WEBVTT NOTE Rothbard's Protest Against Left and Right 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.800 Well, first of all, ladies and gentlemen, I could not be happier to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Mises Institute. 2 00:00:07.800 --> 00:00:12.400 I have never been prouder to be associated with any organization. 3 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:18.000 And I happen to think Lew Rockwell is not only an organizational and entrepreneurial genius, 4 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:25.200 but I also think he is one of the most creative minds of our day, that I read his take on something. 5 00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:29.800 He's one of the few people who can make me feel like a complete idiot for not having thought this way already. 6 00:00:29.800 --> 00:00:59.800 Well, we're all having a wonderful time so far. I mean, last night I was eating shrimp the size of my head. This is just wonderful. And it's great to be in New York for a few days where I used to live. But I'd like to say a few words about Murray Rothbard today. And actually the title of my talk was changed online but didn't make it into the print program. Jeff Tucker changed it to 7 00:00:59.800 --> 00:01:02.800 Rothbard's protest against left and right. 8 00:01:02.800 --> 00:01:06.800 And of course I don't mean Rothbard's protest against his own periodical called left and right. 9 00:01:06.800 --> 00:01:09.800 I mean against the left and the right. 10 00:01:09.800 --> 00:01:13.800 And I want to bring to your attention, in case you're not aware of this, 11 00:01:13.800 --> 00:01:17.800 that just this year, in fact just a matter of months ago, 12 00:01:17.800 --> 00:01:20.800 the Mises Institute has published a new book by Murray Rothbard. 13 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:22.800 Now how is this possible? 14 00:01:22.800 --> 00:01:26.800 Have we been having seances at the Institute? How is this possible? 15 00:01:26.800 --> 00:01:34.800 Well, this book has been around for some time in manuscript form and for one reason or another, logistical or otherwise, it never saw the light of day. 16 00:01:34.800 --> 00:01:46.800 It's called The Betrayal of the American Right and in a way it's kind of an autobiographical statement by Murray Rothbard about his own life in politics and so on and so forth. 17 00:01:46.800 --> 00:01:53.800 And it's very interesting and compelling because what it has to say to us is, I think, going to sound eerily familiar. 18 00:01:53.800 --> 00:02:03.800 Now it's been said that today in the United States we are saddled with two parties, the stupid party and the evil party. 19 00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:17.800 Well, I can't figure out which is which anymore, but I do know that once in a while the two parties will get together and do something that's both stupid and evil, and this is called bipartisanship. 20 00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:29.800 An old conservative wag once said that, and I think it's still, of course, true. 21 00:02:29.800 --> 00:02:35.800 And this is in large part what Murray was getting at when toward the end of his book he says this. 22 00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:42.800 Now this book was finished in the early 70s, and then later he added a later chapter bringing it up to the early 1990s, 23 00:02:42.800 --> 00:02:46.800 but we've been unable to find that chapter, so he's really concluding in the early 70s. 24 00:02:46.800 --> 00:02:48.800 Here's what Murray says, 25 00:03:16.800 --> 00:03:22.800 Militaryism and Conscription at Home, Intimate Partnership between Big Business and Leviathan Government 26 00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:30.800 And he goes on to ask, where then can disaffected liberals turn, not to the current right, which offers them only more of the same? 27 00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:39.800 Well, I don't know if it's comforting to know that Murray endured the same thing we're enduring or incredibly depressing that we're still enduring it. 28 00:03:39.800 --> 00:03:42.800 But that's sort of the theme of my remarks. 29 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:49.800 And what I'd like to do is give a couple of examples of the continuing relevance of Murray's analysis. 30 00:03:49.800 --> 00:03:56.800 As I think there are conservatives out there who claim to have some kind of affinity for the Constitution 31 00:03:56.800 --> 00:04:00.800 and say that, well, what's been happening is that we've had all these crazy liberal judges 32 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:03.800 with all their crazy theories who have taken our Constitution away. 33 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:09.800 Well, let me submit for your consideration a gentleman who would be considered a conservative by today's standards. 