 I'm going to be talking informally, anecdotally, about a whole bunch of things. And I don't know how many people have seen the movie Gone With The Wind. My students haven't seen it. My students consider an example of an old movie to be Platoon. But if you remember Gone With The Wind, it starts with a scrolling about this world that has disappeared, that once existed, and so on. And that's how I'm going to start, where the world that once existed and now is gone forever. About the best thing my parents have it did for me was to move us from Italian Harlem, where I was born, up to the Bronx. And Italian Harlem, which is now Spanish Harlem, the Barrio, who knows if I'd stayed there, would have wound up maybe like some of my cousins selling cartons of cigarettes at fellow trucks. But moving up to the Bronx, that was a world that has disappeared. It had a population then, as it does now, of about a million. And by census, there were 500,000 Jews. I think people outside of New York City don't know what it means to have one. And that wasn't even Brooklyn, with a million and a half Jews, or Manhattan had more Jews. It was a very Jewish city. I was raised among the Jews, and it made a very big difference in my life. Among other things, I went to the Bronx High School of Science. There are still three high schools in New York that you get into by examination. And thankfully, they have not given into affirmative action. There's Bronx Science, Stuyvesant High School, and in Brooklyn, which is a different world that I don't know anything about, Brooklyn Poly. Bronx High School of Science, again, at that time, they were almost all Jews. There were a few Gentiles like myself. In my neighborhood, there were a handful of Gentiles. There were mainly Irish kids who went to the parochial school. And they were the tough guys, because they could actually get into fights and use their fists. And they intimidated the Jews and me and everybody else. But they didn't wind up very well. So at Bronx Science, that made a very big difference. I don't go to reunions in my high school. I'm listed, for instance, as a contributing editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. One of the fellows who graduated with me, Joe Lilleveld, became executive editor of the New York Times. So I've already had high school reunions. But at Bronx Science, a number of things. First of all, to be among these real smart kids. By the way, there's still examinations for those schools. But now, in Bronx Science, there are almost all Orientals. And as for the Bronx itself, whites altogether, mainly Italians, but whites altogether are the third largest ethnic group in the Bronx. So that's a different world also. Now, at Bronx Science, I met George Reisman. I'm not saying this ranks with the Cobden meeting bright or Mark's meeting angles, but it made a certain difference. We formed a free enterprise group. But now, the kids were all Jewish and pretty bright. But the great majority of students were leftists. There were some commies there. That is the children of commies. Sally Belfridge was one of the leading British communists, leaders of the British Communist Party. Robert Williamson was the son of one of the 11 top communists put on trial under the Smith Act. I.F. Stone, one of his sons, was there. So there's a definite leftist tendency. I remember that Debbie Weisstein went around collecting money for the defense of the Rosenbergs. Now, that had to have been a rather rare occurrence in American high schools at that time. She didn't do too badly. But George and I, and George will tell you tomorrow how we met, rather one-sided and distorted interpretation. But we formed a free enterprise group and started making a limited number of converts. Now, one of the younger fellows that we met was a kid named Bill Schultz. And I see that he's in the news now, because he's become a Republican, and they're pushing him now into position of leadership in the PBS. The Republicans are going to try to take over public broadcasting. And so he had an interview when he talked about Bronx Science, and he said that oddly enough, we had this free enterprise conservative libertarian group there. Schultz went on to become, I think, the editor of the Reader's Digest, which was not improved with his leadership. Reader's Digest had published a synopsis of Hayek's Road to Serfdom. It published a synopsis of John T. Flynn's The Road Ahead. They were really old right. And then now they're another neocon rag, really. But Schultz mentioned that there had been this group. But he came under the influence of another friend of ours, Bob Shuckman. Now, Shuckman went on to become a protege of Bill Buckley's and became the first president of YAF, the Young Americans for Freedom. As far as George and I went, we had other acolytes. Among them, maybe most significantly, we converted Bob Hessen, Robert Hessen, now finishing a career at the Hoover Institution, who has written a number of books on defense of the corporation, and so on. Now, one thing that will maybe surprise some people, while we were free enterprise, a private property against militarism, but we were also supporters of Senator Joe McCarthy. George delivered a notorious speech on behalf of