Lew Rockwell
 |
Lew Rockwell |
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (b. 1944,
Boston), more commonly known as
Lew Rockwell, is an
American libertarian political commentator.
Rockwell is the founder and President of the
Ludwig von Mises Institute in
Auburn, Alabama, Vice President of the
Center for Libertarian Studies in
Burlingame, California, and publisher of the political
weblog,
LewRockwell.com. Rockwell was closely associated with his teacher and colleague
Murray Rothbard until Rothbard's death in
1995, and like Rothbard in his later years his political
ideology combines an
anarcho-capitalist form of
paleolibertarianism with
cultural conservatism and the
Austrian School of economics. Rockwell also espouses the political concepts of
federalism,
secession, and political
decentralization. Rockwell is a Roman Catholic.
He is the author of
Speaking of Liberty, an anthology of his editorials (originally published on his web site) and transcripts from some of his speaking engagements. Rockwell is also publisher, along with the
Mises Institute, of the
Journal of Libertarian Studies.
Rockwell's opposition
[[1]Rockwell, Lew. "The Glory of War." LewRockwell.com. 6 May 2005.][[2]Rockwell, Lew. "My Speech at the Antiwar Rally." Mises.org. 25 September 2005.] to the
war in Iraq has led to criticism from the
neoconservative movement.
Jacob Laksin, writing for
FrontPageMag.com, said that Rockwell had become "a willing dupe of the far left"
[[3]Laksin, Jacob. "The Right's Left Turn." FrontPageMag. 5 October 2005.] and called into question his Libertarian credentials. He cited the posting of a picture of a bombed-out American tank with a caption by associate
Mike Rogers which said "A toast to the defeat of the evil empire"
and for posting a message from columnist
Karen Kwiatkowski where after calling for Iraqi insurgent-like resistance in the United States, wrote "Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!"
[[4]Kwiatkowski, Karen. "Unleashing the Resistance." LewRockwell.com. 15 June 2005.] as examples.
Rockwell responded to this criticism, saying:
[T]here is nothing too complicated about why the left today looks better than the right (and its unthinking defenses of Bush): the right holds the balance of federal power and the left doesn't. It's the flipside of the 1990s, when the Republicans attacked Clinton foreign policy for its nation-building overrearch and democrat imperialism etc. while the left warmed up to the domestic and international uses of the armed forces. It's all about power. Libertarianism is contra power. [[5]Rockwell, Lew. "Consistent libertarianism is incomprehensible to state partisans." Mises Economics Blog. 5 October 2005.]
Rockwell has been criticized by
Cato Institute Senior Fellow
Tom G. Palmer for publishing columnists, such as
Joe Sobran,
Gary North and
Samuel Francis, who expressed their viewpoints at his website,
LewRockwell.com.
[[6]Palmer, Tom G. "Gary North, Lew Rockwell, and the Politics of Stoning Heretics and Homosexuals to Death." TomGPalmer.com. 25 September 2004.]As author:
Speaking of Liberty (2003), ISBN 0945466382
As editor:
Man, Economy, and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard (with
Walter Block) (1986), ISBN 9991178627
The Free Market Reader (1988), ISBN 0945466021
The Economics of Liberty (1990), ISBN 0945466080
The Gold Standard: Perspectives in the Austrian School (1992), ISBN 0945466110
The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000), ISBN 1883959020
*
LewRockwell.com*
Ludwig von Mises Institute*
"My Speech at the Antiwar Rally," LewRockwell.com, 25 September 2005*
"The Right's Left Turn: How a von Mises conservative stumbled into the tar pits of the radical left," FrontPage Magazine, 5 October 2005*
"My Visit to DC: An Interview with Lew Rockwell," Mises.org Podcast, 9 December 2005