34 00:04:09.800 --> 00:04:17.800 And I want to look at what he's had to say in recent years. And the gentleman I have in mind is named John Yu, Y-O-O. 35 00:04:17.800 --> 00:04:23.800 Is anybody familiar with John Yu? Okay, there's a smattering of people, that's good. 36 00:04:23.800 --> 00:04:30.800 John Yu, who is currently a professor at the law school at Berkeley, has had a fairly distinguished career, 37 00:04:30.800 --> 00:04:41.800 But his most significant years, perhaps, were spent in the Office of Legal Counsel under the Bush Administration serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General. 38 00:04:41.800 --> 00:04:48.800 Now you think, how could that be influential? Deputy Assistant Attorney General, that's like the assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the administrative assistant. 39 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:50.800 How can this guy be influential? 40 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:56.800 But he took this office and somehow transformed it into some kind of a fiefdom or something 41 00:04:56.800 --> 00:05:04.800 or something, because the memos he wrote helped to rationalize a lot of the decisions that the Bush administration had every intention of taking anyway. 42 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:12.800 The Office of Legal Counsel's purpose, by the way, is to sort of analyze constitutionally the actions of the executive. 43 00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:18.800 And it calls to mind what H.L. Mencken said when he wrote his Constitution for the New Deal, 44 00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:22.800 which is a satirical rewrite of the Constitution in light of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, 45 00:05:22.800 --> 00:05:27.800 in the way he described the attorney general in that satirical constitution. 46 00:05:27.800 --> 00:05:34.800 Mencken said that it shall be the job of the attorney general to attest to the constitutionality of all actions taken by the president. 47 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:37.800 And that, in effect, is what the Office of Legal Counsel does. 48 00:05:37.800 --> 00:05:45.800 Well, John Yoo was up to the task because you may realize, having read a little something about American history, 49 00:05:45.800 --> 00:05:52.800 The Founding Fathers were concerned about having one individual having the authority to bring the country into war. 50 00:05:52.800 --> 00:05:55.800 They had a lot of choice words for monarchs. 51 00:05:55.800 --> 00:06:06.800 They believed that monarchs had sometimes taken their people into wars that were ruinous and that involved nothing of substance. 52 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:09.800 They wanted to deprive the American president of this power. 53 00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:13.800 They were concerned about executive power and they were concerned about war powers. 54 00:06:13.800 --> 00:06:43.800 War Powers. And the evidence for this, I mean there's just an avalanche of evidence and I'll just mention that I too, it's not just Murray Rothbard who has a new book, if I could have as many books as Murray I'd be very happy, especially after I'm deceased 12 years, but I actually have this book this year called 33 Questions about American History You're Not Supposed to Ask, and one of them involves this War Powers question. But the fact is the evidence, there's so much of it, as I say it is an avalanche of evidence supporting what I'm saying and what 55 00:06:43.800 --> 00:06:47.540 John Paul is saying about the powers of the president and war. 56 00:06:47.540 --> 00:06:52.680 Well, John Yoo comes along. In 1996, he writes an article in the California Law Review. 57 00:06:52.680 --> 00:06:56.760 And John Yoo says this, the founding fathers, in fact, the framers of the Constitution, 58 00:06:56.760 --> 00:07:01.680 gave us a system that he said, in his words, would encourage presidential initiative in 59 00:07:01.680 --> 00:07:07.200 war. I wonder how he ever got the job in the Office of Legal Counsel. 60 00:07:07.200 --> 00:07:10.960 He went on to say, the Constitution gives the president the initiative in war. So he 61 00:07:10.960 --> 00:07:16.480 repeats this. He says the framers were not excessively worried by the prospect of unilateral 62 00:07:16.480 --> 00:07:25.480 executive action. In 2002 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which by the 63 00:07:25.480 --> 00:07:30.040 way should have a gong at it, you know like the gong show for a guy like John Yoo, he 64 00:07:30.040 --> 00:07:35.560 said this, the president has the constitutional authority to introduce the U.S. armed forces 65 00:07:35.560 --> 00:07:41.000 into hostilities, when appropriate, with or without specific Congressional authorization. 66 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:47.600 But in a September 25th, 2001 memo, which is notorious, two weeks after September 11th, 67 00:07:47.600 --> 00:07:52.000 you said, the President has the constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, 68 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:57.360 organization or state suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, 69 00:07:57.360 --> 00:08:02.520 but also against foreign states suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations. 