Among other Jewish libertarians, Mises is important for his early critique of the problem of economic calculation under socialism and the delineation of the role of money and credit in causing business cycles. Milton Friedman’s work can be read with great profit along several dimensions. And Murray Rothbard is valuable particularly in understanding fractional reserve banking, a subject which has again moved to the fore because of the current credit crisis.

The greatest libertarian writer and thinker, however, was a non-Jew, Austrian-born philosopher Friedrich Hayek. You needn’t be a libertarian to appreciate the profound importance of his myriad contributions to intellectual thought.

Curiously, no attention whatsoever was paid by any of these writers—or the libertarians who succeeded them—to the problem of intellectual freedom: freedom of thought, speech, and association. In terms of liberty, this is the key issue of our time.”

Actually, Rothbard by the end of his life was so fed up with the assaults on freedom of speech and association in the name of civil rights that he was supporting David Duke. Unlike Rand and the Objectivists with their computer game “individuals,” he had no problem with hereditary differences and cheered the success of The Bell Curve.

http://vdare.com/misc/091109_hoste.htm

A distinction should be made by the brilliant scholars of the Mises Institute and the deranged permanent adolescent followers of Rand’s philosophy.

http://forum-network.org/lecture/leonard-peikoff-america-versus-americans

Things get good around 19:10. There’s a moral imperative to kill citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan, and why can’t things be like the good old days when FDR and friends burned 80,000 Japanese civilians alive in one day?

I couldn’t find Peikoff’s ethnicity from a quick search, but I’m sure someone will take the opportunity to inform me.

These people are beyond sick.

No, really, I don’t think it is particularly more complicated than just another hyper individualism to sell to, and split up non-Jews; in particular to uprooted, rootless, atheistic lower middle class, first generation of the family that attends university, somewhat intelligent people of European descent as they have not seen, or heard about, anything else but outright irrational and vulgar parliamentary party politics, and here, finally, is some “rational” (rational, of course, within the computer game anthropology, which is not applicable to the real world) political thinking.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/raimondo1.html

The “maniacal bloodthirstiness” of Leonard Peikoff and others at the Ayn Rand Institute recalls that of the “Old Testament.” Although Jewish Objectivists profess radical individualism, rationalism, and atheism, they are still Jews. One may recall the Jew, cited in Kevin MacDonald’s Culture of Critique, who remarked that he had not known how Jewish he was until the 1967 War. Jewish Objectivists may be more Jewish than they themselves realise. As Rudyard Kipling wrote in “The Stranger”:

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control—
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

Jews are obviously one the most nomadic groups on Earth. Who was Rand trying to fool?

I think the folks over at Monthly Review on the Left (along with the numerous far-left nutcults of Marxist-Leninists) to the Objectivists, ‘LP’ activists and followers of Mises on the Right represent the polar opposites of this mindset with the Center some fusion of watered down ‘anarcho-capitalism’ (dubbed neo-liberalism) and Cultural Marxism—the Center-Right and Center-Left . . .

Interestingly, Ayn Rand’s portrait and biography were exhibits at one of Stalin’s ‘Museums of Atheism’ (I got this from Anton LaVey’s book Satan Speaks or Secret Life of a Satanist). I find it curious that of all the Orthodox, Catholic & Baptist clergy that ended up dead or in the Gulag along with numerous Islamic & Buddhist clergy, the founder of the modern Chabad movement in the US, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, got out of Stalin’s USSR with ease.

MJC

She is a classic example of the secular “rabbinic”-style Jewish guru described by Kevin MacDonald. The sexual dynamics of her cult were baroque. For example, Rand, though married to an Irish-American, carried on a long affair with disciple Nathaniel Branden, 25 years her junior, though Branden, too, was married at the time. Ostensibly both Frank O’Connor (Rand’s husband) and Barbara Branden “consented” to the affair.

Despite her ideological libertarianism, Rand possessed an intolerant, authoritarian personality that greatly affected the dynamics of her cult. It was vividly on display during an appearance on The Phil Donahue Show where I recall her brutally castigating a female member of the audience who’d articulated a question/comment that she disapproved of. I believe the woman had prefaced her remark with a fervent expression of her admiration for Rand and her work. That exchange remained forever etched in my mind.

Intolerance and authoritarianism likewise characterized another Jewish libertarian, economist Ludwig von Mises. This despite the fact that, in response to a question that began, “If you were dictator, what would you do to . . .” Mises humorously and charmingly responded, “I’d abdicate.” Mises married a beautiful shiksa—an Austrian actress who quit the stage and thereafter served as his dutiful typist and gofer. Her 1976 memoir (available online here http://mises.org/books/myyears.pdf ) displayed a painfully servile and worshipful attitude toward her “great” Jewish husband. Mises, too, was a guru in the MacDonald mold.

Intolerance and authoritarian personalities are particularly striking in people ostensibly devoted to liberty.

The only work of Rand’s that I have read is her big novel Atlas Shrugged. It is an absorbing read and was a big bestseller; the woman definitely had a gift for storytelling.

Among other Jewish libertarians, Mises is important for his early critique of the problem of economic calculation under socialism and the delineation of the role of money and credit in causing business cycles. Milton Friedman’s work can be read with great profit along several dimensions. And Murray Rothbard is valuable particularly in understanding fractional reserve banking, a subject which has again moved to the fore because of the current credit crisis.

The greatest libertarian writer and thinker, however, was a non-Jew, Austrian-born philosopher Friedrich Hayek. You needn’t be a libertarian to appreciate the profound importance of his myriad contributions to intellectual thought.

Curiously, no attention whatsoever was paid by any of these writers—or the libertarians who succeeded them—to the problem of intellectual freedom: freedom of thought, speech, and association. In terms of liberty, this is the key issue of our time.

There was a brief interval during the 20th century in which selective, ad hoc theorizing about “freedom” by judges and legal academics took place. However, the participants were interested primarily in advancing Jewish and Leftist group interests in the political and cultural arena. Due to the profound insincerity and highly-specialized nature of this dialogue, its social influence was ephemeral, and vanished completely once power was attained.

Therefore, the last serious defense of intellectual freedom remains that of John Stuart Mill.

It appears Rand had taken up an archetypal ‘Charasmatic Rabbinic’ role in this movement.

Sort of a Jewish version of the Aryan Fuhrerprinzip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip ) perhaps is how it could be thought of.

Q: What should the United Sates do about the [1973] Arab-Israeli War?

AR: Give all the help possible to Israel. Consider what is at stake. It is not the moral duty of any country to send men to die helping another country. The help Israel needs is technology and military weapons—and they need them desperately. Why should we help Israel? Israel is fighting not just the Arabs but Soviet Russia, who is sending the Arabs armaments. Russia is after control of the Mediterranean and oil.

Further, why are the Arabs against Israel? (This is the main reason I support Israel.) The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it’s the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are. Israel is a mixed economy inclined toward socialism. But when it comes to the power of the mind—the development of industry in that wasted desert continent—versus savages who don’t want to use their minds, then if one cares about the future of civilization, don’t wait for the government to do something. Give whatever you can. This is the first time I’ve contributed to a public cause: helping Israel in an emergency.

****

Quite the constrast with her 1963 essay.