For a New Liberty The Libertarian Manifesto_3

Introduction
It is also striking how Rothbard chose to pull no punches
in his argument. Other intellectuals on the receiving end of
such an invitation might have tended to water down the argument
to make it more palatable. Why, for example, make a
case for statelessness or anarchism when a case for limited
government might bring more people into the movement?
Why condemn U.S. imperialism when doing so can only limit
the book’s appeal to anti-Soviet conservatives who might otherwise
appreciate the free-market bent? Why go into such
depth about privatizing courts and roads and water when
doing so might risk alienating people? Why enter into the
sticky area of regulation of consumption and of personal
morality—and do it with such disorienting consistency—
when it would have surely drawn a larger audience to leave it
out? And why go into such detail about monetary affairs and
central banking and the like when a watered-down case for
free-enterprise would have pleased so many Chamber-of-
Commerce conservatives?
But trimming and compromising for the sake of the times
or the audience was just not his way. He knew that he had a
once-in-a-lifetime chance to present the full package of libertarianism
in all its glory, and he was not about to pass it up.
And thus do we read here: not just a case for cutting government
but eliminating it altogether, not just an argument for
assigning property rights but for deferring to the market even
on questions of contract enforcement, and not just a case for
cutting welfare but for banishing the entire welfare-warfare
state.
Whereas other attempts to make a libertarian case, both
before and after this book, might typically call for transitional
or half measures, or be willing to concede as much as possible
to statists, that is not what we get from Murray. Not for him
such schemes as school vouchers or the privatization of government
programs that should not exist at all. Instead, he
presents and follows through with the full-blown and fully
bracing vision of what liberty can be. This is why so many
other similar attempts to write the Libertarian Manifesto have
not stood the test of time, and yet this book remains in high
demand.
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