Against the Left: A Rothbardian Libertarianism

Against the Left explores something basic to libertarianism that many people today have forgotten. As everyone knows, libertarians view the State and the individual as fundamentally opposed. People who freely interact in the market create on their own a wonderful society that advances progress. The State, as Murray Rothbard explained, is a criminal gang of predators. It takes away what people produce, confiscating wealth for its own nefarious purposes.

So much is common knowledge, and in Against the Left, I show in detail how the State does this. What is often forgotten, though, is that libertarianism accepts people as they are. If we get rid of the State — and that is a big if — we have accomplished our goal as libertarians. Libertarianism does not try to remold people to make them conform to some supposedly desirable ideology. It does not embark on the futile quest of making everybody equal. It does not favor trying to end “discrimination”. It does not view the traditional family as an enemy. To the contrary, it views the traditional family as the basis for a decent society.

Two great thinkers have taught us these truths better than anyone else: Ludwig von Mises and his foremost student, Murray N. Rothbard. Their insights are basic to this book.

Unfortunately, a number of so-called libertarians ignore these essential points. These left libertarians attempt the impossible. They want to combine libertarianism, with its polar opposite, egalitarianism. It’s not enough for people to be libertarian. They must also be “nice,” where this means surrendering to the latest leftist claptrap.

In Against the Left, we examine some key battlegrounds in the struggle to preserve and advance real libertarianism against its enemies. These include the assault on the family, civil rights and “disabilities,” immigration, environmentalism, and economic egalitarianism. In the last chapter, we directly confront the left-libertarian impostors who want to take libertarianism away from us.