 All right. I want to start off by saying a little something about the talk I was originally planning to give. May it rest in peace. I'm not going to give this talk, but I want to say just a word about what it would have been. I was going to give a talk on the general subject of so-called national divorce. And I want you to know that the website, the domain, nationaldivorce.com, is in good hands. I own it. It was not cheap, by the way. That was not the usual $10 domain that you buy on Namecheap. But man, was it worth it. Because I released a book that I give away for free, and it's called National Divorce, The Peaceful Solution to Irreconcilable Differences. So that's what's waiting for you at nationaldivorce.com. If you look through this thing, I hope you will agree with me that after you read chapter 1, you will not look at the world the same way ever again. Chapter 1 is I couldn't be prouder of chapter 1 of that book. Now you can also get it through the miracle of technology. During these talks, people will tell you, turn off your cell phones, shut them off. I say, turn them on. Turn those cell phones on, because you can get this My Little E-book, National Divorce, delivered to you instantly this very minute. All you have to do, you're going to text the word national to the number 666866. So you just type in 666866, and you type the word national, and I'm going to send it to you. How about that? Now I could have programmed it where you go 666866 and you type in divorce. But then I felt like, what if your spouse is looking at what you're doing? They might get the wrong idea. So the word is national. All right, well instead of that talk, I'm giving a different talk. And there's a reason. There's a reason that there is no title given for my talk on your program. It's just luncheon with me. Now usually the reason is I forgot to give them the title until it was too late, and the programs had already been sent to the printer. But at this time, there was a reason behind it. It's because I'm giving a talk that Lou Rockwell does not want me to give. And it's called The Lou Rockwell I Know. Now Lou would hate this. This is the last thing in the world Lou wants. And in that way, he's very much like Ron Paul. Doesn't want people talking about him. He's happy to just do his work. Doesn't need public praise. Well, doggone at Lou, you're just going to have to sit there and take it. That's what I have to say to you, OK? I first met Lou in 1993, which all of a sudden just like in the blink of an eye has become like forever ago. 1993 is forever ago all of a sudden. I met him at the Mises University program. And even then, he was this soft-spoken figure, towering figure. I wasn't so sure I should speak to him. And then I saw him deal with a student. He probably won't even remember this. There's a student who clearly did not know who Lou Rockwell was. And went up to him and said, could I get a couple of more pillows for my dorm room, please? And Lou was so gracious in how he handled this situation there was no sense of, do you realize I'm Lou Rockwell? He got him the pillows. I was one of the very first summer fellows of the Mises Institute in 1995. And that summer, my grandfather fell ill, very, very ill. As a matter of fact, I began to find out that he was more or less on his deathbed and that he was asking the doctors, or I beg your pardon, he was asking family members, how long till Tom gets back home? I was in Alabama for the summer. How much longer till Tom comes back? And they told him, August, whatever. And he said to himself, I've got to hang on till then. So I found out about this. And Lou paid for me to fly home, to see my ailing grandfather before he died. Lou has done private, unknown kindnesses like this his whole life. Kindnesses that, as we all know, are not always reciprocated. Now Lou and his work have great personal significance for me as I'm going to share with you in a few moments. But the significance of Lou Rockwell for the Austrian school and for the world are of somewhat more general interest, so I'm going to begin there. We look at Ludwig von Mises. We look at a man of towering intellect and prolific output. And that figure of Mises can have the effect of obscuring just how desperate the Austrian movement was after World War II. Now as most of you in this room know, Mises himself held only an unpaid position at New York University where he directed his small seminar. Hayek, for his part, although he did not withdraw entirely from economics, as we know from the denationalization of money and his essays in A Tiger by the Tail, had nevertheless moved into related but distinct fields by that time. There was no institutional support for the Austrian school, and the number of people working in the tradition actively was desperately small. Now of course, the Austrian school got a major shot in the arm. I feel funny using that expression after 2020 when Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974, the year after Mises' death. And that same year, the South Royalton Conference was held in Vermont, and the remnant of Austrian scholars met there. And it's from that event that we often date the Austrian revival. But Joe Salerno, who of course is academic vice president of the Mises Institute, points out that we cannot overlook the significance to the Austrian movement and the Austrian revival of Murray Rothbard's man