A Wise Man of Liberty

by Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo

More years ago than I care to remember, Burt Blumert saved my life – with the sort of advice only a born wise man could proffer. During some crisis or other, perhaps personal, perhaps political or professional – I don’t recall the details – he told me just what I should do, and I promptly did it – with beneficent results all around. What was his advice? As I agonized over what course of action to take, he sagely advised me: When in doubt, do nothing. Let the situation cool off, and take no action that will further inflame the dispute. “Us ethnic types,” he confided, “are emotional: it’s the way we are.” Burt introduced me to what was, for me, a novel concept: the idea of self-restraint, which has stood me in good stead ever since – and saved my life on more than one occasion, when I thought: “What would Burt do?”

He was a great one for self-discipline: all good businessmen are, and he was the epitome of the entrepreneur in an almost Randian sense. As the proprietor of Camino Coins, he was in the gold business for decades, as long as I knew him: he was a principled businessman who knew the value and the meaning of what he was doing, and did it with zest.

I met Burt through our mutual friend and mentor, Murray Rothbard, the libertarian philosopher, economist, and prolific author and activist whose career as an intellectual entrepreneur spans the life of the modern libertarian movement. Burt was an enthusiastic supporter of Rothbard’s intellectual and political projects, from the Center for Libertarian Studies in the old days to the Ludwig von Mises Institute in the 1990s, from the Libertarian Forum, Murray’s feisty little newsletter started in the early 1970s, to the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, the last issue of which was dated sometime in the mid-1990s. Whenever there was something to be done, a practical matter to be attended to, a conference to put on or a special project that had to be undertaken in order to preserve the integrity and good order of the libertarian movement, Burt was there, with his clear-eyed no-nonsense view of things and his invariably affable manner.

Burt was in many ways like a father to me: he tempered my more angular personality traits and patiently helped me – in spite of myself – to survive my misspent youth relatively intact, and ceaselessly urged me to focus on the one project out of many that eventually became successful: Antiwar.com. It was Burt who graciously offered to take Antiwar.com under the wing of the Center for Libertarian Studies when we converted to the nonprofit model and professionalized our organization. Without that kind of assistance, we would never have survived.

Burt had a generous personality, and I mean that in several senses at once, including an ability to stand outside his own prejudices and see the humor in situations. I remember one time, at a Libertarian Party national convention held in Seattle, I believe, in which Ron Paul was slated to become the LP presidential nominee. It was one of those rare times when Burt and I were on opposite sides of the barricades: I had left the LP, along with a small group, having decided that the third-party strategy was a dead end, and that it was time to build a libertarian faction inside the GOP. This was 1987, or thereabouts: you might say I was a premature Ron Paul Republican. This meant – in 1987 – that it was necessary to oppose Ron Paul, who was running on a third-party ticket and not in the GOP primaries. So a contingent of us “Libertarian Republicans” showed up at the LP National Convention, with all kinds of printed propaganda, including a rather scurrilous and wrong-headed pamphlet attacking Ron – think of Matt Welch, only well-written. Indeed, there were two such pamphlets, both authored by yours truly, in which poor Ron was raked over the coals for every deviation from strict libertarian principle – both real and imagined – I could throw at him, and then some.

There I was, handing out these screeds at the front entrance to the convention, when who should walk up to me but Burt, with a more-in-sadness-than-anger look on his face. “Justin, Justin, Justin,” he said, shaking his head as he perused the contents of my screed and giving me a mischievous half-smile. “If only we could take all that energy and harness it for good.”

Well, later on, and not much later on, he did manage to harness it for good, as he and Murray eventually got sick and tired of the LP and its curiously non-political shenanigans. The Cold War was ending, and the divisions between libertarians and old-style conservatives were less important than the similarities. Burt was tremendously excited by the possibilities, and plunged into activities of the then-brand new John Randolph Club, meant to be a “bridge” organization uniting libertarians and traditionalists in opposition to the neocons. Murray was the first president of the group, and Burt served, I believe, as the treasurer – a role he often played in our little projects, and a vital one it was.

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April 11, 2009

Justin Raimondo [send him mail] is editorial director of Antiwar.com and is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.

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