MurrayRothbard

he State's greatest living enemy."That's how Dr. Murray N.

Rothbard is described on the jack-et of his latest book, The MY..sterY..piBanking, and the description is

an accurate one. Since the late 1940s Roth-bard has been an uncompromising enemyof the very institution of government itself.More than a dozen books and countless ar-ticles and speeches have made him thiscentury's most prominent Libertarianthinker and activist.

Rothbard virtually gave birth to the mod-ern Libertarian movement in the mid-195Os, when he fused three related butthen-separate themes-individualist anar-chism, free-market economics and a non-interventionist foreign policy-into a singlepolitical philosophy: "anarcho-capitalism, "or libertarianism. He set forth his politicalvision in the 1973 book For a New Liberty;.

The Libertarian Manifgsto, which is wide-ly regarded as the single best introductionto libertarianism. In that work Rothbardcondemned government as "acriminal gang"and argued that all services provided by gov-ernment-even police, courts and military de-fense-could be provided more effectively andfairly by the free market and other voluntarymeans. Rothbard feels government is unnec-essary and the greatest violator of humanrights to life, liberty and property.

Rothbard's ideas are unquestionablyradical. They are backed up, however, by alifetime of serious scholarship in a wide va-riety of fields. Rothbard is internationallyrenowned as an innovative economist, his-torian, political theorist and social critic.Among his major books are Man, Econ-omy" and State (1962), a two-volume trea-tise on economics that was hailed by a crit-ic as "one of the great books of this century

,

InterviewbyJamesW.HarrisPHOTOBYKENNETHRAND

..

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in economics;"Power and Market (1970), thefirst-ever economic condemnation of all gov-ernment action; Conceived in Liberly (1975),a four-volume history of Colonial Americaand the- American Revolution; and TheEthics 01 Liberly (1982), a PhilosoPhicalargument for human freedom described ina review as "one of the most imporlant worksof this-or any other-century. "

"The State is an inherently illegitimate in-stitution of organized and regularized crimeagainst the persons and properlies of its sub-jects," Rothbard has written. Now 59, he con-tinues to pit his vast command of economicsand history against that institution. His arli-cles, written with a characteristic clarity,vigor and wit, appearfrequently.

A longtime Liberlarian Parly activist,Rothbard serves on its National Committeeand advises numerous Liberlarian organiza-tions and publications. In addition, he is pro-fessor of economicsat the Polytechnic Instituteof New York. His writings and speeches con-tinue to insPire a growing international Lib-erlarian movement.

James W Harris, whose Guest Editorial"The Decline and Fall of American States-manship" appeared in the March '85HUSTLER, conducted the interview.

CHIC: Dr. Rothbard, just what exactly islibertarianism?ROTHBARD: Libertarianism is simplythe belief that it's immoral and impermis-

sible for any person to aggress against theperson or property of anyone else. That'sthe simplest definition.

Now most people would agree with thisif you stated it like that. Most people areas against murder, robbing and muggingas we Libertarians are. The difference be-tween Libertarians and other people isthat we apply this moral principle consist-ently, across the board. And we specifi-cally apply it to the government.CHIC: You hold the government respon-sible for its acts of violence?ROTHBARD: Right. Most people ex-empt the government from this moralrule. They think that, somehow, if thegovernment commits an act of aggres-sion, it's okay, it's legitimate. The govern-ment commits tremendous, organizedsystematic theft-it's called taxation, andit's considered legitimate. The govern-ment can enslave people-it's called thedraft. The government can commit massmurder-it's called war and consideredheroic.

So that's the'difference between Lib-ertarians and other people. We take thismoral code, and we apply it to the mainexemption, the guys who are consideredexempt: the government.CHIC: You go beyond even many Lib-ertarians, however, and consider govern-ment itself to be illegitimate, a criminalinstitution. Why?