economy and state. After all, where did all these people who showed up at the South Royalton Conference come from? They had all been reading that book. And that was a book Mises himself had praised, and we know from his private papers that Mises' praise of Rothbard's work to individual correspondence was even more effusive than the praise he had uttered in public. Man economy and state, Joe says, kept the Austrian school alive. And I think we can say that Lou's founding of the Mises Institute was a watershed event of similar significance. And I'd like to quote here a passage from an article by Joe Salerno, who says this. When Rockwell founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 1982, he had single-handedly laid the institutional foundations for the restoration of sound Austrian economics, Austrian economics unabashedly inspired by the scientific vision of Ludwig von Mises. The Mises Institute was indispensable for rescuing the modern Austrian movement that had been initiated by Rothbard in 1962, and by the early 1980s was manifestly foundering. When Rockwell suggested the idea of an Austrian journal as an integral component of this institutional rescue effort, Rothbard immediately saw merit in the idea and seized upon the journal as the main instrument for reclaiming Austrian economics from those who had stripped it of its essential Misesian content in search of acceptance by mainstream economists. Hence Rothbard pushed for a distinctive and bold name for the journal that would proudly and explicitly proclaim Austrian economics as an alternative to the prevailing neoclassical Keynesian synthesis. He was opposed in this by a number of younger Austrians who argued for a less provocative and more nondescript name like the Journal of Market Process. But Rothbard perceptively recognized this concession on the journal title as a cover for and first step toward watering down the praxeological core of Austrian economics. I'm reminded of an incident some years ago in which a New York Times reporter showed up at the Mises Institute. Now, if this had been a typical libertarian institution, why the red carpet would have been rolled out for this reporter? Why, hello, good New York Times reporter, sir. We'd like to tell you about all the wonderful work we're doing here. And of course, we're confining ourselves to the range of opinion that you've so graciously allowed us. This was not exactly Lou Rockwell's reaction to finding out that a New York Times reporter had shown up at the Mises Institute. Lou's office, if you've been to the Mises Institute, you know is on the second floor. Lou found out there's a New York Times reporter in the building. He came shuffling right down those stairs and told the reporter that you're a mouthpiece for the regime and you're going to have to leave. And then he went right back up to his work. That's a boss. That's a boss move right there by all Lou Rockwell. Now nowadays, we observe many thousands of people working in the Austrian tradition and the great works of the school being read by millions. And we take this for granted. But this itself is an outcome of the work of Lou Rockwell and the Mises Institute. Because again, in 1982, there was no guarantee that the Austrian school would continue to grow and flourish instead of wither and fade. Lou brought the brightest students from around the world to the Mises Institute for entire summers to participate in the Summer Fellows Program before they went off to become significant academics in the United States and Europe. Now, I myself was a resident scholar at the Mises Institute from 2006 to 2010. And during the summers, I had weekly parties at my house. And this gave me the opportunity to get to know outside the confines of the Institute, the Summer Fellows. And I can tell you, these were truly the cream of the crop. And man, what fun we had, playing games, eating, a little drinking. I don't know why this is, but the American students always went way overboard and the European students were always moderate and in control of themselves. I don't know why that was. The American students would stumble out of our house and the Europeans would say, why thank you for having us at your home. All right, well, I don't know why that is, but that was the case. And we used to play, I don't know if you've ever played this game. There's a game called Mafia that you can play with a large group of people. And you have to figure out which people in the group are in the mafia. And I don't know why the Poles and the Germans were just such vicious opponents of each other through this whole game. I don't understand all these ethnic hatreds in Europe, but what fun we had and to be able to see them all now, accomplishing great things all over the world is a genuine thrill. And they worked with Mark Thornton and, of course, primarily Joe Salerno as the director of the Summer Fellows program on their research. And the idea was they would take their work and by the end of the summer forge it into a publishable article in a peer-reviewed journal. And that would thereby give these students a massive academic and career advantage over their peers. I remember one student in particular who was being examined by the faculty at the Mises University program. At the conclusion of the course of study at the Mises University, we have an oral exam. And we find out who the best students