Roy Cohen at a famous dinner in New York, which I think he maybe will give you an excerpt of tomorrow. Let me explain what this McCarthy thing was about. McCarthy, of course, nowadays is maybe what have been taught this by your teachers. He ranks, let alone with fascist dictators, is another palpate. And one of the worst people who ever lived, there was a reign of terror under McCarthy, and so on, a bunch of nonsense. The impetus behind the McCarthy movement was this. This was 1950 when McCarthy started. And it was only 10 years less than since there had been an anti-war isolationist movement called America First. And they had been subjected to the worst mirrors in American history. All of the administration, all of the so-called liberal media, painted them as Nazis. One of them, for instance, was a political correspondent of the New York Daily News, which was an isolationist right-wing paper at the time. And at a press conference in Washington, Roosevelt went over to him and wheeled himself over. Or called him over. And gave him an iron cross for service to the Reich. I mean, here's an American reporter who's been humiliated this way by the president of the United States. What is he going to do? Another Nazi, so-called, just because he was anti-war and isolationist. The administration constantly had this theme, that anybody who was against Roosevelt's policy was a Nazi. OK, well, now it was payback time. And all of these people, like John T. Flynn and Murray was kind of the tail end of the thing, were able to get back to these people that called them Nazis. Because, in fact, the Roosevelt administration was riddled with communists. The undersecretary of the treasury committed suicide. Harry Dexter White was a communist agent. Lachlan Curry, who had access to the White House, communist agent. Al-Jahiss, of course. There is evidence that Harry Hopkins was considered by the Soviets an agent of influence. Now, if that didn't make you a spying tingle, I don't know what I could possibly say to horrifying, terrifying you. Harry Hopkins lived in the White House. He was Roosevelt's closest confidant. He was, to Roosevelt, his colonel house had been to Woodrow Wilson. Harry Hopkins was a great friend of Eleanor's, and so on. And I say there's evidence now from the Soviet archives that the Soviets considered him an agent of influence. So now, Joe McCarthy, over the top, of course, he was over the top. George Marshall was not a communist agent, and on, and so on, and so on. But there certainly had been a communist. And it was for what McCarthy stood for, which was a great counterattack to what had been done to us by the left. So we had this group at Bronx Science surrounded by leftists. But I would say we sort of held our own. There was one time, I don't know if George remembers, which I think is very funny. See, we were on a McCarthyist phase. In the great auditorium there, the old building at Bronx Science, there were the flags of the major nations of the United Nations. Remember, George? And then the principal was Dr. Lamb. And George and I went over to him. And we pointed out that the Soviet flag was there also. And we said, we don't think that should be there. And these college administrators totally scared wimps. Give in to any black takeover of the administration bill. He gave in to us and took down the Soviet flag. I mean, what we could have done if he hadn't done it, I don't know, take an over-Bronk science. Well, then the time came when we discovered the foundation for economic education. The way that happened was I spent a lot of time writing letters to the editors of newspapers. And they didn't check it at that time. And I used different names, ethnic names, and whatever, try to make a point. But under my own name, I sent in a letter to a small magazine that was called USA Today. No, USA. There's a little conservative pocket-sized magazine. And they had written an article saying that the capitalists own the means of production and they do very well by the people. And by that time, George had introduced me to Mises. And somewhere, Mises says something to the effect that someone who owns property is the person who disposes of property. And in a capitalist system, it's the consumers, while they're buying an abstention from buying who dispose of property. So I sent in a letter saying that according to the literature, Mises, it's really the consumers who own the factories and other property in the United States, total garbage, of course. But nonetheless, they published it. And somebody at Fee in Irvington noticed it. And I got a letter from them. By the way, Foundation for Economic Education is located in Irvington, New York, in a gorgeous house. It was founded in 1947 or so by Leonard Reed. And they had a very big influence for a long time. The first people who published Bastiat in the US, for instance, and to give you an idea of what that sort of thing means, we have a friend, Henry LePage. I was a fine free market man, active in France and in Europe. And he said he had never heard of Bastiat in all of his education, including higher education, until he came to the US and saw Bastiat's the law published by Fee. Well, anyway, Fee was, as I've written elsewhere, the Gibraltar