ROTHBARD: There are two things es-sential to government that are criminal.One is that government lives off taxes.Government is the only organization insociety-outside of known criminals-thatgets its money by coercion, by armed rob-bery-i.e., taxation. Every other organiza-tion or person in society lives either byselling a good or service to somebodyelse, or by getting membership dues orvoluntary contributions from other peo-ple for one reason or another. Only thegovernment-aside from people who arerecognized to be criminals-lives off coer-cion, off this vast organized crime racket:taxes.

The other inherently criminal thinggovernment does is to outlaw all competi-tion with itself: better courts, betterpolice, whatever.

So government is a compulsory mo-nopoly, and it lives off a vast engine of co-ercion-taxes. Other than that, it's a greatinstitution. [Laughs.]CHIC: Many people consider the govern-ment to be "just ourselves," the way we asa nation express our collective will.ROTHBARD: There is no collective will.

There are roughly 225 million people inthe United States, and each one has a will.Sometimes they agree, and sometimesthey disagree.

Government, rather than expressingour collective will, actually benefits onegroup of people at the expense of anoth-er group. There are some people who paytaxes, and other people who live offtaxes-the basic class struggle in society.Government bureaucrats, for example,don't pay taxes-that's only an accountingfiction. If a bureaucrat gets $50,000 ayear and he pays $10,000 in taxes, that'snot really payment of taxes-he's simplygetting $40,000 a year off the taxpayers.

In addition to all this-the taxes and the

monopolies-there are other criminalthings that government does, such asforcing one group's religious or moralprecepts on other people. The AyatollahKhomeini is an obvious example of a rig-orous government forcing certain moralprinciples on the public_ It just dependsupon which group of fanatics or doctri-naires gets control of the government toimpose moral or aesthetic views on every-body else.

There's no collective will expressed bygovernment. Government is a great in-strument for coercion of one group byanother.

CHIC: Our society currently depends ongovernment for a wide variety of services.What's the alternative?ROTHBARD: Government functions can

be divided into two categories. There aresome things that government does thatare illegitimate-criminal-such as mur-der, theft, torturing people in prison

camps, initiating force, etc. These arethings that nobody-including govern-ment-should be allowed to do.

Then there are some functions of gov-ernment that are legitimate-except thatgovernment shouldn't be doing them. Thegovernment monopolizes many legiti-mate activities: carrying the mail, forexample.CHIC: Why shouldn't the governmentperform nonviolent activities like that?ROTHBARD: Well, first of all, it fundsthese activities by taxes-by armed rob-bery. Second, since the government getsits money from the taxpayers, it doesn'thave to be efficient. It's not concernedwith the consumer. With private firmsthe quality of the product is always goingup. Competition forces them to be effi-cient to meet their competitors, ete. Butgovernment doesn't care; so it gets moreand more inefficient, and the quality ofservice goes down.

When I was a kid, private residentialhomes got mail twice a day. Of course,that's now unheard of-you're lucky toget it once a day. [Laughs.] That's justone example-a little breakdown of thesystem.

Carrying the mail is an example of aservice that can be performed not onlyjust as easily, but better by private enter-prise and free competition than by a co-ercive monopoly like government. Even

today, even though government has theadvantage of having its capital and pro-duction costs picked up by the taxpayers,it's out-competed by United Parcel Ser-vice, Federal Express and other outfits.As soon as private enterprise enters anyarea, they out-compete government.

Mail delivery is just one example. Thiswould apply to any service or any goodthat the government now monopolizes.CHIC: We see how private enterprisecould provide some services, such as de-livering the mail, fire protection, build-ing roads and so on probably better thangovernment. But what about the morebasic functions of government, such asprotecting us against violence? Don't weneed government for those type ofthings?ROTHBARD: There are two answers to

that. One is, since the government mo-nopolizes protection, it doesn't do anyreal protecting. It's well-known in NewYork, where. I'm from, that the copsdon't protect us. There's no real policeprotection. There's no incentive for thecops to be around, because they're get-ting paid by the taxpayers.

And so the public has to "take the lawinto their own hands"-defend them-selves as best they can-because the copsain't around. That's why the case ofBernhard Goetz, the so-called "SubwayVigilante," has fired the imagination of

every New Yorker. And the reason whyGoetz or anybody else has to use a gun todefend himself is that the cops aren'tthere to do it.

