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The following story is part of Walter Block's Autobiography Archive. My Path of Reason
For me, being a libertarian has a lot to do with being a philosopher. It also "helps," I guess, that I grew up under the post-war communist government of Hungary – and then under the stern totalitarian hand of my father, who reared me for several years after I escaped from Hungary at age 14. (I say "reared me" but what I mean is "ordered me around constantly, in the most disapproving and hostile manner.") So I am sensitive not only to the evils of totalitarianism but also to the signposts on the road that leads to it. I don't believe my background pre-determined my viewpoint, and certainly I have met émigrés from communist states who were quite obtuse on political questions. I have also met many Americans just as passionate about liberty as I am but who have never had to suffer under totalitarian rule. But can I say that I would have gone on to write millions of words on the virtues of liberty had I lived my childhood in the Coney Island of the 1960s rather than the Budapest of the 1940s? I don't know. I have always been interested in the question of how much one is the product of some concatenation of influences versus how much one is "self-made." My weird childhood, with no steady guidance from without, encouraged me to make sense of things for myself. It is possible that much of what philosophy has to offer us is conducive to just this attitude, as distinct from what we glean from religion or mythology. Intellectually pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, with a little help from others party to the apparently endless conversation, seems to be just what philosophers of all stripes do – even those who deny the validity of the process. When I was about nine or ten years old, I had, I believe, one of my first near-philosophical thoughts, something to do with cosmology. Lying on some patch of grass one clear night, I fixed my gaze on a star and thought, "If I were on that star, gazing in the same direction in which I am gazing now, I would see another star about as far as that one is from me now. But then if I were on that star, gazing again in the same direction, once again I would see a star about the same distance away. And so on. But that means the universe may be endless!" But I also thought, "Whatever the case, I am here on earth and will just need to make the best of it, whatever the size of the universe." I suppose I was confused, but in a philosophical way. Another time, as I was sitting at a train station in Budapest, I mused about all the people milling about. "I wonder whether the fact that I am looking at and thinking about the people would have to be included in a very detailed biography about them." Later I found this thought relevant to metaphysical and epistemological concerns, namely, the question whether reality is altered by one's perception of that reality. I never thought it would have to be, at least not in most cases (and in some apparent counter-examples, it seems that perception does not "alter" reality directly but rather through some resultant action). To the extent that I engaged in philosophical thinking as a child I found it exciting, but life proved to be a persistent distraction. So I did not really begin my philosophical education in earnest until my early 20s, when I had enough peace and quiet, as an enlisted man in the U.S. Air Force, to do so. In 1960 I was in the United Air Force, stationed at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, DC. I had become interested in politics again after watching the Kennedy-Nixon debates, and I was further provoked by an article by William F. Buckley, Jr. in Esquire, "Why Don't We Complain." Buckley suggested that the reason violent protests occur in relatively free societies is that people suppress their dissatisfactions until they cannot be contained, then blow their cork. I wrote to Buckley about the article and he responded with a very friendly note. (Throughout the years I would remain on reasonably civil terms with Buckley, though very critical of his nasty treatment of Ayn Rand. In April 1982 I became one of the few libertarians he would invite on "Firing Line." I interviewed Buckley for Reason magazine in 1982, right after my appearance on "Firing Line.") After hearing from Buckley, I subscribed to his magazine, National Review. In it I saw an ad for Classic Books Club and signed up, acquiring fairly good editions and selections of works by Plato, Cicero, Aristotle, Montaigne, Locke, and others. All this mental ferment inspired me to pursue more ambitious educational goals than I had previously envisioned. In the fall of 1960 the little Andrews theater group I had helped found put on The Night of January 16th, Ayn Rand's popular play. If I recall correctly, I acted the part of a character who jumps up during the trial and confesses so as to save the accused heroine. Each night of