are. And there was one student who was so extraordinarily learned that Walter Block, who was, of course, one of the examining professors, said to him, you belong on this side of the table with us doing the questioning. We shouldn't be asking you questions. These are the kinds of people Lou managed to find. Not to mention the Mises Institute's website is the greatest online resource for libertarianism ever created. All the major books are there in the Austrian tradition. The entire print runs of journals like the Journal of Libertarian Studies or the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics are available there. As are all the issues of the Libertarian Forum. And even left and right, the short-lived but highly interesting publication Rothbard edited with Leonard Ligio. Lou solicited courses from some of our top scholars and longtime libertarian stalwarts, scholars any libertarian in his right mind admires, like Robert Higgs and Paul Cantor and Ralph Raco. And these courses cover history, literature, economics, philosophy. And of course, they're available to view for free at Mises.org. We find there also all the named lectures at every one of the Austrian scholars conferences later renamed the Austrian Economics Research Conference. That's the annual event at which the latest research in Austrian economics and related fields is presented. And as I mentioned before, every year, of course, we have the Mises University Program, where I myself first encountered the Mises Institute. It's an intense week-long instructional seminar over the summer, attended by college students around the world. It made me intellectually who I am today. And you can watch previous year's Mises University programs for free on the website. And that's not to mention the thousands and thousands of original articles that have been published on Mises.org, helping people understand current events in light of the Austrian school or the Austrian economics bootcamp that gives you a quick primer in Austrian economics. Or Hunter Hastings' important Austrian economics for business, for entrepreneurs program. All of this is thanks to Lou Rockwell. Now, let me pause also to say that thanks to Lou's good judgment, the Mises Institute is currently in excellent hands under President Jeff Deist. Jeff is a brilliant commentator full of original ideas. And his achievements at the Mises Institute deserve a hearty job well done by everyone who cares about this institution. Now, these days in my spare time, I'm a bit of an oddball eccentric. In my spare time, I've been reading the Stoics, particularly Seneca. Now, Seneca humanizes Stoicism to an extent, but the strict principles he calls us to, although I recognize in them an undeniable nobility, often seem out of my reach. And yet it occurred to me the other day, I know a Stoic, Lou Rockwell. First, there's his temperament. I have never seen Lou lose his temper, or appear distraught, or let his emotions get the better of him. I have never known anyone who is so consistently in command of himself, precisely as the Stoics urged. Before I elaborate further, though, let me share with you a story drawn from Taxi, the 1980s sitcom. Some of you are old enough to remember. There's an episode in which Ted Danson plays a snooty, arrogant, and expensive hairdresser who absolutely ruins the hair of Elaine, who's played by Mary Lou Henner. She had saved up her money to go to this hairdresser to get her hair done for a fancy event. Well, back at the garage, the Alex Rieger character talks her into going back to the salon and demanding her money back. He goes with her. Louis de Palma, played by Danny DeVito, also goes to the salon. At one point, Elaine, in an act of revenge for the terrible hairstyling, is about to dump a huge bowl of red hair dye all over Ted Danson's character. At the last second, Alex talks her out of it. If you do that, Elaine, he says, you'll be no better than he is. And she stops and says, you're right. I am too good to do this, and they walk out. And then Louis says, she may be too good, but I ain't, and he dumps it on the guy's head. Now let's apply this tale to the life of our subject, Lou Rockwell. The stoic, you will recall, is unperturbed by outside events, and that includes the attacks of critics. I do not believe in the nearly 30 years I have known Lou Rockwell, I have seen him respond to critics even once, not even once. Somebody who looks at the situation we face today and concludes that the real threat is coming from the right rather than a left that controls all institutions and the media and demonizes dissidents anywhere in the world where they emerge is in some sense not intelligent enough to be worth responding to. Somebody who has accomplished nothing and has absolutely nothing to show for himself in terms of the libertarian movement, attacking somebody like Lou Rockwell who has made every single key text in the Austrian tradition available to the entire world does not need to be responded to. On some level I get that, and I admire Lou for not wasting his time and just continuing his work. It must make them crazy that not a single thing they say appears to affect him at all. They want him to lash out, and yet he doesn't. He doesn't even swat them away as he would an ordinary bug. That's a boss move. But remember, there's Alex Rieger and there's Louis De Palma. Lou may be too dignified to reply to