Number 2: Who's protecting us fromgovernment? Who's protecting us fromits depredations, its graft, its taxation, itsrules and regulations, and all these otherthings that are oppressing us? Nobody.Since the government monopolizes pro-tection, there's nobody left to protect usfrom it-from government.

Those are the two big defects in the ar-gument that government is necessary toprotect us from crime.CHIC: What's the alternative to govern-ment protective service? How could wehave police, courts and so on withoutgovernment ?ROTHBARD: The way I envision it, thiswould be another form ofinsurance. You

would probably pay a premium to someprivate police company or court compa-ny for insurance. There's nothing out-landish about this. We already have a lotof private-defense agencies now-such asBrinks-which do better than govern-ment. Why do people hire private detec-tives or private guards? Because govern-ment is not doing a good enough job.

And we have private arbitrators whodo a much better job than governmentjudges and courts. They're much moreefficient; they do, on the whole, a muchbetter job. All these things would be donea lot better and more morally by privatecompetition, without government, sincethere would be no coercion involved, noinitiation of force. Having competitionwould give a check and balance. If peopledidn't like some judge or some arbitratoror some police agency, they could taketheir business somewhere else. Competi-tion is something that always keeps peo-ple on their toes.CHIC: What about people who might notbe able to afford such services?

ROTHBARD: The police protection in aLibertarian society would be pretty cheap.Anyone who can afford food or clothingor insurance right now could certainly af-ford police protection.

You have to separate that questionfrom the question of poverty in general.The government is always adding to pov-erty by taxes, controls, licensing, regula-tions, cartels and all sorts of other devicesthat prevent free-market capitalism fromrising up and really wiping out poverty. Ifyou give capitalism its head, it wipes outpoverty.CHIC: But wouldn't the kind of pure,laissez-faire capitalism that Libertariansadvocate give rise to monopolies andother dangerous concentrations of eco-nomic power, as happened in the late19th and early 20th centuries?

(continued on page 88)

BIIBIIY(continued from page 44)

ROTHBARD: The usual view of what

happened during that period is the exactopposite of what really happened. His-torians are beginning to realize this,although it hasn't seeped into the high-school textbooks where most peoplelearn history.

Businessmen tried to form monopo-lies. They tried to form cartels to restrictproduction and raise prices. And in the1890s they tried to have mergers into onebig monopoly, to share the loot by re-stricting production and raising prices.But these cartels and monopolies con-stantly kept falling apart. They all failedon the free market.

Then these same outfits, these same

Big Business men like the Morgans andthe Rockefellers who were trying unsuc-cessfully to get monopolies on the freemarket, turned to the federal and stategovernments to imposemonopoliesfor themin the name of "regulating and curbingBig Business." That was the magnificentcon job they pulled on the Americanpublic. .

These big businesses would lobby for,say, an Interstate Commerce Commis-sion or a Federal Trade Commission or aFederal Power Commission, arguing that"we need an impartial government agen-

cy to curb evil Big Business." And thenthey would get their guys made the headsof these agencies. They would write thelaws, and these agencies would imposecartels on the public in the name of "freecompetition. "

For example, the Interstate CommerceCommission-the first federal regulatoryagency-was set up by the railroads them-selves in the 1880s. The first thing it didwas to impose higher freight rates-thesame higher freight rates that the Mor-gans and these other guys had wanted toachieve by cartels and couldn't do on themarket!