of Liberty and has been for 50 years. It's still in existence. And a friend of ours, a friend of the Institute's, Dr. Richard Ebelink, now runs it with his wife and Dr. Anna Ebelink. They're doing a very good job. I was up there a few months ago. So George and I went up there. And we met the old crowd, starting with Leonard Reed and Bettina Bean, if she was at the time. Bettina Bean, Graves, Baldi Harper. Baldi Harper was the founder of IHS. And his name actually was F.A. Harper. He was called Baldi Harper, not because he was bald, but he had a brother who was bald. For some reason, he was called Baldi Harper. So this is the guy who founded the Institute for Humane Studies, is what we're talking about. And Henry Haslett was associated with them. And we met up there. And then one time, George and I were invited to their annual Board of Trustees meeting. I didn't come from a very affluent background in the Bronx. I think I guess I had a suit of some kind. Anyway, we met them downtown in front of the Waldorf. There was the head of what? The head of DuPont? No, Jasper Crane, one of the vice presidents. They had some big corporations and so on. And we were driven up there to make a little speech. Hardly to believe, perhaps, but George Reisman and I were poster boys for free enterprise and for the foundation for economic education. It was a long time ago. Now, through fee, we were then voted an invitation to the Mises Seminar at NYU. And that made a hell of a lot of difference. I might say, George was already familiar with the Mises. He had read Socialism, introduced me to Socialism. I was a big anti-communist because I read the Hearst Press. And also, I'd read The Roast to Serfdom. I'd heard about this guy, Hayek. Somebody finally corrected me who'd written that. But George introduced me to Mises. And George, I guess it's been going on for a long time now, was so involved in. I don't want to say obsessed because there's nothing wrong about it at all, but he was so involved with economics. For a long time, he carried around a book called The State in Relation to Labor by Stanley Jevons, which I looked at. And Stanley Jevons was one of the founders of the Marginalist Revolution, which has to be one of the dullest things that I haven't even looked at. The idea of carrying it around. But George had to read and absorb and debate with every sentence in this book. This is the way he handled economics. I'm talking about when he was 16, by the way, at the time. So we went down to the Mises Seminar. And as I say, that made a tremendous amount of difference. The first night, we met Murray. And we went out to have a bite afterwards, as I remember. I don't know if the George's memory is the same, but I think that I'm pretty sure this is what happened. Well, Murray obviously was somebody very different. He was a different sort of person than we were used to meeting, different even from the fee types. For one thing, he had a kind of wicked sly sense of humor. What do you think of Mises, Murray? Well, no doubt the greatest economist of the century, one of the greatest economists of all time. But politically speaking, Murray said, some of us consider him part of the non-communist left. Well, that was the start of what we called the Circle Bastiat. There was Murray, there was George, there was my friend Leonard Ligio. Oh, I should mention that George and I had been involved in the Taft campaign. Robert Taft. OK, not the Taft campaign. And that's how I met Leonard also in the Taft campaign. And George, did you go around with us collecting petitions to put a Taft delegate elected to the Republican Convention? Well, I did, and there were a couple of others. I forget, Leonard was in Georgetown by that time. But this was before the 52 convention. And there weren't many Republicans in New York. So there were a few of us going around, proselytizing for this guy. I forget his name, he was a young fellow, Richard Somebody, who was going to be elected from the Southern District of Manhattan. And not many Republicans. He was elected to the Republican Convention. And this was the last great convention, really. I mean, there's nothing now. But that was an exciting convention. Up to the last minute, it wasn't certain whether Eisenhower or Taft would be nominated. And the Eisenhower people clenched it by promising Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, if we would throw California to them. Nixon to be a vice president. But anyway, we did elect this guy. And when Taft was nominated, he was one of the seconders. The Taft people wanted to show that there was Taft support even in New York City. So I'm going to tell the poor guy was trembling. I mean, obviously, his mortgage had already been foreclosed by the New York banks. They were getting rid of all of his friends, and liquidating their businesses, and so on. He was taking his life and his career into his own hands for seconding Taft, and nothing was heard from him afterwards. But that was an exciting campaign. But we're talking about a few years after that, but that's how I met Leonard. And Leonard Ligio has been a friend ever since. And so other people in the Circle of Boston, well, there was Ronald Hammerway. Now, Ron was an old friend of