After some problems, not to speak of the whole Mark Skousen debacle, the venerable FEE seems to be on the right track.
But an interesting PC episode has been on my mind recently. The November 1996 issue of The Freeman contained a Book Review by Hans-Hermann Hoppe of The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars (edited by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger).In the review, Hoppe pointed out – in arguing against the war — that Hitler had killed relatively few people until the war, mostly fellow Nazis, as compared to US ally Stalin; Stalin had killed 20 million of his own people before the war. This true statement angered a number of people, including a famed Austrian economist on the FEE board.
Next came Robert W. McGee‘s article Arab Terrorism: Causes and Cure, in the December 1996 issue of The Freeman, about the systematic violation of Palestinian human rights. McGee pointed out that Palestinians have had their land stolen and have been subjected to numerous other abuses since the 1940s, with the help of American taxpayers.
The economist, angered by the two articles, resigned from the Board in protest. The president of FEE then fired Lawrence White, the editor of the November issue in which Hoppe’s book review appeared; Robert Batemarco, the book review editor; and Robert Higgs, the editor of the December issue, in which McGee’s article appeared.
So at this point it appeared that Hoppe, McGee, White, Higgs, and Batemarco were persona non grata with FEE. One ironic aspect of this is that White, who has disagreed with Hoppe over free banking issues, was fired for publishing Hoppe’s book review.
And I haven’t even gotten to the part about the father-in-law having an affair with his daughter-in-law, who ends up committing suicide. Wait, whoops, I think that’s Hillsdale (link2) I’m thinking of. Nevermind.
10:50 pm on May 20, 2004