the performance of the play we selected a group from the audience to be jurors. And then, after the verdict, we all went to a bar to debate what the verdict ought to have been. It was a fascinating exercise and I found the issues intriguing. We could never decide on the basis of the facts but had to reveal our sympathies for the moral traits of the characters. I hadn't by then become interested in Ayn Rand – didn't even know she had written anything else. I was rather illiterate at the time, trying hard to get my High School Equivalency degree and prepare to go to night college. Next summer, though, I read a review of Rand's For the New Intellectual in Esquire, written by Gore Vidal, who panned the book for its avowed egoism and failure to champion Christian virtues. Two fellow airmen had mentioned their enthusiasm for Ayn Rand's works. After I read the review, the first time I saw them – Walter Allen and Howard Williams – I marched up and said, "Your hero was sure creamed by Gore Vidal." I think it was Walter who looked at me quizzically and asked, "Have you read any Rand?" I said, "No." "Well," Walter replied, "don't you think it would be best to read her before you decide that Vidal has the drop on her?" This, I recall, stopped me cold. It squared with my sense of justice that if I make a claim about an author and think it to be worth parading before her admirers, I should know what I am talking about. So I borrowed The Fountainhead and read it. I liked the book. In fact, it spoke to me profoundly. I had been struggling with my Roman Catholicism for some time by then, and the religion's attitude toward sex angered me. I also knew a friend who was getting a divorce that both he and his wife thought was justified. Yet I was supposed to oppose it even though I agreed that decision was justified. When I posed my dilemma to a priest I knew, William Novicky, he could give me only very bland answers. For example, I was informed that "God is putting you through some difficulties." (Well, of course, thanks for the news flash, father; now how about a solution?) And now Howard Roark's attitude toward religion – a self-confident dismissal of the very idea of God – was giving me pause. When his mentor, Henry Cameron, asks Roark why he decided to be an architect, Roark replies, "I didn't know it then. But it's because I've never believed in God." In another place, Roark attempts to decline an assignment to build a temple because "I don't believe in God." Roark clearly is reverential and spiritual, but his reverence is for the world, not any heaven. I again consulted Father Novicky, who remained vague. So I retreated to one of the abandoned runways of the base and paced all night long, considering the issue of God's existence. At one point I looked up, hands clasped as if in prayer, and said, "God forgive me but I cannot believe in you!" My thinking was that if God created me and gave me a mind with which to figure out the world and myself, and my mind gave me no cogent argument for His existence, then it would be an insult to God for me to believe that He existed. He didn't bother to refute me, and no lightning smote me on the spot either. Next I tackled Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, which I read in two days, without sleeping. I found it a good read and with great ideas, but it did take me only one encounter with John Galt – while Eddy was visiting with him below the Taggart Building – to realize that the anonymous track worker was Galt. The larger mystery of the book, that of the role of the human mind in the affairs of the world, did not unfold quite so easily for me. I skipped Galt's speech at first but cut it out and made it into a little book that I could study later. Which I did. In fact, a couple friends and I were soon staying up night after night examining Galt's speech for logical flaws. We scrutinized the discussions of the purpose of morality, the contradiction of original sin, the nature of free will, the inescapability of the law of identity, and so forth. It turned out that NBI was sponsoring lectures in the Washington area and we went to some of them. I met Branden, who seemed terribly aloof and snide, though what he was saying made good enough sense. The only series I attended all the way through was "Contemporary Theories of Neurosis," which outlined competing schools of psychology. At a New York lecture I had the chance to ask Branden some questions, but these weren't exactly welcomed, which puzzled me. After all, what especially appealed to me about Objectivism was the idea of an independent mind, the individual trying to answer questions or solve problems to his own rational satisfaction. But everyone has bad days, so I never made much of this behavior. I did find it peculiar how cliquish the people around the taped lectures seemed to be. But again, I chalked it up to the hazards of going against the grain; here was a group with very unusual views, so no wonder they were such a tense bunch. I