George's. But Ron had liberal tendencies. I think George pretty much converted him and then drew him on to Murray and so on, and that settled it. There was Bob Hessen. There were a few other people. There was Fred Pryzinger, who was not too mature afterwards. There was my friend Bruce Goldberg, then went to Princeton and converted Nozick to the libertarian position for a while. And anyway, this went on for a number of years until people left. I went to grad school in 59. But this went on for a number of years, the Circle of Bastia. We'd meet quite often, always in Murray's apartment. And then maybe we'd go to a movie, be incessant conversation. Murray had this magnificent library, and he just had read more than anybody had ever met up until that time, except maybe for Mises. And anything came up. He'd go and take one of his books out and show a passage. He introduced us to H. L. Menken. He introduced me and others to revisionism. And we began reading revisionist books. And Murray impressed on me the importance of revisionism. It just, revisionism in regard to the World War and regard to American history in general, it just shows the state for the joke it is, the murderous joke that it is, and always has been. And Murray also brought us in his direction of, what shall I call it? Not to say anything inflammatory, of the totally voluntary society, OK? If anybody asks you, that's what we're talking about, the totally voluntary society. Sort of super Jeffersonianism, that's all. There's nothing more than that. Now, this was one of the most enjoyable times of my life, and I think of others as well, these times. And first of all, there was the total hospitality and generosity of the Rothbard. Joey would very often make special snacks for us. They were having drinks all the time. Like a typical kid, it never occurred to me to bring a bottle of wine. Just sort of accepting the generosity at face value, but it was always totally open-handed. And I say we went to movies sometimes, played board games. Most of us liked most were games that involved taking over the world. There's a game called Risk, for instance, which I maybe still played, I don't know. Is it really? Yeah. Is it really? Yeah. And Murray enjoyed that, except Murray tended to be very defensive. He rarely attacked anybody, but he tried to encourage other people to attack each other. And Ron was always very good at board games. But there was an endless conversations about every topic, politics, of course. But one thing I remember most were the laughs. Murray was the funniest, wittiest person I've ever met in my life. And Ron Hamaway in those days was a close second. Just it would be impossible to convey to you the sort of thing that went on. George was very, very funny. Was very good. I was pretty good also. Leonard once in a while would throw in some funny remark. But it was, well, and I don't want to say the Salon or Madame de Steyl or anything, or some pre-revolutionary French Salon. But the sort of thing that if you transcribed it, I'm not sure much would come over. But we were constantly in stitches. And there was also then, of course, the Mises seminar that George attended for many years. And it was through Murray that I met Einrand. And that most of us met Einrand. There's no merit on my part, just some kid about your age. But Murray, the Iranians were grooming for possible inclusion in a circle. It was obviously somebody worth converting. So it was a very interesting experience. By myself, I attended the fiction lectures at Ein's place. And met Einrand and their group a number of times. But the time that sticks out is the night that we went over to discuss Atlas Shrugged. I don't know if it was then or shortly after that, PCAF said, we've come up with a name for our movement. And we will reveal it soon. And that was going to be Objectivism. But now, Atlas had come out. This was 57. And we'd all bought copies. And we're reading it like crazy and calling each other up like mad about what happened then and what happened then and so on. And now finally finished with the book and went to Ein's place. He invited us for a discussion of Atlas Shrugged. And the only time in my life I've ever taken Benzedrine to stay up, just five in the morning or something. And then afterwards, we went to the automatic that was open all night on 42nd Street. But it was a quite memorable evening. Now, Ein was a brilliant, one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. And one of the good things that's happened in my life is I've met a number of very, very bright people. She was a brilliant woman. She was charismatic. Now, the word charisma is used by the press all the time. John Edwards doesn't have that much charisma. And any crumb bum politician is supposed to have some charisma or something. When Max Weber came up with the term, charisma is people who have it to the nth degree, Jesus and Muhammad. I mean, it's not for any damn Republican or Democratic American political. But Ein definitely had charisma. She was an attractive woman. She wasn't pretty in any obvious way, but she was attractive. One thing that was attractive about her is that she had this philosophy about how great men are. I always think that the man is a more