And this has gone on throughout thewhole history of regulation. These regu-latory commissions were put in by busi-nessmen; they were lobbied for by them.The laws were written in corporate WallStreet offices and pushed on the Ameri-can public in the name of "curbing mo-nopolies." It was a great racket, a greatcon job.CHIC: So the m9nopolies did not arisefrom free competition?ROTHBARD: They were imposed by thegovernment. As a matter of fact, I'll goflat out and say that in the history of theworld there's no case of a successful mo-nopoly or cartel without the governmentsetting it up, forcing it and squeezing outcompetitors.CHIC: This not only hurts honest busi-

88 SEPTEMBER 1985

nessmen, but it also hurts consumers,right?ROTHBARD: Right. Like the medicalmonopoly today: the American MedicalAssociation. It's accomplished these fan-tastic increases in payments to doctorsand hospitals. And it's all brought aboutby this cartel-government-organized,state and federal-to restrict the medical

profession by keeping the supply downand raising prices to keep out competingtherapies.CHIC: What about the most basic and im-portant function of government: pro-tecting its citizens from foreign invasion?How would a society without governmenthandle that?ROTHBARD: Well, a lot depends on howbig this Libertarian country is. If onlyKennebunkport, Maine, becomes Lib-ertarian and secedes from the Union orwhatever, it obviously won't be able todefend itself against the United States oreven the state of Maine.

On the other hand, if the whole world

goes Libertarian someday, then obvious-ly there's no problem with national de-fense. So the problem with foreign de-fense is a transitional problem, a strategicproblem, based on the size of the freearea compared to the statist area. Thelarger the size of the free area, the betteroff we're going to be, whatever schemeyou have for a national defense.

One defensive advantage that a state-less society has is that there's no govern-ment structure for invaders to take over.

For example, when the British con-quered West Africa in the late 19th cen-tury, one of the areas they took over waswhat later became Biafra, where the Ibotribesmen lived. Now, the Ibos didn'thave any chief; they didn't have any statestructure. Most of them were merchants

and peaceful traders.And the British had tremendous diffi-

culties in ruling them. When the Britishtook over other tribes, they gave the chieforders, and the chief transmitted the or-ders to the rest of the people. But theIbos had no chief, no infrastructure totransmit orders. It's very difficult to gov-ern a people-even a defenseless andmore-or-less disarmed people like theIbos-when there's no state infrastructure.

On the other hand, it was easy for theBritish to conquer India, even thoughIndia was much more populous thanBritain. How could a handful of British

soldiers occupy India? Simple: They justtook over the existing government. Theyhad more guns than the rajahs did; theygave orders to the rajahs, and the rajahsused the existing government to transmitthe orders to the people.

If there's no collaborating govern-ment, it's almost impossible to dominatea country. The invaders just lose out, and

guerrilla warfare takes care of the rest.CHIC: Would a Libertarian society defenditself with nuclear weapons?ROTHBARD: There's no justificationfor mass murder. The problem with mod-ern nuclear weapons and missiles, proba-bly even with strategic bombers andmany non-nuclear weapons, is that youcan't pinpoint them. You can't use theseweapons without murdering innocentpeople.

Most international war thus becomes

illegitimate from a Libertarian perspec-tive, because of this weapons problem.All these nuclear weapons are threaten-ing mass murder, even if no one usesthem. Therefore, they're illegitimate.That's the only way you can look at it.CHIC: Illegitimate or not, many nationsnow have them. We're obviously a longway from a Libertarian society in Ameri-ca today. How then should the UnitedStates deal with its current foreign-policysituation?ROTHBARD~ Well, since states do exist,unfortunately, they should at least be lim-ited to their territorial jurisdiction. Gov-ernments should not invade other gov-ernments, killing other citizens and theirown. At least each state should carry outwhat used to be called an isolationist for-

eign policy-limiting defense strictly tothe ground area of each government. Inother words, the United States's jurisdic-tion should be limited strictly to theAmerican people on U.S. soil. This, ofcourse, wipes out about nine-tenths ofour military budget, I would say.[Laughs.]CHIC: That's the foreign policy ThomasJefferson urged, isn't it? "Peace, com-merce and honest friendship with all na-tions, entangling alliances with none,"and so forth?

ROTHBARD: Right. We don't needthese nuclear missiles, much less theground troops and the Marines and allthat sort of stuff. Nobody's swimmingacross the Atlantic or the Pacific and in-

vading the United States. So even if youthink we need some sort of deterrent, astrictly isolationist foreign policy wouldeliminate most of the military budget.