disagree that there was ever a Rand cult as such – it was more of a Rand clique. A cult needs to be much bigger – like those that surrounding the Reverend Moon or the Maher Baba. It did disturb me that so few of the people at these functions seemed to laugh comfortably. Most of the laughs were snide and derisive. But I considered how strange this bunch must feel – just as I often did – to have embraced such wild ideas that fit nowhere on the standard ideological map. In the fall of 1962 I left the Air Force and entered college. I had read about Claremont Men's College in National Review – in a column by Russell Kirk – who talked about how wonderful and independent the place was. I contacted the admissions director, Emery Walker, and managed to gain admittance. Before starting school I also managed to gain a meeting with Ayn Rand; I went to New York and met with her for about half an hour at her office. It was a wonderful experience. What would stick in my mind was how warm, calming, sensible and friendly Rand was. She showed none of the prickly traits I would hear about later. One thing I remember saying to her was that perhaps I liked her work because I, too, was a refugee from communism. She said she hoped this wasn't the case, since her ideas were meant to have universal significance, not appeal only to those who shared her personal experiences. There was no badgering or finger-wagging. She was like a sensible aunt or grandmother. I promised to send her a letter I had written to my friend the priest, concerning the struggles I had been having with religion, and when I got back to Washington I sent it off to her. Rand replied with a wonderful letter commenting on how my letter exemplified her principle of the sanction of the victim – which it did. I had expressed dismay in my letter about a book the priest had given me, Thomas Kempis's Imitation of Christ. The theme is that the human effort to know is an insult to God – a sign of pride and lack of proper humility. I told the priest how frustrating this message was to me. After all, my every effort had been to know, to learn, to educate myself...yet this was to be spurned as sinful and a betrayal of the Most High? How could I accept this? Needless to say, my frocked friend had no cogent answer to these quandaries. But Rand stated that she was "deeply impressed with the letter you wrote to the priest. If The Fountainhead has helped you to find a way out of such a terrible and tragic conflict, I am very happy to know it." However, not long after this promising start, there was a silly tiff between Rand and me (mostly my own fault), and I was deemed persona non grata with Rand and her inner circle. One day I'd be on friendly terms with Branden, but only after his 1968 split with Rand paved the way. In retrospect, I am glad I was blackballed. I might have become a dependent as so many others did. I am glad, also, that being cut off wasn't so devastating a blow that I renounced the good ideas I found in Objectivism. In the years since, I have become one of the most prolific neo-Objectivist thinkers, probably giving more scholarly exposition to Rand's ideas than anyone else (with the exception, perhaps, of Doug Rasmussen and Doug Den Uyl, and of course Chris Matthew Sciabarra). It is too bad that the folks in the inner circle have not done better at promoting Objectivism themselves. When Peikoff finally came out with his long-awaited book, The Ominous Parallels, I wanted it reviewed in Reason. I no longer had much say in those matters, however, and could only get a very brief review scheduled. I ended up writing it myself, chiding Peikoff for missing an opportunity to produce a truly scholarly project that took alternative explanations, compared them with his own, and thus showed the superiority of his own thesis. I was disappointed – we had all hoped that this book would help to show the philosophical community that there is real substance to Objectivism. Rand's essays, even her Objectivist Epistemology, had been too polemical to qualify as scholarship. Rand herself had urged those who agreed with her to get out there and become the "new intellectuals." But there is no value to "new intellectuals" who cannot talk to the old intellectuals. And there surely are some who could have been reached, had the effort only been made. Instead, Peikoff and the rest of them – except for David Kelley, who in the end also got kicked out of the official movement – kept aping Rand's style and thereby making short shrift of her substance. I had a final word with Ayn Rand on July 4, 1976. I called her to express to her my thanks for being the most crucial contemporary thinker to stand behind and strengthen the meaning of the Bicentennial. Frank answered. I asked for Miss Rand and she came on the line. Here is our conversation verbatim, as best I can remember it: "This is Ayn Rand. Who am I speaking to?" "Miss Rand, I am a long-time admirer and wish to simply thank you on this day for what you have