his critics, but I ain't. I've responded to Lou's critics, I can tell you that. And I know they don't deserve a response, but they're losers and for some reason I feel compelled to make them know they're losers. Oh, Lou's critics are just so concerned about police abuse, but who was it who featured and promoted the late great Will Grig by far our greatest voice on that subject at a time when official libertarianism pretended Will Grig didn't exist. Of course it was Lou. Oh, Lou's critics are just so profoundly concerned about the fate of non-whites around the world. Yet for many of them, supporting wars that led to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths of those very people is somehow not disqualifying. Because after all we're told, hey, Bill Weld changed his mind later, so that's okay. And by a happy coincidence, he changed his mind right around the time he happened to be making an appeal to libertarians. I'm sure that was super sincere. Lou's critics have every possible advantage. They hold only officially approved opinions, which means they don't face the withering hostility of every major institution the way Lou does. Some of his critics have funding sources at their disposal that should have helped propel them to superstardom. Yet I know one think tank official who in effect has to bribe conferences to let him speak since nobody would so much as cross the street to hear this guy. And yet even though Lou's critics have sheepishly followed all the rules laid out by the establishment, being careful to avoid certain topics, making sure to demonize dissidents just the way the regime demands, honoring the states anointed like Dr. Fauci, Lou, despite all this, is still vastly more popular among libertarians than they are. And this makes them crazy. Why, we've done everything we were supposed to. We still can't touch this guy. But maybe, dear critics, that's precisely why you can't touch him. Lou has an expression, the regime libertarian that sums up the people in the libertarian movement who have done nothing but cause problems and undermine the message we're trying to convey. Here's Lou on the regime libertarian. The regime libertarian believes in the market economy more or less, but talk about the Federal Reserve or Austrian business cycle theory and he gets fidgety. His magazine or institute would rather invite Janet Yellen for an exclusive cocktail event than Ron Paul for a lecture. The regime libertarian loves the idea of reform, whether it's the Fed or the tax code or government schools, whatever. He flees from the idea of abolition. Why, that just isn't respectable. He spends his time advocating this or that tax reform effort instead of simply pushing for a lowering or repeal of existing taxes. It's too tough to be a libertarian when it comes to anti-discrimination law, given how much flak he's liable to get, so he'll side with left liberals on that, even though it's completely incompatible with his stated principles. He is anti-war, sometimes, but certainly not as a general principle. He can be counted on to support the wars that have practically defined the American regime and which remain popular among the general public. He sups in happy concord with supporters of the most egregiously unjust wars, but his blood boils in moral outrage at someone who told an off-color joke 25 years ago. That sums it up. We all know those people. We all know those people. When my phone rings and I see that it's Lou, I always race to answer it. He's always got something interesting to tell me, or truth be told, sometimes a bit of gossip from our crazy movement. A couple of times this year, I have answered the phone only to be told that he had called by accident and I cannot tell you what profound disappointments those moments were. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I knew Lou would hate a talk called The Lou Rockwell I Know, which is the title of this talk I'm delivering right now. So that is indeed why we gave it the bland title, Lunch with Tom Woods. So as you can see, I had to trick Lou into sitting down and letting himself be praised. But Lou, I hope you will forgive my doing this one thing presumably against your will. I lost my father tragically in 1996 and since that time, you have been very much a father figure to me. You've supported me through thick and thin. And no matter what happens, I've always thought Lou will know what I should do. Few people are so fortunate to know someone as consistently wise. I have so often been a parasite on your strategic brilliance as I've gone to you again and again for advice. You and Roger McAfrey are the two people I consult when I want to be absolutely certain of the path I should take. With the Mises Institute, you built something lasting which thanks to your good judgment is in good hands and which has boldly and courageously resisted the evils of the age while setting them against an appealing alternative of freedom, prosperity, and peace. Those of us who have had the good fortune to know you personally have encountered one of the kindest and most generous souls they are ever likely to meet. Lou, you are a true gem and my life has been greatly enriched by having you in it. I speak for libertarians everywhere when surveying your accomplishments, I declare you one of our great benefactors and say thank you for a job well done and a life well lived. Thank you.