I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard 175
Austrians fall prey to anxieties about their scientific status. As someone who has established
an appealing and powerful persona within economics, she has been a rare and great role
model. Also, she taught me how to write.
The fourth is H.L. Mencken. Although the first author I read avidly was Albert Jay
Nock, in 1989 I became really taken with Mencken. His influence on me has been deep
and multifaceted. I am half persuaded—but only half—of his thesis that at bottom statism
is a mentality of inferior men in opposition to superior men.
Since the age of 30 (1992), I have developed a great admiration for Hayek and Smith.
Of course I’ve learned from many other friends and collaborators.
On my webpage I offer some ideas about libertarianism as political persuasion and
movement in “Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek and Rothbard.”
In writing out these remarks I experience a satisfaction in knowing that I and most of
my friends have secured a rewarding, active intellectual life for ourselves. We are capable
and in our good work learn to breathe cleaner cultural air. But day to day I focus on the
baneful forces and my sentiments are less serene.
Daniel Klein is professor of economics at George Mason University and associate fellow and academic
advisor of the Ratio Institute in Stockholm.
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PETER KURRILD-KLITGAARD
TO BE CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY
As a teenager you are usually an ideological accident waiting to happen: You are either
so eager to conform to your surroundings that you may end up supporting anything mainstream,
or you are so rebellious that you are willing to advocate basically any odd-sounding
idea as long as it will make your family and teachers go nuts. In my case, being a 14-yearold
in the welfare state of Denmark A.D. 1981, I guess I was plenty of both.
Looking back, I probably had it coming somehow. In the big picture, Denmark in
the early 1980s was—as was most of the western world—an odd mix between the remnants
of ancient bourgeois values and the after-shocks of 1968. In the small picture,
everyone in my family was (to cut a long story short) either extremely right wing or
considerably to the left.