done to keep the idea of the American revolution alive." "Who is this?" "My name is Tibor Machan." "Good bye." In my view there is nothing peculiar about Rand's persona or impact, including some of their more negative aspects. Obviously, some of her prominent and not-so-prominent followers did forfeit their independence to a degree. But a many emerged easily enough from that dependency. I think that the emphasis on the cultism is little more than an ad hominem from people who really should not be tossing around labels in any case when it comes to the phenomenon of exaggerated personal and ideological loyalties. (It is often the most rabid factionalists who decry the rabid factionalism of others!) Almost all great intellects have generated the kind of social upheavals around them that Rand did. And most have been tempted to lord it over their students or disciples. There is nothing terribly surprising about this given how large the egos are of such people, and how reasonable that they should fear being exploited. In the end, what counts most will still be who if anyone is right on the crucial questions that these innovators address. And little of the material that has emerged from discussing their triumphs and foibles instructs us about that. Ayn Rand's work has changed my life considerably. It helped me to see my life coherently and to identify its purpose. Especially given my awful childhood, which involved a great deal of belittlement and self-doubt, Rand's affirmation of the value of one's life and the virtue of living it by standards of one's nature as a rational animal, have been very welcome to me. I doubt I could have lived as happily as I have, even with all the pitfalls, without Rand's genius for me to draw on. I will always be grateful to her for what she has done to support the uniquely American political tradition, one that has helped me and others to stay free of tyranny. (My recent book, Putting Humans First: Why We Are Nature’s Favorite, tries to punctuate this point vis-à-vis the misguided environmentalist and animal rights movement.) Having said all this, I do not believe that books make people – people make books, even in the sense that they make them something important to them selves. I was to discover this in a particular wrenching way soon enough, while studying at Claremont College. Claremont was just where I wanted to be. The intellectual hustle and bustle was exciting but also rather intimidating, since I lacked the sort of preparation for it that most of my classmates had. I was, after all, a high school flunk-out. But my motivation was greater than perhaps anyone else's. I had been on my own for some five years now. And I was eager to get in the swim with the American way of life, a sort of casual self-confidence exhibited in films by the likes of Robert Mitchum, James Gardner, and Gary Cooper. Americans didn't fuss much. They did what needed to be done and went on to the next task, while also taking it easy and finding joy in life. Yet, I also saw that Americans didn't have much of an explanation for why this mode of living was okay, even superior. So I not only tried to adopt the American style but also to learn why it was right. And why the opposite approach was wrong. A tragedy taught me one lesson along these lines. One of my more intellectually vigorous classmates, David Chuchi, was experiencing serious despondency, supposedly in light of certain conclusions he had reached from his study of the skeptical reflections of René Descartes. At first he simply bemoaned the perplexities he found in the philosopher's argument against trusting our sense and judgments. But he then went on to lament the even more radical skepticism he found in the thinking of David Hume. And this wasn’t only something academic for him. Chuchi began to withdraw more and more, and even started missing meals. After a few weeks he could no longer be engaged in conversation about any of this. He would silently walk around and when we tried to inquire about his state of mind, he would not respond. One Monday morning we heard that on the previous Saturday Chuchi had gone to a motel in Pomona, filled his room with gas, lit his lighter and blown himself up. He lived for a few days, conscious but near death, and could not survive his wounds. He apparently expressed regret for what he had done just before he died. This tragedy taught me that philosophy can kill – and not just when imposed by force. I am convinced that Chuchi’s action was in part the result of his taking skepticism seriously. He was not a light-hearted person to begin with, and when he found something persuasive that seemed to reinforce his gloom, he did not let it go. Unlike David Hume, who claimed that he could leave his skeptical reflections behind when he left his study, Chuchi took the ideas home with him. I, too, have always found the philosophical ideas I was examining to be very practically significant, not a mere academic exercise. Fortunately I never saw