I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

62 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
discussions I had with my classmates and teachers is testimony of their infrequent nature—
e.g., with R.C. Sproul, Jr. (son of the well-known protestant theologian) about Misesian
apriorism, with classmates over the environment in a senior seminar on Values and
Technology, and with Dr. Sennholz on the libertarian position on abortion. I was rather
opinionated in these debates and wasn’t in them to engage the other party, but to preach
to them the gospel of truth as I saw it. During a particularly heated debate with my
parents one time while driving, my father pulled the car over and looked at me and simply
said, “Who the hell is this Professor Rothbard you keep talking about?” I replied that he
was a professor at Columbia (I didn’t know he just received his degree from there) and
my father said something like, “It figures, only someone at Columbia could think such
crazy thoughts.” On another occasion, I told my future father-in-law that FDR was the
worst president and that it was because of him and the people that voted for him that
my generation had their liberties increasingly stripped away. As you can imagine, no
matter how correct I might have been in my stance, these sorts of debate tactics were not
very successful. I had neatly divided the world into those who were evil, those who were
stupid and those who agreed with me.
At George Mason, this would all change. I was surrounded by people who had read
more than me, knew more than me, and were more comfortable arguing their position
rather than just stating it. I was completely enamored of Rich Fink, who, like myself, was
from New Jersey. He possessed a tireless energy and a dynamic personality. I was at the
same time awestruck by Don Lavoie, who I thought a scholar of the first-rank (it was his
Journal of Libertarian Studies article on the socialist calculation debate that persuaded me
to study with him at George Mason). My first mentors at GMU, however, were fellow
students, in particular, Roy Cordato, Karen Palasek (Roy’s wife), Wayne Gable, and Deborah
Walker. With these students, I could discuss ideas and learn what the latest arguments were
for a free society. Roy and Karen ran a reading group where we read The Foundations of
Modern Austrian Economics, and they were the original managing editors of Market Process,
and guided me through the ropes as I took over as managing editor. Through Wayne and
Deb I also got on the Cato Institute softball team and through that I met the different
libertarian activists downtown—Ed Crane and eventually David Boaz and Tom Palmer as
well (though they didn’t play softball with us). Through Roy, I met Sheldon Richman. I
also was invited by Walter Grinder to attend the summer seminar in Austrian economics
sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies at Marquette University, where I met for
the first time Israel Kirzner, Mario Rizzo, Gerald O’Driscoll, and Roger Garrison. It was
at this seminar (where I spent much of my time with Grinder and Martin Anderson, then
of IEA, drinking beer, playing pool and talking about economics and libertarianism), that
I became convinced that I could do Austrian economics for a living. My association with
the Institute for Humane Studies would grow closer over the next few years, as I was a
summer fellow for two years (including one where Ralph Raico was the program director)
and attended several seminars and then eventually became a faculty member in those
seminars. Grinder and Leonard Liggio were very influential on me, both in terms of their
suggestions of research projects one could explore and the way one should interact with
interested students to build an academic community of libertarian scholars. I cannot say