The Essential Rothbard - Ludwig von Mises Institute

The Essential Rothbard 73
really a partisan of majority rule. Returning to Socrates and the
Athenians, Rothbard comments:
If they [the Athenian Assembly] are so worried—and Kendall
intimates that they are so worried—because they are afraid
that enough of their number will be converted until, say, 55
percent of the Athenians will become Socratics . . . then at
least 45 percent of the Athenians must not be passionately
committed, must be in danger of seceding to the enemy. But
if that is the case, Kendall is not defending the right and duty
of the majority to suppress a minority; he is defending the
right and duty of a minority to suppress a possible majority. 198
Kendall’s position is more than an intellectual mistake. To put
into practice the rule by popular opinion that he favors would
destroy freedom and with it, civilization itself. If any group that
believes itself to know the truth can suppress dissent, change
becomes impossible:
Since every new social change of importance is subversive of
the old order, and disturbs people’s minds for a while,
Kendall must keep going back and back, since every society
originated in a revolution against some preceding society. In
short, Kendall’s ethical philosophy must lead back to
where—to the era of the cave man. . . . If Kendall has set
forth the philosophy of tyranny cogently, we see that philosophy
leads to: the end of civilization and most of the human
race—in short, the death-principle. 199
Rothbard’s power as a critic is here on full display.
If Rothbard rejected this appeal to consensus and orthodoxy, he
viewed the tyranny of the Liberal Left with no more favor than did
Kendall. In a review of Charles L. Black, Jr., The People and the
Court: Judicial Review in a Democracy, 200 he praised Black for exposing
a key tactic of the elitists. Black, a major figure at the Yale Law
198 Ibid.; emphasis in the original.
199 Ibid.
200 Charles L. Black, Jr., The People and the Court: Judicial Review in a
Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1960).