perfect creature than a woman. Tell us more. All right. Now, to my mind, engaging an endearing thing about her is that she enjoyed flattery. You know, when she died, at Dinkwee magazine, I commissioned an obituary by Roy Childs that was the best obituary that I saw of her. She came to America penniless. She had menial jobs. She worked as a wardrobe consultant in Hollywood. She kept writing. She finished Fountainhead and sent it to 17 publishers who turned it down until Bob's Merrill and Indianapolis are finally published. It's 17 publishers turned it down. Altogether, she wrote what she wanted to write. She became a millionaire. She became famous. She had followers. She crafted a philosophy that attracted thousands and thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. And she died, maybe not a happy woman, but certainly she'd achieved a great, great deal in her life. And I will always respect her. And Roy sums it up in his obituary. However, by that time, at first, she was good friends with people like Leonard Reed, with Henry Haslett, with Rose Wild Elaine, Isabel Patterson, and so on. But by that time, she'd accumulated some of these Canadians. But nothing against Canadians. I live across the border from them. They're wonderful people. Actually, probably too wonderful. Anyway, these were not typical Canadians. The Brandens, as they were called themselves, Nathaniel and Barbara, and Peacoff, and then some others also. And I can't help but think that that was a kind of downfall for her. In other words, she was not then in contact with people who were equal, or whom she could respect. In a normal way, these were worshipers of her. And Nathaniel Brandon, especially. Now, so we fell under their spell, as well as her spell. But what Acton said of Edmund Burke, the political philosopher, that men have made reputations out of crumbs that fell from Burke's table. And Peacoff and the Brandens, and so on, and those types, that's what I think about them. They made reputations out of crumbs that fell from Ein's table. She was the creator. They were the second raiders, the hangers on, whatever they called them. And that led then for difficulties that George is going to be talking about, I think, tomorrow between Murray Rothbard on the one hand, and Rand and the circle of hers. A major bone of contention was that Joey Rothbard was a practicing, believing Christian. And if Murray was to be initiated into this inner circle, then he could not be married to a Christian. I remember. So Joey, not the good soldier she was. We went one time downtown. I mean, it's at Columbia. Ernest Nagel was giving a lecture on atheism. So she sat through that. Her Christianity was based on faith. It wasn't going to be shaken by anything that some philosopher like Nagel had to say. So Joey remained a Christian. And Murray, irrationally, insanely, neurotically, remained in love with his wife. And so that, I think, maybe was the beginning of the split. And then it came to that. And unfortunately, a lot of other people split also, including George and me. Now, at this time, in 1959, I went to Chicago. I was admitted to the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago and to the grad school. I had a pretty good entree, because Mises wrote a nice letter to Hayek, a letter of recommendation on my behalf. And incidentally, by the way, Hayek taught on the Committee on Social Thought. He did not teach in the economics department. The economics department of Stigler and Friedman did not think that Hayek was sufficiently as scientific to teach economics in their scientific department. Still, the University of Chicago, when it lists the Nobel laureates and so on, lists the Nobel Prize at Hayek one for economics. Now, as I studied with Hayek, who's the head of my dissertation committee, there's a very big difference between Hayek and Mises as teachers. Hayek told me, frankly, one time that he only taught in order to be able to make a living to do his writing. I didn't really care to teach. Mises, I think, from every indication, loved teaching, loved teaching students, opening minds. Hayek, well, they were both ennobled in an Austrian way, but I think that Hayek's title was maybe older or something. Anyway, Hayek was more of an Austrian nobleman. He was always polite, always civil, but distant. Mises was a much warmer person by far. Opened his house a number of times to social gatherings. And one time, there was a social gathering there. I remember I appeared on television. I must have been the first of not that many times that I've been on television. I was in high school at the time on a program called Youth Wants to Know. Well, we did. And the editor, or some publisher of the New York Times, Salzburger, I think, was there being questioned. And head of the history department at Bronx Science had selected me. And I said, if you're in favor of human freedom, how could you be in favor of a slave army? But he conscripted an army based on conscription. And he said, well, what about the revolutionary Minutemen? I don't know, some nonsense. When I went back to Bronx Science, they weren't too happy. Oh, there was live TV in those days. But anyway, from that TV appearance, the first time my name was ever in one of