Happy Birthday Ralph!
By David Gordon
October 23, 2018
Today would have been Ralph Raico’s eighty-second birthday. He was a foremost historian of classical liberalism and a leading libertarian theorist. He was a member of Murray Rothbard’s legendary Circle Bastiat and one of Murray’s closest friends. Ralph was also my friend for thirty-seven years, and his learning, analytical abilities, and devotion to liberty always inspired me. He was also extremely funny and a master of the sarcastic put-down. He once said, responding to a radio interviewer who challenged him “You libertarians criticize the state, but this is a democracy, and the state represents all of us” with “Is that right?” delivered in a mordant tone of voice that was all his own.
David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and Distinguished Columnist at LewRockwell.com. He is also author of Resurrecting Marx and An Introduction to Economic Reasoning and editor of numerous books including Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard. Send him mail.
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