70 00:08:02.520 --> 00:08:07.560 The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the states 71 00:08:07.560 --> 00:08:12.800 that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific events 72 00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:15.320 of September 11th. 73 00:08:15.320 --> 00:08:21.120 He went on to say that no congressional statute can place any limits on the President's determinations 74 00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:26.160 as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or 75 00:08:26.160 --> 00:08:29.640 the method, timing and nature of the response. 76 00:08:29.640 --> 00:08:35.040 These decisions under our Constitution are for the President alone to make. 77 00:08:35.040 --> 00:08:40.000 In the exercise of his plenary power to use military force, the President's decisions 78 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:44.600 are for him alone and are unreviewable. 79 00:08:44.600 --> 00:08:52.200 Obviously this man is not giving us the exegesis of any Constitution from this planet. 80 00:08:52.200 --> 00:08:54.720 There's no point even in bothering to respond to this. 81 00:08:54.720 --> 00:08:59.360 If you'd like a response, there is my book chapter, of course, but next summer I'm working 82 00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:06.360 We're going to be working on a project, one chapter of which will be taking apart John Yu, but how much effort does this require? 83 00:09:06.360 --> 00:09:14.360 In fact, one legal scholar said, it's no wonder that all these theories about presidential powers and war, 84 00:09:14.360 --> 00:09:19.360 that John Yu began spinning out in these memos for the White House, 85 00:09:19.360 --> 00:09:23.360 all these theories, of course, came from his time when he was a legal scholar, 86 00:09:23.360 --> 00:09:28.040 and a lot of them were summarized in that California Law Review article in 1996. 87 00:09:28.040 --> 00:09:32.040 It's interesting to note, by the way, that in these memos 88 00:09:32.040 --> 00:09:36.320 when he makes these outrageous claims for the president, what is his citation for 89 00:09:36.320 --> 00:09:37.480 this? How does he defend it? 90 00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:41.800 Well, his 1996 California Law Review article, of course, that's the citation. 91 00:09:41.800 --> 00:09:45.200 And there was one legal scholar who said that it's no wonder 92 00:09:45.200 --> 00:09:49.960 you had this article published in a law review, because alone among professional 93 00:09:49.960 --> 00:09:51.760 journals they don't have peer review. 94 00:09:51.760 --> 00:10:00.760 Law reviews are run by law students, none of whom have any particular expertise in the areas that are covered by the articles that are submitted to them. 95 00:10:00.760 --> 00:10:07.760 So by and large, you sometimes will see law students who want to raise the visibility of their journal. 96 00:10:07.760 --> 00:10:18.760 So they will be very impressed by an article that debunks the conventional wisdom and bucks the tide and comes in at nearly 140 pages with over 600 footnotes. 97 00:10:18.760 --> 00:10:21.760 What's a law student to do if not print that? 98 00:10:21.760 --> 00:10:23.760 Well, there it is, but of course it's... 99 00:10:23.760 --> 00:10:26.760 So in other words, no matter how hair-brained your article is, 100 00:10:26.760 --> 00:10:29.760 you might have a chance getting it into a law review. 101 00:10:29.760 --> 00:10:31.760 But why do I raise John Yoo? 102 00:10:31.760 --> 00:10:36.760 Because I want to show that right now liberals, of course, have had a field day with John Yoo 103 00:10:36.760 --> 00:10:41.760 because he's also responsible for other notorious aspects of the Bush administration. 104 00:10:41.760 --> 00:10:46.760 But what I want to show is that when liberals, so-called, were in power, 105 00:10:46.760 --> 00:10:52.760 They had their people offering defenses of executive power in exactly the same way. 106 00:10:52.760 --> 00:11:03.760 In 1950 when Harry Truman went to war in Korea to repel the North Korean invasion of the South, 107 00:11:03.760 --> 00:11:11.760 Truman did so, of course, without a declaration of war, and it was Senator Robert Taft in the Senate 108 00:11:11.760 --> 00:11:15.920 Robert, who is known as Mr. Republican, who stood up and said, well this is obviously 109 00:11:15.920 --> 00:11:20.360 unconstitutional, it's obviously at odds with unbroken American practice, and you can 110 00:11:20.360 --> 00:11:24.600 read it in the congressional record, he's got a very long speech devoted to this. 111 00:11:24.600 --> 00:11:30.520 Well what did liberal establishment historians have to say about Robert Taft in those days? 112 00:11:30.520 --> 00:11:36.140 Well, Henry Steele Commager, who's an absolutely mainstream, typical liberal, you can predict 113 00:11:36.140 --> 00:11:39.080 everything he's going to say, there's no need ever to read anything he ever wrote, 114 00:11:39.080 --> 00:11:51.080 The Taft is just being unreasonable. Why? This is perfectly normal for the president to do this, sending countless hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans overseas. 