those name plates that you get at conferences and so on. So I brought along as a souvenir, put it in the closet with my coat. And then when the time came for us all to leave, Mises was handing out coats, held up my name. Who does this belong to? That is my name plate that said Ralph Raker. It was a mild joke, but it was a better joke than Hayek ever made. So but Hayek was as helpful as you wanted him to be. He gave one class in the history of economic thought that it was very ordinary, as I learned afterwards from looking at ordinary texts. But the main thing was that the Committee on Social Thought, the instructor, the people, gave tutorials. You selected a book, and a number of people might have selected the same book. And you read some parts of it, or read the book, and then you meet with somebody to discuss it. And Hayek was at his best then. One nice thing is that he gave me his own personal notes. He was kind of collecting notes, typed up notes. And his whole batch of personal notes on Benjamin Konstan, who at that time was totally unknown in the Anglophone world. I mean, history's a political thought. Didn't mention him at the time. Now he's become a big deal. So Konstan became the chief subject of my doctoral dissertation. If I'd published it back then, it would have made a difference, because now there's any number of books on Konstan. But then that was a novelty. But I have to admit that probably the main thing that I did at Chicago was not even so much class work at all. By the way, something I should mention, the same thing about Bronx Science, about college, about grad school. Often you learn more from your fellow students than you do from professors. And that certainly has been the case often with me. So I was at Chicago. And now I was in 1959. And then in the next year, Ronald Hammerway came to Chicago, also on the Committee on Social Thought. And Ron is the one who had the idea that we should put out a magazine. So you put out a magazine called New Individualist Review. You'll find it in the library here, or you can even get a paperback edition of it. The whole run of the magazine was reprinted by Liberty Press. OK? And I love this, we all love this magazine. I was the editor-in-chief, you can see here. The first article in our first issue is called Capitalism and Freedom. It was the first chapter of the book that Friedman was about to publish at that time. And Milton, Friedman, and Hayek, and a conservative philosopher named Richard Weaver were our faculty advisors. Afterwards, Stigler became an advisor also, and Ben Rogge from Wabash, the great old right type. You can see this is the whole run of the magazine. And there's some highlights. There's Ron's evisceration of William Buckley. There's Mies's review of man economy and state. And Otto von Hapsburg sent us an article, which I forget which issue it's in, that we published. People were just, we didn't pay anything, of course. We didn't have any salary. But people sent us an article. It was Altschitz sent in an article. Demsets, Stigler sent us on the intellectuals in the marketplace. And Murray, of course, nobody wrote as quickly and as well as Murray did. And he sent us in a bunch of articles. So there was Ron. There was myself. Our business manager was Sam Peltzman. Now Peltzman went on to become the editor of the Journal of Political Economy. And he's now retiring from the business school at the Chicago. Sam was a very good business manager. He also, we guessed because we could never find him at fault here, he knew the name of everybody on a subscription list. There were a limited number, about 1,200 or so. But we'd give out plays in the Annapolis or whatever and he'd come up with the name. There was a fellow who died young, Robert Hurt, who was high considered him as a best student at that time. There was Robert Schrodinger and also some conservative types. So there was a tension on the editorial board and we had to sort of balance articles. I never published any outright warmongering type but also had to tone down some of the things Murray wrote. Actually, you always had to tone down some of the things Murray wrote. But a whole bunch of people, like a number of people anyway, became libertarians at the time. The only thing that was going really in the country, not that it was that famous or that great, but it certainly had a certain amount of respectability. It was at that time, well, it's 64 actually, that Ron and Bob Hurt and Schrodinger and I were enlisted, admitted en masse into the Montpelloran Society. Again, kind of poster boys of those people who had been around for so long. Well, those are some of the highlights of this thing that might seem to you, really old fashioned, out of date perhaps, of interest for that reason. It was a different world. It was a world before iPods. Not that I even know what the hell an iPod is. But I've heard the term. I think it's something modern. And it was extremely interesting and curious and enlightening. And for me, the center of it was Murray Rothbard. Well, we have a few minutes. Why don't we, why doesn't anybody say what they want to say or ask questions or comment? Yeah, Ryan. How did one find readers and subscribers to Google's Google app? Well, we were advertised by ISI, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, at that time. At first, they gave us a little bit of a subsidy. But we wanted to be independent. And we got money from, Friedman was very good at that, raising money from Chicago businessmen. I mean, anything. If Friedman wanted $500 or $1,000 for some cause, it wasn't hard for him to raise it. So they helped us out. And would it have been an advertiser to find a way? No, we didn't have much of it. We didn't have an advertising budget. By word of mouth, yes? I've heard George Schoops. You've heard of? I've heard George Schoops speak of his days in Chicago. I'm not sure it was the time you were there, but you spoke about how everybody was a robot, almost a few rather exchange of ideas. Everybody challenged everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that was the- Everybody loved to argue with Bill Friedman. Uh-huh. So they went Friedman plus the fact. Yeah, that was the economics department. And they certainly had arguments among themselves. I think it's some famous occasion, Coase delivered his paper one on the firm or something. And at first, nobody agreed with him. On social costs. On social costs, yeah. And nobody agreed with him, and then he won everybody over. It was within limits, I would say. It was an intellectually robust and active place. But there were limits. Austrians were off limits, right? I have a question. You mentioned that Mesa's review of man and economy state, how did he like it? How do you read it? How do you like it? Yeah, fine. What is review positive? Yeah, he liked it fine. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I think it was probably the best review that it got, yeah. Well, Ralph, you ended your narrative around 1965 or so. Would you share anything? No, well. No, well, I mean, I'm talking about the memories of the circle Bastiat and Maureen and Hayek. Of course, I knew Maureen until the end of his life. Hayek I didn't really keep in touch with. The summer, the first summer he went and started teaching at Freiburg, I went, Bruce Goldberg and I went there and we attended his course at Freiburg. But not really kept in touch with Mesa's on and off, but of course with Murray pretty constantly. And we attended our I and Ron and other people who had been admitted to the MPS attended more Pellerin meetings, so he met all these people, Bruno Leone and many, many of them, all of the old timers. But Peter, did you ask that question? Well, as you probably know, there are certain things in the past four decades or so that I'm not really a liberty to talk about. It was that whole ugly CIA time in Vietnam, what? I got it to the... Right, yeah. People that were there that you didn't mention were Paul Smith and Joe Peden and Larry Moss and Jerry Walsh and Walter Berner. Yeah, except for, Joe Peden came in with Leonard. But except for him, they came somewhat later, as you did, for instance. And it was a big discussion, should Walter be allowed in? I got bigger plans. What? I got there around 66. Yeah, okay. No, but since I left a number of years, I was still in the Midwest then. And in 66, I was teaching at Wabash, first college teaching job and my best. Well, there was a very small town, Crawfordville, Indiana, population of 12,000. Before that, the smallest city I'd ever lived in was Paris, where I was an exchange student for a year. And being in a small Midwestern town, I was telling some other people about this before, was a cultural shock. And I'm sure things have changed now. In those days in Crawfordville, Indiana, you could only purchase olive oil in a pharmacy. Because it was considered a medicine, it was used for ear aches. There were an enormous number of churches in this town. It was a Catholic church, but now there are every possible Protestant denomination. But the students were really very good, and it's still a very good school. And Ben Rogie was a great guy, real old right type. By the way, at that time, he was the main advisor to Pierre Goodrich, who was in the process of founding the Liberty Fund. And I met Pierre Goodrich also, which by the way, nobody at the Liberty Fund has ever done. And Pierre Goodrich was a great guy. And I remember that personally, he was somewhat frugal, or maybe just thought that people should depend on themselves. When we all went out for a beer, I paid for my own beer, a buck. But that was fine. I certainly don't resent it or even remember it, frankly. But what I'm getting at is this other major institution, maybe you heard about the Liberty Fund, not only Liberty Books, but these Liberty Conferences. This was something that Ben Rogie was the main advisor to Pierre Goodrich about. And unfortunately, Ben died a few years after that. But the whole slant of the Liberty Fund was towards Austrian economics, Pierre Goodrich, for instance, in effect, Missessian economics and Missessian social policy. Pierre Goodrich had a detailed critique of the Constitution of Liberty and towards a non-interventionist foreign policy. But now everything changes. And now the followers of Leo Strauss have a big say there. Although, to do them justice, they have so many conferences, they still have some conferences that deal with some of