much appeal in skepticism. Quite the opposite. I know that human beings have the capacity to know the world. Of course, to actually learn about the world often requires enormous effort. But I never doubted that I, too, shared this capacity to know and had, indeed, a definite responsibility to figure things out as best as I could. This produced a certain confidence in me, as well as a sense of freedom to enjoy myself in life, despite the pretty awful things I experienced in childhood. We are all obliged to cope with various adversities. I think I did better than most, mainly by channeling whatever bad feelings I had into doing useful and creative things. Notwithstanding my anti-skepticism, however, to this day I am still a tad baffled about how I got through all the philosophical work in college and especially graduate school. The decision to major in philosophy had not been a slam-dunk. The field intimidated me. Indeed, after I took the plunge, it took me years to gain confidence and resist recoiling in humiliation in the course of disputations. I had to tell myself repeatedly and firmly that I could make it. And as I took on various issues, guided at first largely by what I learned from Ayn Rand and a few other greats, I came to realize that with some concentration I could prevail – and also that my approach was a strong one, capable of handling philosophical problems to the extent one could reasonably expect to do so. New York University wasn’t a terrible choice for grad work but when I got there the place was swamped. Graduate seminars had up to 90 people crowding the classroom, with professors unable to see those who wanted to discuss ideas. Long lines invariably awaited us when we wanted to discuss a paper with them. Some of these folks teaching philosophy seemed to me extremely clever, if not always wise enough. They could spin arguments, theories, scratch their heads and ponder with lots of intensity and energy, and weave words around with amazing skill, so I always saw myself as having to struggle a bit harder than they in order to achieve the respect of my peers. But I had the advantages of coming to school with a few years of real-world experience under my belt, a hunger to succeed, and, not least, an array of very strong basic ideas to serve as a theoretical mooring. At first I proposed to do my Ph. D. work on the idea of logical possibility but since my training in formal logic was weak, I was discouraged from doing this. So I settled on the much more controversial and acrimonious topic of my dissertation, "Human Rights: A Meta-ethical Inquiry." By the time I started work on it, I had taken a job at California State College in Bakersfield and was doing my graduate work at the University of California at Santa Barbara. About this time I was also being looked at by the Institute for Humane Studies in Menlo Park, following Margaret Harper’s reading of a column I wrote for The Santa Ana Register critical of public education. The folks at Menlo Park – Ken Templeton and Baldy Harper – invited me to fly up for an interview. After this several projects ensued, including two political philosophy conferences I co-directed, one with John Hospers at USC, the other with Robert L. Cunningham at USF. I had also begun to publish. My first paper appeared in 1969 in The Personalist, entitled "Justice and the Welfare State," a piece which the late Roy Childs had always thought was very good. It argued that because of the extensive intrusion into human affairs by government in the welfare state, the possibility of determining whether one is acting justly is diminished. My next paper was "Education and the Philosophy of Knowledge," published in Educational Theory. So even before I received my Ph.D., I was beginning to publish – not as part of any grand career strategy but simply because I was eager to advance ideas. There is no doubt that I was working on topics under the considerable influence of what I have learned from Ayn Rand. I was also attempting to place her ideas in circulation. Some folks would consider this way of approaching coming to grips with the world to be too derivative. Yet originality per se has never seemed to me a priority in searching out the truth, so long as the influence of another does not trump one's own first-hand understanding. One of my more satisfying experiences in grad school occurred out of the blue. Anthony Flew, a famous analytic philosopher, came to give a paper at UCSB. I went to the meeting and as I was standing around waiting for Flew to arrive, I heard him ask the faculty "Where is Tibor Machan? Isn’t he a graduate student here?" Flew had become a libertarian and read some of my early writings. On another occasion I went to USC to hear Saul Kripke, the famous Princeton philosopher and wunderkind (having entered grad school at 15, I am told). After hearing his paper we adjourned to the faculty club to hob-knob a bit. As we entered, Kripke stood there shaking hands with some faculty and grad