Today, March 2nd, 2026, would have been the great Murray Rothbard’s 100th birthday!
In celebration, I decided to talk a little bit about one of his essays that I think is exceptionally good at describing the proper mindset of Rothbardian Anarchocapitalism.
Just finished reading a short book from the Tenth Amendment Center, by Michael Boldin and Michael Maharrey. It’s about some of the Anti-Federalist essays that came between the constitutional convention and ratification.
Of course, the Anti-Federalists are barely covered in public school curricula, but they had some very good arguments and several dire predictions that came true.
My notes here.
Now that we’ve seen Locke’s framework and Rousseau’s twisted, totalitarian version of it, I’m going to lay out seven actions taken by governments that Locke would allow, but which spell doom for any government that would actually serve the people.
Inspired by the October 22, 2025 episode of the Tenth Amendment Center’s Path to Liberty
https://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2025/10/even-the-law-isnt-above-the-law/
Bringing together two quotes from James Wilson, from his Speech to the Pennsylvania Convention on Nov. 24, 1787:
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/speech-to-the-pennsylvania-convention/
and his Lectures on Law:
https://contextus.org/James_Wilson’s_Lectures_on_Law_(1789_to_1791)%2C_Part_1%2C_Chapter_I_Introductory_Lecture_Of_The_Study_Of_The_Law_In_The_United_States.64?lang=en&with=all&lang2=en
We’ve finally reached the conclusion of this mess of a book, and guess what? It gets even worse right at the end. Book 4, Chapter 8 is about “Civil Religion” and while you might be unsurprised that religion clashes with Rousseau’s concept of a State, it actually gets much worse.
Written show notes here.
Get your free copy here:
https://mises.org/hayek21
This little book contains some of the most important economic and political essays written in the 20th century, and many of these ideas still need more defense in the 21st.
It just keeps getting worse… This week we’re looking at Book 4, Chs. 5-7. In these chapters, Rousseau introduces three new, weird, dangerous institutions to… “help.”
This week, we’re covering one long chapter. Book 4, Chapter 4, is titled “The Roman Comitia,” and it’s Rousseau’s breakdown of the ways that early Roman government worked. I’d even say, coming as it does near the end of the book, that it’s unnecessarily long, because many of the points Rousseau is using this historical analysis to support have already been fervently argued against by Rousseau earlier in the book.
Full show notes here.
I did not expect Book 4 to start with a bunch of weird contradictions, but it did. This week we’re covering the first three chapters of that Book.
Full show notes here.
This week we’re finishing Book 3, taking a look at Chapters 16-18. Rousseau spends a lot of time building up these weird word games that give the same thing multiple names in order to give it a veneer of legitimacy, but he doesn’t retract any of his previous ideas about the unlimited power of the State or the duty of a State’s people to preserve it, both of which lead to major negative incentives which Rousseau conveniently ignores.
Full notes here.