I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

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JUDE CHUA SOO MENG
IN THE SPIRIT OF MURRAY ROTHBARD:
AUSTRIAN, LIBERTARIAN, AND THOMIST
I first read about Murray Rothbard while surfing the Internet. As a natural-law
theorist, I was looking for material that had been written on economics, especially in recent
times. I typed “natural law” and “economics” in the search field. What appeared was a
review of the book The Ethics of Liberty. According to the reviewer, this book was an attempt
to build an entire economic theory on the basis of natural law. It was written by Murray
Rothbard. I was, of course, quite excited. So I ran a search for Murray Rothbard, and the
links led me to the (really impressive!) Mises Institute web site, with all its Real Audio
lectures. Here also was advertised the Rothbard Graduate Seminar. One thing led to another,
and I applied for and was invited to attend both the Mises University and the Rothbard
Seminar, thanks to the generosity of the Mises Institute.
Murray Rothbard writes from the tradition of the Austrian economists. I had already
been acquainted with some of the Acton President Father Robert Sirico’s writings tracing
Austrian economics to the Salamancan Scholastic theologians, as well as some of Acton’s
research, so the mention of Austrian economics just lit up my eyes.
Still, when I first read The Ethics of Liberty, I had mixed feelings. The first few chapters
were great, I thought. They presented Aristotle and Aquinas as masters, but . . . in the following
chapters this perspective was later abandoned in favor of enlightenment theorists.
This left me a little disappointed. Of course, coming from a scholastic background, this
could be attributable to my own medieval prejudice. But when it came to crafting a defense
of private property based on John Locke and Rothbard’s adamant defense of abortion, it
was just too much. And the fact that I was a Dominican tertiary and a Thomist, certainly
did not help. My heart sank. A wild goose chase—a wrong lead. This book is erroneous, I
thought. Had I been an inquisitor, I would have set it afire.
My two weeks at the Mises Institute, however, quite changed all that, but not without
help. (No, they did not drug me, but they did feed me well!) There I met Oskari Juurikala,
who was a Summer Fellow. Since he was an Aquinas and natural law enthusiast as well, we
hit it off pretty well. As I look back I am immensely grateful to him not only for his friendship
but even more for explaining to me the other side of Rothbard that had so far escaped
me. He showed me other of Rothbard works, especially his History of Economics, and pointed
out to me that Rothbard’s interest in John Locke was much in evidence, and that there was
a strong connection between Rothbard’s Lockean account of property with that of a fellow
Dominican Friar named John of Paris, otherwise known as Jean Quiddort O.P.