students. I, too, went by to introduce myself, only to find him telling me that he was familiar with some of my work, having been a reader of Reason magazine for some time. I admit to having been a bit flattered on these and similar occasions, as when F. A. Hayek wrote to ask me about B. F. Skinner, for example. I have, over the years, rubbed elbows with some rather famous folks, including Milton Friedman, Hayek, Jim Buchanan, and others. I once picked up Ludwig von Mises at the Long Beach Airport, when he addressed what I think was the Future of Freedom Conference at Long Beach State University (now called California State University at Long Beach). Later in life I had the opportunity to interview Edward Teller, Thomas Szasz, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Paul Craig Roberts, Yale Brozen, William F. Buckley, Jr., and a few other people for Reason magazine. (I did the interview with Hayek in his home in Salzburg, the summer before he won the Nobel Prize.) I had a chance to converse at some length with Gary Becker when we both attended a meeting of the Mt. Pelerin Society in Hong Kong. And at the Hoover Institution, where I spent a year in 1975–76, I had some discussions with Aaron Director, a major figure of the Chicago School of economics. Indeed, I disputed with him about the nature of truth. He said that truth is of no importance, only usefulness is. Whereupon I suggested that this is only useful to acknowledge if it is true! When Sidney Hook heard about this he advised me not to push folks to the wall where they see no escape, for it is bad diplomacy. I don't know whether this was a true statement of his or merely a useful one. I myself did not find it very useful. In April 1970, I attended an Institute for Humane Studies seminar at Claremont Men’s College, where Murray Rothbard, Armen Alchian, Henry Manne, Leonard Liggio and many other folks were lecturing. Paul Varnell and Anne Wortham were also present. During a lecture by Alchian, who was by then a famous economist and author of University Economics, a widely used textbook, I had a pleasant but protracted argument about whether values are subjective. Alchian argued they were, comparing the preference for freedom no different in kind from the preference for golf or tennis. I protested, saying that at least freedom is a broader value, maybe even a precondition of valuing in general. I kept up bugging Alchian about this throughout the seminar and thought I had gotten on his nerve by the end, only to find that at the concluding dinner he was raising a toast to me for being so persistent in keeping the exchange going. I need not say that I was very flattered – my relatively insecure ego makes very good use of such compliments. Later, in 1986 or thereabouts, Milton Friedman invited me to a conference in Napa Valley that was also attended by Professor Alchian. To my surprise, Alchian came up to me during a break and told me that he had changed his mind about freedom: it is either some kind of universal value or a hard-wired value. In any case he now agrees that it is not akin to preferring golf to badminton. That, too, boosted my ego, although by then I was a fairly productive scholar myself. On this same occasion I also had a heated exchange with Friedman. At some point he complained that Objectivists lack humility, which is why they think one can know right and wrong; I pointed out that the criticism about humility itself presupposed such knowledge. Much of my contact with such estimable personages is the result of my efforts to facilitate dialogue among both scholars and the public. I served for many years editor of Reason Papers, was a co-founder of the Reason Foundation with Manny Klausner and Robert W. Poole, and during its early years published many articles in Reason magazine (which Bob, Manny and I took over from founder Lanny Friedlander). I have organized many conferences and seminars, usually with help from some foundation that has thought of me as adept at these tasks. I suppose I am so active in part because of my ambitious temperament. But I also have theoretical grounds. Because of the human capacity to initiate thought and conduct, there is no determinate force that one philosopher’s thinking will exert upon the world. However, philosophers can produce an understanding that can be presented to the rest of humanity in more or less accessible ways and from this understanding – indeed from the wide array of diverse philosophies – the next generation can then pick and choose for purposes of helping in its efforts to make sense of the world and to be guided in how to cope with it. So I have all along tried to facilitate philosophical inquiry, especially with regard to political issues. The first conference I did I conducted with John Hospers at the Los Angeles Sheraton and USC. The idea was to encourage serious discussion in political philosophy with concepts like liberty, rights, justice and individuality kept firmly in mind. As my educational experience had taught me, the dominant political philosophical climate insisted upon the supposed supreme social value of human equality, specifically in economic realm. We individualists had to answer by creating forums where classical liberal concerns could be aired, debated, and welcomed with respect. Fortunately, the same idea had begun to animate a great many others, generating a quite fertile individualist philosophical discourse over the years. Ironically, it was at this inaugural USC conference that Robert Nozick presented his paper "On the Randian Argument," later published in The Personalist as part of the conference proceedings (and much later to be published in his collection of papers, Socratic Puzzles) This was four years before his Anarchy, State, and Utopia was published by Basic Books. Nozick tried to dismantle Rand’s philosophical edifice, charging, in essence, that it was a house of cards. Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen would critically dissect Nozick’s own argument in their article "Nozick on the Randian Argument," published, along with Nozick’s piece, in a volume by Jeff Paul, as well as in their own edited volume The Philosophical Thought of Ayn Rand. At the same conference Jack Wheeler criticized anarchism and Lou Rollins defended it. I argued the thesis of my dissertation, i.e., the viability of the concept of human rights. Nathaniel Branden commented on a paper, and many others contributed as well. Charles King – who later became president of Liberty Fund, Inc., the Indianapolis outfit established by Pierre Goodrich and instrumental in organizing hundreds of colloquia and seminars, many of them initially directed by me (and then was removed supposedly because of some murky business involving an alleged sexual liaison in the office) – first learned of libertarianism at this affair, having come down from Pomona College to attend some of the sessions. Charles had soured on academia – he harbored some resentment about how his career had gone after having gotten his Ph.D. at Harvard and studied with John Rawls. During one visit with Marty Zupan and me, he got kind of tipsy and informed us that if you don’t get picked as one of the select by the first quarter of your grad studies at Harvard, you can pretty much kiss your professional prospects goodbye. He flourished a bit late and then got jobs at Rice and later at Pomona, both very respectable, but not Ivy League institutions. So when Liberty Fund offered him a job, he gladly accepted, eventually ascending to the presidency. For many years my history with Liberty Fund was very successful. I conducted 13 events, including 4 ten-week-long summer seminars, and participated in many others – until the coming of one very active trustee who was also a Roman Catholic. He got hold of an op-ed piece I wrote in 1981 for The Los Angeles Times, "Abortion May be Immoral But It Isn’t Murder," and my gigs with Liberty Fund suddenly dried up. Charles told me, confidentially, that I should no longer make proposals (nearly all of which had been accepted in the past). I was at least invited to a couple of events, though, for some of the people I had introduced to Liberty Fund were beginning to direct their own brain-storming colloquia or seminars, and they wanted me to brain-storm along with them. But then even that much participation was forbidden. In 1991, I believe, Doug Den Uyl, a good friend and fellow philosopher, invited me to participate in a colloquium on "Virtue and Wealth." During one of the sessions the subject of homosexuality came up, and I made the point that from a certain reasonable perspective it could at most be judged a confusion, whereas celibacy was outright perversion, a denial of one’s nature as a sexual being. Across from me sat Ted Vitalis, a philosophers and a Roman Catholic priest. The Liberty Fund observer was also a devout Roman Catholic. So, word got back to headquarters and from then until 1995, I was banned from all meetings. When Charles finally told me that it’d be okay for me to be invited – though not to make any proposal of mine, of course – it took about a year and a half before any of my friends went out on a limb to propose to Liberty Fund that I should take part in one of their events. Finally Ron Hamowy, Professor of History at the University of Edmonton, Alberta, took the leap and invited me to the November 1996 Liberty Fund colloquium on Cato’s Letters. Ron had been something of a maverick among the classical liberals in North America – a feisty, articulate, blunt, short gay man with whom I had gotten along despite our serious disagreement on Ayn Rand’s merits as a thinker and novelist. Oddly, just about then Liberty Fund fired Charles allegedly because of some indiscretion with a secretary. My next seminar would be in April 1997, at Indianapolis, where I may have reinstated myself firmly into Liberty Fund’s stable of scholars. In September of 1999 I directed my first colloquium since 1988, on "Moral Tragedy