However, what Roepke is surely struggling to articulate is the old truth given expression by (I think) Burke: namely that men cannot be free unless they first govern themselves.

To the extent that we are devoid of ethics, morals (and – just possibly – faith), our free market materialism is prone to becoming unbridled and unchanneled and we become as petulant, spoiled favourite nephews in a sweet shop, doing harm to ourselves and (more importantly) to those around us.

As we know, nothing is better designed to perpetuate and intensify this collective infantilism than the secular, mass democratic Welfare/Warfare state.

I would argue that this is what Roepke wishes to deprecate – not free markets as such.

Yes, indeed it is very suprising. In fact one would think the more prominent ones would point out the fact that it was an INSIDE JOB! I know if Rothbard was still alive, that’s what he would be saying.

The more I look into the facts (something I never bothered to do), the more it seems that we either reject the State’s conspiracy theories (“it was the terrorists!”) or we reject the laws of physics. Physics and Austrian Economics both suggest that the State had a motive, opportunity, and in fact carried out an act of terrorism against the public.

Every libertarian should have “the state is responsible for crisis X” as a knee-jerk reaction, and then follow up with the evidence and the list of private accomplices. Roepke did not stick to the libertarian formula.

I’m a bit confused. You don’t seem to view
this position with much sympathy, but is it
because you regard the claim (that there are non-
economic factors at play in societal phenomenon)
as rather obvious (such that it would be strange
for someone to portray it as deep), or is it
because you are puzzled that someone could
actually believe it to be true?

Thank you for an excellent commentary, and for the comparison with Mises, who, despite the horrors he also lived through, managed to better maintain his scientific discipline and his spirit.

I have not read Roepke’s book, but does he not overlook the fact that Classical Liberalism died in virtually every major country with the outbreak of World War I? And regarding the large majority of intellectuals and academics, Classical Liberalism was abandoned by them at least 10 or 20 years prior to 1914.

The horrors of the first part of the 20th century are overwhelmingly the result of the abandonment of Classical Liberalism and the implementation of socialist and interventionist policies. This is even more disconcerting since Classical Liberalism was the economic/political system that had brought an unprecedented increase in the standard of living to the masses when it was most consistently implemented in the period following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars to the late 19th century.

He certainly seems to think that a New Liberalism needs to come into being, having robust States lead by a Philosopher King and His Band Of Merry Men, who will maintain a proto-leviathan but still honor individual rights. It’s simply the template of the mid-grade socialist UN’ism that the State exists a priori and hands out rights like party favors. Once this view point is accepted, and is the foundation of one’s advanced opinions on the matter, the cause is lost. Inevitably the State will promise more than it can deliver, programming the people to be right, and civil, and honarable as an extension of the State (and have those qualities collapse as the State inevitably will without use of greater force to maintain it) versus being so in ones own self-interest.

WWII (or WWI) didn’t happen because of capitalism, it happened because of Statism. Imperialism is a State backed and funded proposition. Both wars have their origin in Imperialism. Empires are created to dope people with more than they otherwise could have had. It is the system of Leaders securing their place, whether a despot or a vote-whore, to the people swapped for domestic harmony. But domestic harmony is only disrupted when the notion strikes that people are due more than they’ve collectively created (either through central planning or a market). Empires are created to divert foreign resources to the domestic treasury. How that is capitalism I’ll never know. Granted industrialists may war-profiteer and some may have enough clout to spur on the State, but it still is foremost a Statist function. And the State exists in the first place to have leaders who will ensure honorable behavior, and civility, and truth etc etc etc. And the cycle continues…