments for or against a thing. The collection could have used some tighter editing, at least in the beginning.
In the balance, this collection was worth reading for me — but I was trying to coax someone into Liberty’s camp I’d use something less bellicose. There’s a lot of good content here, and some lamentable blind spots.
Lew Rockwell has been active in political and economic circles at least since the seventies, co-founding the Mises Institute alongside Murray Rothbard, the father of anarcho-capitalism. I’m familiar with Rockwell through his frequent appearances on the Tom Woods show, and so for the most part there were few surprises here, content-wise. Rockwell is a welcome and consistent voice — if sometimes an overly acidulous one — haranguing the state for its wars, its abuse of civil liberties, its bullying of its people, its manipulation of the money, etc. Rockwell is as I mentioned consistent, sometimes astonishingly so: his essay written on September 12, 2001, was particularly impressive: here we were with a massive gaping wound in the American heart, and Rockwell says: stay calm. Don’t let the pain and righteous anger of this time carry us away into making a costly mistake in the middle east. The alterations of the American state after 9/11, its final corruption through the Patriot Act, the explosion of warrant-less surveillance, etc, were the events that began waking me up to the dangers of the modern state — and Rockwell saw them coming. He also writes — in 2003 — on the potential for mischief with oil prices because of Bush & Cheney’s interests in the industry. Not all of the content is political, though; one essay concerns Y2K and the banks, and I found the essays on historic events I remembered from the nineties on to be especially interesting, prompting me to think on how I interpreted those events then and now.
Many of the essays are Rockwell riffing off of contemporary events, or using them to argue a more pressing point. When Clinton complained that his private life was being invaded by the press, quick on the scent of the Lewinsky scandal, Rockwell chuckles in a fit of schadenfreud and points out the ways that DC has invaded the private lives of everyone. In another example, he discusses subsidiarity and secession amid the Soviet Union’s breakup, promoting the latter (especially in Europe) as self-determination. In other sections, he moves away from current-events contemporary to write more generally: reviewing the works of various economists,or discussing the role of inflation in economic busts, and the perverse effects of war on the economy. By far the weakest section is that on the environment; Rockwell dismisses conservation and hazard containment altogether, regarding progress and industrial growth as absolute goods. Although environmentalism and libertarianism are often at loggerheads over the heavy-handed ways that environmental legislation is handled, there are perfectly plausible arguments to be made for environmental concerns from the libertarian camp. The first time I saw Rockwell in person, for instance, I was attending the 2015 conference of Young Americans for Liberty, and several of the booths selling books outside were from green libertarian groups. Rockwell’s stance in this is so strident and narrow that it undermines credibility.
Despite this, Rockwell’s collection of writings here was worth plowing through over the last few months. In the beginning, I appreciated the view that libertarian-leaning individuals who work with the government to help it function better by introducing some ersatz market measure — school vouchers, say, or social security privatization — do the cause of liberty a disservice by making it the handmaiden of its enemy. Liberty, he writes early and emphasizes throughout, is not a public policy. It is the end of public policy. Despite being familiar with and sympathetic to many of Rockwell’s viewpoints, I also delighting finding a lot of content here that challenged me, like Rockwell’s defense of planned obsolescence. I still don’t like planned obsolescence, but it’s good to consider the arguments for or against a thing. The collection could have used some tighter editing, at least in the beginning.
In the balance, this collection was worth reading for me — but I was trying to coax someone into Liberty’s camp I’d use something less bellicose. There’s a lot of good content here, and some lamentable blind spots.
June 19, 2019
This is a great work on Libertarian thought. It is a collection of essays over the course of about fifteen years, largely dealing with issues contemporary to the times. For example, Rockwell muses on the presidencies of Clinton and George W. Bush along with the issues they dealt with all from a consistently libertarian perspective.
It is a great learning tool for one such as I, having developed politically during those times. It is useful especially in loosing oneself from the intellectual stranglehold of the Republican Party and Rush Limbaugh.
It is a great learning tool for one such as I, having developed politically during those times. It is useful especially in loosing oneself from the intellectual stranglehold of the Republican Party and Rush Limbaugh.
September 15, 2013
This is an insightful collection of essays by leading libertarian writer Lew Rockwell. Being in essay form, the book is easy to digest, especially if you don't like slogging through 500 pages of dense economic prose (i.e. some of Murray Rothbard's material).
The essays in this book cover everything from price-gouging to food production, environmentalism to war, and everything inbetween. There's something for everyone, and none of it is overly technical. I recommend anyone interested in liberty read this book. It's available for free at the Ludwig Von Mises institute website.
The essays in this book cover everything from price-gouging to food production, environmentalism to war, and everything inbetween. There's something for everyone, and none of it is overly technical. I recommend anyone interested in liberty read this book. It's available for free at the Ludwig Von Mises institute website.
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July 29, 2011A great collection of essays from the 1st Bush administration up to our own times illustrating the essential difference between libertarianism and both left-wing and right-wing varieties of statism. An easy read, I got through the book in just over a week in spite of it being more than 500 pages long.
July 21, 2011
Wouldn’t agree with every single point or emphasis, but this was a really good, informative read.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews