 Justin Romando is best known as the editor of antiwar.com, where he writes a steady barrage of columns exposing the U.S. government's war machine. Uncompromising and defiant, Justin is one of the most unheralded journalists working today. His work is too incendiary for mainstream publications and way outside the bounds of any left-right paradigm. But he's not only a voice against war and empire, he's had a huge influence on the modern libertarian movement for decades. He was a friend and associate of the late Murray Rothbard, and in 2000 produced a biography of Murray titled An Enemy of the State. We discussed the early history of the modern libertarian movement and his time working with Murray Rothbard on libertarian strategy and the chances for developing a broad new antiwar coalition. Stay tuned. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mises Weekends. This is Jeff Deist. We're joined today from the San Francisco Bay Area by Justin Romando. How are you today? I'm good. Thanks very much for coming on today. There's a lot going on in the world. But let me just back you up a little bit and get into something that's a little more high level. In your bio, you still have the term paleo-libertarian as a moniker for yourself. Can you tell me from your perspective what paleo means to today's libertarian movement? In my bio, where? On Wikipedia? I mean, I didn't write that. Are you saying Wikipedia is not true? Well, like we all know that everything on the Internet is true. Though, I would defend that label. I think that the word paleo means going back to your roots. I think that we should go back to our roots as libertarians, keeping in mind that the non-aggression principle is what we are all about. We are not for any cultural lifestyle and that, you know, lifestyleism is a danger that has to be avoided. So I would agree with the paleo label and I think it's still valid. Even though Lou has kind of renounced it, I have a sentimental attachment to it. Well, in terms of your own development, you're a young guy growing up in New York State, I guess Westchester County, so not quite New York City, but not quite upstate. Catholic kid, is there anything about your childhood that made you into a natural or reflexive libertarian? Oh, boy. Well, yeah. I mean, I was always a difficult kid and, you know, I could have been a juvenile delinquent easily and then I read Ayn Rand and I became a libertarian and, you know, growing up Catholic was very important to me. The Catholic Church, even though I rejected the whole idea of God early on, my interactions with the local Jesuit seminaries. I lived in Yorktown Heights, New York, where I was brought up and up on the hill there was the big headquarters of a Jesuit and in exploring the woods one day, we came upon, you know, the seminary and I, you know, I started talking to them and they were talking about St. Thomas Aquinas, you know, philosophy, and of course, my parents were thrilled. They went, oh, he's going to be a priest. And not quite, but I was taken with their engagement with ideas, which I didn't get at school and I didn't get from my classmates, certainly. So that was an influence on me. And, you know, I joined a libertarian movement when I was maybe 15 years old. And of course, back then we were a tiny little movement that was mostly teenagers and they're mimeograph machines. I don't know if anybody remembers what mimeograph machines are, but it was an early form of publishing and we had our little fanzines. We were all young Americans for freedom. So it was that generation of the libertarian movement that I belong to. And of course, I'm thrilled today to see that we are now a relatively mass movement and I have trouble believing it. But anyway, well, let's talk about your time being a libertarian before the digital age was upon us. Obviously, you knew Marie Rothbard as far back as the 1980s and you were involved with him in libertarian strategy and the LP. You ultimately wrote a biography of Marie. Tell me about that time and what you really remember about him. Oh, boy, Marie was a friend. I met Marie in 1978 when the Cato Institute was founded in San Francisco. And we were the local libertarians and we were thrilled to hear that the Cato Institute was coming to San Francisco. This was the big news. So, you know, I went down there and met Roy Childs and I had on my hands an article that I wanted him to publish in libertarian review and he was thrilled. He published it and he hired me as a volunteer editorial assistant. That was my entry into this world, which to me was just amazing. Here were all these people gathered together, the cream of the crop of a libertarian movement, the intellectual fountain heads. Murray, Bill Evers, Ralph Raco, Leonard Ligio, David Thoreau. I mean, everybody was there. And there was a little war in the offices across the street from Cato. In an old warehouse, there was libertarian review, students were a libertarian society and the libertarian party men across the street in this glass and steel building was the Cato Institute. And so we entered that world and it was a privilege to meet all these people. I just can't even begin to express it, of course, all due to the generosity of Charles Koch. Justin, when you think back to that time, one of the fascinating things about Murray Rothbard is his willingness to build coalitions. He had a lot of thoughts about a coalition with the anti-war left. He had lots of thoughts about libertarians trying to have outreach with the religious right, with independence, with everybody in between. And I'd like to get your thoughts about that, especially in the context of the sort of the modern anti-war era. I noticed that Ralph Nader just came out with a book where he also praises what he calls an emerging left-right alliance. Right. Well, I mean, let me talk about how I sort of came into contact with Murray. Me, myself and Eric Gareth, who is now the webmaster of antiwar.com, we started what we call the radical caucus of the libertarian party. And we were basically crazy leftists. We were imitating the left consciously. And we put out an issue of a newsletter, which, hold on, was called Diversity. It was filled with the usual leftist garbage, you know, cultural leftism. But this was back before it was popular and