115 00:11:51.080 --> 00:11:58.080 Of course that's perfectly normal. He said the Taft has no support in law or history for his crazy ravings. 116 00:11:58.080 --> 00:12:05.080 He said there is no basis in our own history for the distrust of the executive authority. This is a liberal. 117 00:12:05.080 --> 00:12:11.080 So again, remember Murray's warning about, well here's what we face, they're two sides of the same stinking coin. 118 00:12:11.080 --> 00:12:19.080 Well likewise, then you have Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who says that Taft's remarks were demonstratively irresponsible 119 00:12:19.080 --> 00:12:25.080 and that Taft and his friends were rewriting American history according to their own specifications. 120 00:12:25.080 --> 00:12:31.080 So when it comes to a democratic president launching a war and not consulting Congress, 121 00:12:31.080 --> 00:12:37.080 Well, we can't rush to his defense fast enough, coming up with contrived historical examples to support him. 122 00:12:37.080 --> 00:12:44.080 Well, by the 1960s, I'm at least happy to say these two historians had the honesty in the midst of the Vietnam War to start saying, 123 00:12:44.080 --> 00:12:47.080 gee, maybe Congress should have some authority over war. 124 00:12:47.080 --> 00:12:52.080 Well, duh. Thanks for being 15 years late on this one. I appreciate that. 125 00:12:52.080 --> 00:12:57.080 I mean, I always like seeing people rethinking their views, but not 15 years after it might have done any good. 126 00:12:57.080 --> 00:13:06.080 That's absolutely typical, and in fact what solidifies this point about left and right and how interchangeable the mainstream versions of them are, 127 00:13:06.080 --> 00:13:11.080 are these remarks by Congressman Howard Buffett from 1947. 128 00:13:11.080 --> 00:13:14.080 Now, Buffett was one of Murray Rothbard's favorite congressmen. 129 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:18.080 He said, I would actually get the congressional record so I could read this guy's speeches. 130 00:13:18.080 --> 00:13:22.080 Okay, there aren't many people for whom we would get this congressional record. 131 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:49.080 Congressman Buffett was talking about the Truman Doctrine, which of course amounted not simply to aid to Greece and Turkey, but to the much more ambitious program of global intervention to stop communism everywhere, and here's what Buffett said, looking around and noticing that nobody's dissenting from this. 132 00:13:49.080 --> 00:13:53.080 The mainstream of both parties are just rushing. They can't sign on for this fast enough. 133 00:13:53.080 --> 00:13:59.080 Buffett said, Mr. Speaker, the so-called Truman Doctrine is characterized by proponents 134 00:13:59.080 --> 00:14:04.080 as probably the most far-reaching change in American foreign policy in a hundred years. 135 00:14:04.080 --> 00:14:09.080 Many of its opponents contend it starts us on the road of militarism and imperialism. 136 00:14:09.080 --> 00:14:13.080 Whatever its consequences are, I rise to propound a solemn question. 137 00:14:13.080 --> 00:14:17.080 How in the existing political framework of this nation can the people of America, 138 00:14:17.080 --> 00:14:21.840 of America, if they so desire, effectively oppose this policy. 139 00:14:21.840 --> 00:14:25.900 The policy is sponsored by the Democratic Party and collaborated in by the Republican 140 00:14:25.900 --> 00:14:31.680 leadership. If the people disapprove of this adventure, as many polls indicate, what recourse 141 00:14:31.680 --> 00:14:37.520 is left them when neither party provides the vehicle for effective opposition? 142 00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:43.760 When the Republican leadership, without consulting the people, does a me too on decisive issues, 143 00:14:43.760 --> 00:14:49.120 What method do the people then have to effectively influence governmental policies? 144 00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:52.840 Under this situation, it would appear that the people are losing the all-important right 145 00:14:52.840 --> 00:14:58.400 to approve or reject decisive policies at the ballot box, for as matters now stand, 146 00:14:58.400 --> 00:15:03.960 neither party affords the people the opportunity to effectively oppose this global program. 147 00:15:03.960 --> 00:15:09.240 I respectfully urge the Republican leaders responsible for this collaboration to explain 148 00:15:09.240 --> 00:15:13.320 this situation fairly and forthrightly to the American people. 149 00:15:13.320 --> 00:15:18.120 The people are entitled to a full explanation of a political performance which apparently 150 00:15:18.120 --> 00:15:23.600 deprives the people of an effective voice in determining America's future. 