and Individual Responsibility," at Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach, CA. And thereafter I not only took part many colloquia but got at least one more proposal accepted, one made with Nick Capaldi, and did taped interviews for their library with Izrael Kirzner, Ernest van den Haag and John Hospers. I have been a professor at several universities, including a couple stints in Europe, and eventually settled into a post at Auburn University, hotbed of Austrian economics. But I grew restless in that post and started putting out feelers for other opportunities. My many years as a scribbler of opinions for The Orange County Register and other papers now paid off. In 1996 I wrote to Ken Grubbs, then editor of the editorial page at The Register, indicating my desire to leave Auburn, where I thought my work was not sufficiently appreciated and rewarded by the administration. He invited me to see him, and we set up two talks at The Register that were quite successful. I returned to Auburn for about a month, and then was contacted by Jim Rosse, CEO of Freedom Communications, Inc., the parent company of The Register and about 27 other papers around the country, as well as several TV stations and magazines. Rosse asked me whether I'd be interested in the position of Advisor on Libertarian Issues at the company. So, I moved to Orange County, California, where my work consists of traveling to various newspaper offices and meeting with editors and other staff, explaining libertarianism and its application to local issues. Sometimes I conduct workshops for groups of editors and publishers, sometimes give talks at department meetings. I wrote columns at first mostly for The Register, but eventually for Freedom News Wire also, the service that reaches out to all the newspapers owned by Freedom. Jim Rosse, who has an academic background himself, understood that I’d be no good at Freedom Communications without scholarly connections and projects. So he has been very supportive of my continuing, indeed even revving up, all such activities. I continued to write my scholarly papers and books, magazine articles and so forth, as well as the renewed projects with Liberty Fund. At the Hoover Institution I was asked to edit a series of books, Philosophic Reflections on a Free Society, which was supported by Johan and Joanne Blokker (until Johan’s death in 2000). And I got to teach at the Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University. I taught mainly the business ethics course. Chapman has paid half my salary, with Freedom kicking in the rest. I was also appointed Freedom Communications Professor of Free Enterprise and Business Ethics at the Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics. All in all the Freedom appointment was a very nice development. But in 2003 it became rather wobbly – the company, owned by a large family in its fifth generation, had been having feuds since a nasty conflict a couple of decades ago. The bad blood had lingered with some of the shareholders and led, in time, to a decision to put the firm up for sale. Morgan Stanley was chosen to handle the job and in 2003 the process began, with no clear idea of how it would end. As of this writing these developments hadn’t reached their culmination. I have no illusions about the impact of my work on the community of political philosophy and economy. Whatever its quality, the regard in which it is held is very mixed. And it is plain enough that my work isn’t issuing from Oxford or Harvard or Princeton University Press, nor am I asked to write for The New York Times Magazine, the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, or even The Public Interest. (I have, however, managed to squeeze into the pages of The American Scholar, Free Inquiry, National Review, The Humanist, Barron’s, Economic Affairs, and many good scholarly forums.) The unevenness of my success is no doubt in part due to the often low regard in which the scholarly community holds libertarian and other ideas I am associated with. In part it may be due to the lack of upward mobility in academic circles. And in part, also, to my admittedly sometimes hurried writing. Still, if I am to judge, the latter cannot be definitive; for many writers within the mainstream community manage to lope onto the front stage fairly easily, despite their occasional lapses. The bottom line, if there is one, has to do with what I champion in my works, which is the most radical idea in the history of politics: the individual is sovereign and not beholden to others in any enforceable way. Tibor Machan [send him mail] holds the Freedom Communications Professorship of Free Enterprise and Business Ethics at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, CA. A Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, he is author of 20+ books, most recently, The Passion for Liberty (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com
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