That's point 1. Point 2 would be towork out a nuclear-disarmament agree-ment with the Russians. And the Russians

are very willing to have it. There's noproblem with inspection. You could havesatellites do it-there are plenty of satel-lites spying on everybody now already.And the Russians are willing to have un-limited on-site inspections.CHIC: The Russians have said that?ROTHBARD: Yeah. This is a key point-something that's overlooked, to say theleast, by Establishment historians. In thelate '40s and mid-'50s the United Stateswas urging the Russians to agree to "gen-

eral and complete disarmament" -thecode words for disarmament down to po-lice levels. In other words, that no gov-ernment should have weapons beyond,say, machine guns, maybe tanks. Nomass-murder weapons.

Finally, on May 19, 1955-a day thatshould live in infamy-Soviet leaderNikita Khrushchev said, "Okay. You'veconvinced us. We hereby agree to generaland complete disarmament across theboard. With inspections." The press hasbeen corrupt on this whole history. Theyclaim the Russians didn't want inspec-tion. Actually, the Russians said you caninspect anything-anybody can come overhere and look at anything.

As soon as the Russians agreed to theAmerican disarmament plan, the Ameri-cans said, "Uh-oh, conditions havechanged. We're going to have to rethinkthis." We withdrew the proposal, whichwe had been urging for a couple of years.We suspended all the disarmament nego-tiations. We removed our own disarma-

ment plan after the Russians had agreedto it! It was really monstrous.

Later we came back with Eisenhower's

famous "Open Skies" plan. Open Skiessounds great-it's a great PR term. Butwhat does Open Skies mean? It meansunlimited inspection and no disarma-ment! This was really the Americanposition.

The position of the American press-the "kept press," as we used to call it inthe old days-is that the United Stateswants disarmament with inspection, andRussia wants disarmament, allegedly, butno inspection. Actually, it's just the op-posite: The Russians willagree to any andall disarmament with total inspection,and the United States wants total inspec-tion and no disarmament.CHIC: But that was in the '50s. Do youthink it still holds true today?ROTHBARD: Yeah, it holds true today.The United States has always been the ob-structor to disarmament throughout-since the 1950s. "

The United States is also the main im-

perialist power in the world today. All the

superpowers are imperialist i~one way oranother, but the United States is themajor one. The United States is pushingpeople around all over the world. I mean,geez, everywhere-setting up militarybases, giving orders, changing govern-ments, either formally or covertly. Orsupposedly covertly-actually, it's the mostopen "covert" I've ever seen. And we actas if we have this moral right, this divineright, to run every country in the world.The United States is acting like a fantasticinternational bully.CHIC: Why is this? Who benefits fromU.S. imperialism?ROTHBARD: A lot of it is misguided ide-

ology: the idea that somehow the UnitedStates is morally obligated to impose theso-called democratic system everywherein the world.

But one of the key roots is economics.Various economic interests benefit from

imperialism. The foreign-aid program,for example, is just one big export subsi-dy. A lot of taxpayers' dollars are shippedto some foreign dictator-with, of course,the American government getting a"handling fee." The foreign dictator thencements his rule, gets his "handling fee,"and the rest of the dollars are sent back in

order to pay for American exports. Thewhole thing is an elaborate mechanism bywhich American exports are heavilysubsidized.

That's just one example. A lot of Amer-ican bankers also benefit. They under-write some foreign bond, and then theUnited States steps in and bails out thebank. The Polish bond is a beautiful ex-

ample. Poland was defaulting on its loansto Chase Manhattan and other banks. Sothe U.S. government steps in, gives thePolish government the money, and thenthey return it to Chase and other banks.So the American suckers-the American

taxpayers and consumers-end up subsi-dizing American exporters and Americanbankers.CHIC: The claim is that we have to be in-volved in the internal affairs of other na-

tions in order to protect them and our-selves from Communist aggression?ROTHBARD: [Laughs.] Yeah, right.CHIC: You don't buy that?ROTHBARD: It's the old shell game. It'sjust like saying that we have to have a mu-nicipalized police force and high taxes toprotect us against crime. It's the same oldthing, the same old excuse: "for theirown good." We have to march into everycountry "for their own good."