fashionable. This was back when it was radical. So Murray contacted us. Of course, he was across the street, but he got in touch with us. He, you know, we came over and he talked to me and he wanted to join. We were like, wow, this is great. You know, we got Murray. And Murray basically taught us what it meant to be a libertarian, what it meant to have a strategy. And of course, he was not into the cultural leftism that we espoused. But he saw all this as window dressing. I mean, what he saw in us, I guess, was that we were dedicated to principle and we were talking about strategy. Like, you know, like we weren't just saying, oh, yeah, A is A. And, you know, we're going to have, you know, like a libertarian defense company and, you know, all this sort of abstract theoretical stuff. We were interested in what he was interested in. And that is building an actual libertarian movement that could win. And so we learned from him and we evolved our views. And it was great fun. I mean, he was an amazing person to be around, always joking and laughing, but basically serious. And he schooled us. We had weekly meetings of our caucus and, you know, we talked about the movement. You know, we talked about ideas. We drew up a 10 point program, which if you read it today is still valid and actually pressing it. So that's how we came into contact with Murray. I was working for students for Libertarian Society and we were active locally in the anti-war movement in an effort to get rid of draft registration. So Murray guided us, not that he was in charge. I mean, he actually argued with us. He took us seriously. And that was absolutely amazing. I mean, here's this guy who had written all these books, was brilliant person, the founder of our movement. And here are these snotty little kids, basically, who thought I knew everything. And here we are arguing with him as if we were on the same level. But he wasn't offended by this. He was charmed by it and he educated us. That was very important to me. When you talk about strategy, the fast forward 35 years, is Ralph Nader right when it comes to the anti-war movement? Is there a left-right coalition today that you can still discern out there? Certainly it seems like public opinion is going Ron Paul's way when it comes to topics like Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes and no, I haven't read Nader's book. I read about the book. I, you know, I intend to read it, but there isn't much of a left wing anti-war movement anymore to ally with. It's basically us. There's, you know, a few groups, but they really can't mobilize people. And I think that they often look to older models. They hearken back to the anti-war movement of the 60s, which, you know, it was massive demonstrations, stuff like that. I think it has to take on a different form now and I'm not quite sure what that form is, but I think a lot of it is online, which of course positions anti-war.com pretty well. But yeah, I mean, like we have great trouble with what is called the left. I mean, where is the left today? Where do you see a left? There is no left. You know, the left is talking about cultural issues, cultural Marxism, you know, this whole racial and sexual identity politics. And that was really the death of the anti-war movement. And of course, now that they're in power, at least temporarily, they are not that interested in opposing the regime's wars. So that's a problem. Of course, there's Ralph Nader, but I mean, how many troops does Ralph Nader actually have? You know, I think the left is dying and that it isn't left versus right anymore. It's libertarianism versus authoritarianism. And I think a lot of anti-war leftists have a problem with that, but there's not much they can do about it. Justin, is there any room on the right? It seems like the neoconservatives remain almost delusional, certainly unapologetic. We've seen Cheney come out recently talking about Iraq. The same people who bungled us into a disastrous conflict in the Middle East never seem to apologize or go away. But there also seems to be a developing Ron Paul wing on the right of people who understand that we need to get back to some kind of traditional conservative foreign policy. And so I'd like to get your thoughts on where we are in terms of reclaiming sort of the old Taft Goldwater Republican foreign policy. Well, all the movement is on the right now. That's where the growth of anti-interventionism is really taking place. And this is a project that I've been personally involved in and anti-war.com has emphasized over the years. Ever since the end of the Cold War, when Murray first started talking about this paleo movement, it's been in progress. And 9-11 interrupted it and gave the neocons a temporary triumph. But that's worn off pretty much. And now the neocons are in a tiny minority and we're on the descendant. And of course, Cheney now has this political action committee called the Alliance for War Mongering or whatever he calls it. They're raising all this money and they're going to have this big campaign to re-institutionalize neoconservatism as the official ideology of the Republican Party. But you know what? It's not going to work. I don't care how much money they have, people are sick of the empire. They're sick of paying for wars. They're sick of the slaughter, most of all. And we're winning. We are actually winning. I mean, you know, for somebody who grew up in a libertarian movement that didn't have more than a thousand members nationwide, to me, this is almost like a dream. And I keep pinching myself and thinking, I'm going to wake up and it's going to be me, my mimeograph machine. But actually, it's actually happening. I mean, I've never been more optimistic. People are embracing anti-interventionism as the default because they are politicians. They're looking at the polls. 75% say that the war in Iraq wasn't worth a single American life. Now, we said that back when it started and we were a tiny minority, but we knew that we were going to be vindicated. And we have been and now, now is our time. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have to agree with Justin 100%. Read his column several times a week at antiwar.com. And Justin, we thank you for your time. Have a great weekend. Oh, and I had a great time. Thank you for inviting me.