My friend and colleague Paul Cantor (1945-2022) passed away a while ago. He will still be missed. He will always be missed. Paul served for many years as the Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Some scholars are narrow specialists. Others are experts in a wide range of fields. Both Mises and Rothbard were Austrian economists and libertarians. But whereas the former stuck for the most part within the confines of the dismal science, the latter ranged widely, covering not only those specialties they both shared but also history, philosophy, sociology, political theory, law; he even ventured into movie criticism (he served as the media and literary critic Mr. First Nighter).

Paul Cantor was clearly in the Rothbard camp in this matter. His contribution to scholarship within the realm of literature and media ranges all the way from Shakespeare to South Park. From Hamlet to Bart Simpson. That is quite a stretch. You can’t get much more broad coverage encompassed by that field than that if you tried to do so purposely.

But that by no means exhausts the diversity of his interests. He was also deeply involved until the very end of his life in Austrian economics. He started out as devotee of the economics of Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises and Hayek while still a high school student, during which time he attended the economic seminar of Ludwig von Mises at New York University. You don’t get too much more precocious than that.

He was also a devotee of libertarianism. He made numerous and important explicit contributions to the theory of this political economic philosophy. It would be an exaggeration to say that his career as a critic of English literature consisted of applying libertarianism to such as Gilligan’s Island, Star Trek, The Simpsons, and the X-Files, or to As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Othello, King Lear, Timon of Athens and The Tempest. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that libertarianism and Austrian economics were his lodestar, hints of which can be found even in unexpected areas of his writing. Not for him, as for all too many of his literary colleagues, to embrace the niceties of intersectionality, feminism, or woke-ism. Rather, he stuck to his principles, as unpopular as they may have been in this area of scholarship.

He was also an unparalleled public speaker. I had the honor to attend several libertarian conferences as a fellow speaker. He was riveting, passionate, knowledgeable, entertaining, witty. His stage presence reminded me of that of Murray Rothbard who he resembled both physically, linguistically (both were Jews brought up in New York City), and philosophically (both were devotees of Austro-libertarianism). I know of no greater compliment to pay anyone than to say they are similar to Murray in any manner, way, shape, or form.

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