Somehow these other countries don't

see the great Soviet threat. They don'tthink that the Russians are about ready tomarch in and conquer them. And, byGod, they're right, as far as I can see.CHIC: You don't think the Soviets are an

expansionist power?ROTHBARD: No. Look, I'm not sayingthe Russians are some great Libertarians.But Russian foreign policy, ever sinceLenin, has always been: Defend thehomeland. The Russians have never beenin favor of sending their armies acrossthe borders of another country, and theynever have. They haven't expanded be-yond their borders. They haven't doneany military interventions, which is pre-sumably the so-called threat to the U.S.CHIC: What about Eastern Europe-Hungary, Romania, Poland and so on?ROTHBARD: How did the Russians gethold of Eastern Europe? No revisionisthistorian has ever denied the elemental

fact that on June 22,1941, Germany at-tacked Russia. Then Hitler was joined inthe war against Russia by all these East-ern European countries. Russia rolledback these armies and then occupied EastGermany and all these other nations. Theoccupation came about because of the at-tack on Russia. It was strictly defensive.

And then, at the end of World War II,all of a sudden the American liberals and

conservatives woke up and said, "Hey!Russia's expanded! How'd they get toWarsaw? How'd they get to Budapest?"They got there because they were rollingback an attack, okay?

The Russians have actually pulled theirtroops out of a whole bunch of areassince World War II: Austria, Finland,northwestern Iran. The only place thatRussia has sent troops since World War IIis Afghanistan.CHIC: Isn't the Afghanistan invasion anexample of Soviet expansionism?ROTHBARD: No. Afghanistan has alwaysbeen in the Russian orbit. I don't meanthe Commie orbit; I mean the Russianorbit. Since about 1850.

The Russians have one interest alone

in foreign policy, almost their sole inter-est: preventing their borders from get-ting into hostile hands. And Russia'sbeen attacked through Eastern Europethree times in the 20th century: in WorldWar I, by Poland just after World War Iand by Germany in World War II. So Rus-sia is interested in keeping Eastern Eu-rope in non-anti-Soviet hands.

In early 1979 there was a Commie rev-olution in Afghanistan. The Commiestook over. Unfortunately for the Rus-sians, they were left-wing Commies-Mao-ists, Trotskyites, total fanatics. And thiscrazy left-wing Commie party starts na-tionalizing everything, blowing upmosques, looting the peasants and kill-ing Muslims. And this stimulates the guer-rilla war.CHIC: This was before the Russianinvasion?

ROTHBARD: Yes. The guerrilla war didnot start after the Russians invaded. It start-ed with this internal-Commie revolution.

The Russians were very upset aboutthis. Here were these crazies on theirborder, ruining everything and stimulat-ing the guerrillas. And the guerrillas wereactually beginning to win out.

The Russians sent emissaries down to

these Maoist Commies, saying, "ForChrist's sake stop this." The Maoists an-swered, "No, no, nuts to you."

Finally, the Russians, driven by de-spair, sent in their troops to kick out theMaoist Commies and put in their ownpuppet Russian Commies. That's whathappened. And now the Russians arescrewed totally. Nobody supports theRussian puppet regime. The Soviet

Union keeps sending in more men, andthey keep losing more men. It's Russia'sVietnam. They're really stuck.

I'm not justifying their invasion,but it'snot an example of Russian expansionism.CHIC: What about the Star Wars pro-gram? That's touted by Reagan as a de-fensive system that would eliminate theneed for nuclear weapons.ROTHBARD: The scientists say it won'twork. You can't prevent all the missilesfrom coming in. It willcost an enormousamount of the taxpayers' money-trillionsof dollars-and it's not going to work. Ex-cept for that, it looks great.