Pierre's favorite ideas. Jeff and I were discussing this earlier. Did you recall about Pierre Goodrich, how voluntary would he be? How much in a voluntary direction would he be? I don't know what you mean. What? I was told it's a totally voluntary society. No, I'm afraid, I think that, I don't want to say I'm afraid, I think that he believed in constitutional government and the original sense of the founders. You know, which of good luck. But he was of the old right type. He was one of the founders of human events, one of the financiers. He had been in the America First movement so many years before. But let me say this, he was an independent businessman. He made his own money, his own fortune, nothing to do with the Goodrich family, I mean the entire people. He was a lawyer, he owned some coal mines in southern Indiana. He owned some independent Indiana phone company in those days. A total anomaly, but yeah, Indiana is an independent phone company, so he made a whole bunch of money. But he was really very interested in ideas. Constantly, even in a poor Ben Rogan, 12 o'clock at night he'll call him up and say, well what about this passage from the Book of Kings or something, something from the Bible? Or he said he was going to leave a lot of money to Wabash on the condition that they become a free enterprise college. But I mean that's not what the school was for. So they declined, but he did give them money. And he built a very nice big room, a small school to the whole faculty could meet there. And on the wall, all the great, his mind, the great molders of human thought from ancient times and then Jesus Christ is there and then it ends with Adam Smith. There's not a cross there, but it's significant the juxtaposition of those two names, Jesus Christ and Adam Smith, and then all the great philosophers and thinkers in between. And he collected a personal library that included many of those people who was constantly reading. It was the opposite of any kind of organization man in business. It really was an original. I don't know what went wrong, but there seemed to be originals in those days that nowadays you don't find anymore. People like I, or Mankin, or Isabelle Patterson. Well, yeah? There's someone behind you. There's someone behind me doing what? Well, you're in Chicago. Do you ever see high and take-off treatment on the issue of clothing and change rates? Did anyone ever take them off on that issue? If I could, I blanked it out of my mind. I was telling somebody before these early meetings of the Montpeleran Society that we went to in the early 60s, that's what they constantly discussed. I still have no idea what it means. Floating versus fixed exchange rates. Who could possibly be interested in something like that? No, see, Hayek was not in his social and political thought period. He was just finishing the Constitution of Liberty. And I never saw them get into any kind of economic argument. I think the differences between them, they had agreed to disagree on. Ralph, in the period that you've spoken about, particularly the Sturmovastia days in the Rothbard living room, that must have been a very heady time. The individualist movement was fairly small. There was a tremendous sense of excitement, challenging the establishment. The people were doing great things. As you survey the landscape today, looking back, the libertarian movement is much larger. It's more established in a sense. You already mentioned that some institutions and organizations that were more fewer in those days are not so fewer today, but there are many more institutions. This is important to make this happen. Could you just comment briefly on where you think intellectually, academically, the individualist movement has gone. What are the greatest successes, greatest disappointments? Well, yeah, the takeover of the right by the militarist conservatism that Murray wrote about was very important. But as far as the libertarian, true libertarian movement, the real libertarian movement, and you can't call somebody's in favor of invading the world a libertarian as far as I'm concerned, but what can I tell you? I mean, back then, none of us could have conceived of even a gathering like this and of the work of the Mises Institute. I'll tell you, Murray, we know, since he lived late enough, was thrilled by what the Mises Institute did and was doing, and Mises would have been, I think, quietly very, very pleased. So, in that way, yeah, and it goes on, and Murray was an optimist, I don't know. To what extent that's justified, but it goes on and short of some awful, awful thing like a war clamped down of a dictatorship on the U.S., which is virtually going to happen if there's some really terrible nuclear terrorist attack or something, it's going to be martial law. And probably some of these people in this room will be arrested, I'm not saying that they shouldn't be. But short of that, the libertarian movement is going to survive. And there are more people who realize what a joke the government is, what a terrible, burdensome, murderous, awful, sick joke the present-day government is. Well, I think that's about it. Anybody who wants to talk about any of this with me in the next few days, feel free, and thank you.