151 00:15:23.600 --> 00:15:25.400 Well that's an interesting little speech isn't it? 152 00:15:25.400 --> 00:15:29.440 I've never heard it reproduced anywhere, right down the memory hole. 153 00:15:29.440 --> 00:15:37.160 But there it is, there's our dilemma, and there it is being expressed as early as 1947. 154 00:15:37.160 --> 00:15:42.160 Next year I have a kind of an anti-war anthology coming out that I've compiled with a gentleman 155 00:15:42.160 --> 00:15:46.720 on the left, but who's on the sort of real left, not the phony Hillary Clinton left, 156 00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:51.880 you know, I'll say whatever the rubes want me to say to get in office, but who actually 157 00:15:51.880 --> 00:15:56.420 does kind of believe in being opposed to slaughtering people for no good reason. I mean, he's that 158 00:15:56.420 --> 00:15:59.480 kind of leftist. You know, we disagree on everything else, we don't talk about anything 159 00:15:59.480 --> 00:16:04.520 else, but we have this fundamental sense that you should try to avoid killing hundreds of 160 00:16:04.520 --> 00:16:09.520 thousands of people for safe, for face-saving purposes or for no good reason. So we've come 161 00:16:09.520 --> 00:16:14.080 We've come together to put together some of the best anti-war writings in the American tradition, 162 00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:17.840 going through all the major wars and a lot of them are forgotten, 163 00:16:17.840 --> 00:16:21.800 a lot of these great speeches and articles and book excerpts and political cartoons, 164 00:16:21.800 --> 00:16:24.680 and they're from all over the spectrum and we're bringing them together. 165 00:16:24.680 --> 00:16:26.420 But when you read it though, 166 00:16:26.420 --> 00:16:29.820 again you can't tell whether you should be encouraged or depressed. 167 00:16:29.820 --> 00:16:30.620 Depressed, 168 00:16:30.620 --> 00:16:35.040 because so many of these wars are so similar to the Iraq war. We have this view that this was unusual, 169 00:16:35.040 --> 00:16:39.500 that the media was sort of complicit in this and they didn't give us all the information 170 00:16:39.500 --> 00:16:43.460 and the so-called opposition party is scratching its head, gee, we didn't know this. 171 00:16:43.460 --> 00:16:44.620 That's how they all are. 172 00:16:44.620 --> 00:16:45.860 They're all typically been that way. 173 00:16:45.860 --> 00:16:49.980 You always have a media that's complicit and then afterwards sometimes they apologize but 174 00:16:49.980 --> 00:16:50.980 it doesn't mean anything. 175 00:16:50.980 --> 00:16:52.500 They then go do the same thing again. 176 00:16:52.500 --> 00:16:57.820 I mean, going back into the 19th century you see this and so partly you think, good grief. 177 00:16:57.820 --> 00:17:02.880 How can we ever overturn this system if this is how it's always been? 178 00:17:02.880 --> 00:17:06.740 But on the other hand, perhaps we can be encouraged in that, well, apparently a lot of Americans 179 00:17:06.740 --> 00:17:07.940 have had to endure this. 180 00:17:07.940 --> 00:17:14.180 We're following in a tradition of an honorable resistance movement and I think for me, what 181 00:17:14.180 --> 00:17:19.460 is particularly encouraging and what has been encouraging for Ron Paul, as he has said repeatedly, 182 00:17:19.460 --> 00:17:23.940 is that he will go out, Ron Paul will have these big rallies and you get so many people 183 00:17:23.940 --> 00:17:24.940 showing up at them. 184 00:17:24.940 --> 00:17:30.100 When he has no media coverage, he has so many people showing up, young people, Rudy Giuliani 185 00:17:30.100 --> 00:17:36.100 has 17 people show up, you know, three of them are estranged wives or something, whatever. 186 00:17:36.100 --> 00:17:48.100 Well, the media can't give it enough coverage. Ron Paul's got 2,000 people at the University of Michigan. 187 00:17:48.100 --> 00:17:55.100 You can hear crickets among the media, nothing at all. But what's encouraging to me is that here's a guy who stands up, absolutely bucks the establishment, 188 00:17:55.100 --> 00:18:03.100 defies everything I've just covered here, asks the unaskable questions, finally asks, should we have an interventionist foreign policy at all? 189 00:18:03.100 --> 00:18:06.100 Should we bomb this or that one? Should we just have sanctions? 190 00:18:06.100 --> 00:18:09.100 Should we bomb that country? Maybe we should rethink the whole thing. 191 00:18:09.100 --> 00:18:15.100 And to see how many people show up and how many people this message resonates with, 192 00:18:15.100 --> 00:18:19.100 well, that is encouraging because I don't know how many people support us out there, 193 00:18:19.100 --> 00:18:24.100 but it is more than I thought. And when there are enough of us, 194 00:18:24.100 --> 00:18:29.100 well, perhaps something will happen. And right at the forefront, 195 00:18:29.100 --> 00:18:35.100 I'm absolutely convinced, as always, will be the Mises Institute and the great work of Lew Rockwell. 196 00:18:35.100 --> 00:18:37.100 So thank you all.