Besides that, the Reagan program is tokeep current missiles in place and alsohave Star Wars, the so-called absolute de-fense. The Russians are scared, becausethe U.S. can figure it's safe to annihilatethem. The Russians are terrified of theseAmerican war hawks. I don't blamethem-I'm scared of them also.

Notice what Reagan does. He says hisobjective is to'eliminate the threat of nu-clear weapons throughout the world.How is he going to do it? By maximizingnuclear forces!

Similarly,he sayshe's in favor of elimi-nating deficits-he wants a balanced bud-get. How does he get it? By creating thebiggest deficit in American history! Twohundred-billion-dollar-a-year deficits!Maximizingdeficits will somehow give usa balanced budget.CHIC: Many people believe that Reaganis a foe of big government and high taxes.Is he?ROTHBARD: He hasn't cut taxes; he'sincreasedthem. Taxes have gone up. Thetax cuts were phony. They were morethan offset by bracket creep, by inflationraising us into a higher tax bracket, andby Social Security tax increases. And hekeeps increasing the size of governmentby 10% a year.

Most of the so-called cuts he's beentalking about are cuts in the rate of in-crease,cuts in the projectedbudget. It's to-tally meaningless. Semantic trickery.

A cut means loweringthebudget,and hehasn't done that.CHIC: He also says he's freeing up themarketplace, deregulating the economy.What do you think?ROTHBARD: It'sjust rhetoric. He hasn'tdone a thing, as far as I can see. All the ef-fective deregulation done early in theReagan Administration wasactually donebyJimmy Carter. Carter was the one whoput in deregulation of the airlines, truck-ing, the FCC and oil prices. I think regu-lation has increasedunder Reagan.

And now protectionism has increasedtremendously-tariffs, quotas, farm-pricesupports and so forth.CHIC: What do you think of Reagan'scall for a "second American Revolution,"

during his most recent State of the Unionaddress?ROTHBARD: That's absurd. I don'tknow what his "revolution" is. If it's sup-posed to be smaller government, hehasn't done it. He's fastened governmentmore on our backs. He's increased taxes.He's increased government expendi-tures. He's increased the military-indus-trial complex. He's brought back theoc-racy, invasions of personal liberty, theMoral Majority stuff. He's a counter-revolutionary talking about a revolution.

Reagan has conned the public. Andhe's bringing back the pro-war spirit,which is disastrous. Because of Vietnam,we were starting to have a strong antiwarsentiment in the United States. This is to-

tally lost now, with all the flag-waving,stomping Grenada and so on.

Worst of all, he's eliminating the greathatred of the Presidency we've had sinceWatergate. Reagan's getting the public tolove the President again.CHIC: It's hard to build an antistatemovement when the whole country seemsto be in love with the President?ROTHBARD: Exactly. Richard Nixonand Watergate did more for libertarian-ism than any other person or event dur-ing the 20th century. Finally, peoplebegan to distrust their damn Presidentand to distrust politicians in general. Butnow there seems to be almost nobodywho hates Reagan. Everybody loves theguy. Even people who say they don't likehis politics say they love him. I don't un-derstand it. It's a remarkable phenome-non. Where are the Reagan haters?

It'll happen again, though, this distrustand hatred of the Presidency. I don'tthink anybody will be able to repeat thisReagan phenomenon.CHIC: As a longtime observer and criticof the American political scene, are youoptimistic or pessimistic about the pros-pects for liberty in America?ROTHBARD: I'm optimistic in the longrun. I've been saying so for a long time.One, because I think we're right, andeventually people will see it. And two,even more than that, statism doesn't real-ly work. There's a built-in failure in gov-ernment actions, and a more immediatefailure than there used to be. We've got-ten to the point now where it's more andmore difficult for the government to getaway with anything. Take the marijuanalaws, for example. They're unenforce-able. Take inflation. As soon as the gov-ernment starts inflating, the market real-izes that more inflation is coming, andinterest rates are raised to compensate.There's instant negative feedback when-ever government does anything now.

Libertarian ideas are definitely spread-ing. There's a long-range trend towardliberty, and that's why I'm optimistic. 0