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The Betrayal Of The American Right QUOTES

The Betrayal Of The American Right QUOTES

1 " One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . ‘Libertarians’ . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over... "

― Murray N. Rothbard , The Betrayal Of The American Right

2 " I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty, and that the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms. . . . I believe in complete freedom of thought and speech—alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society. I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run. I believe in the reality of progress. I— But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant.8 "

― Murray N. Rothbard , The Betrayal Of The American Right

3 " It is all too true that the disease of most economists is to think solely in terms of a phantom 'efficiency,' and to believe that they can then make political pronouncements as pure value-free social technicians, divorced from ethics and the moral realm. While I was convinced that the free market was more efficient and would bring about a far more prosperous would than statism, my major concern was moral: the insight that coercion and aggression of one man over another was criminal and iniquitous, and must be combated and abolished. "

― Murray N. Rothbard , The Betrayal Of The American Right

4 " All sorts of people are for it. Numerous senators and representatives—of the Right and Left—have expressed their purpose to establish universal military training when the war ends. The great and glamorous industry is here—the industry of militarism. And when the war is ended the country is going to be asked if it seriously wishes to demobilize an industry that can employ so many men, create so much national income when the nation is faced with the probability of vast unemployment in industry. All the well-known arguments, used so long and so successfully in Europe … will be dusted off—America with her high purposes of world regeneration must have the power to back up her magnificent ideals; America cannot afford to grow soft, and the Army and Navy must be continued on a vast scale to toughen the moral and physical sinews of our youth; America dare not live in a world of gangsters and aggressors without keeping her full power mustered … and above and below and all around these sentiments will be the sinister allurement of the perpetuation of the great industry which can never know a depression because it will have but one customer—the American government to whose pocket there is no bottom.16 "

― Murray N. Rothbard , The Betrayal Of The American Right