Once upon a time, in July of 1978 I had the honor of attending the Cato Institute’s First Summer Seminar on Political Economy atWake Forrest University. The distinguished faculty of libertarian luminaries included Murray N. Rothbard, Leonard P. Liggio, Arthur A. Ekirch, Walter E. Grinder, and Roy A. Childs. This was before the devastating Cato Institute split detailed by David Gordon in his excellent series of articles at LRC.
The curriculum was hard-core Rothbardian – natural rights libertarianism from The Ethics of Liberty, Austrian Economics, revisionist history, and libertarian class analysis.
The Cato organizers gave us each a ton of excellent books (including Rothbard’s Power and Market) and photocopy reprints of classic articles including Rothbard’s libertarian strategy memorandum to the Kochs which served as the guideline for the Institute’s creation.
Rothbard later admitted that these early Seminars were organized as “best and brightest” talent searches for Cato.
But it was the powerful lecture presentations by Walter E. Grinder, “Libertarian Class Analysis” and “American Power Elites” which had the most truly lasting impact upon me
Reading Robert Wenzel’s perceptive observations today on LRC concerning how far the Koch-funded “libertarian” student groups have fallen in their willful ignorance and boastful hubris deeply saddens me. Things surely do not go better with Koch; but they do with Lew and his crew.
5:09 pm on April 18, 2014
