Anent yesterday’s reminisence, I rediscovered two clippings from early 1995 on which I foolishly failed to note where they appeared. (I know roughly when, but not whence.)
Murray Rothbard had died on January 7th; obits followed soon thereafter, including several from the eloquent American conservative commentator Joseph Sobran, the traditionalist Roman Catholic who “anarched” under Murray’s influence.[1]
I believe one clipping was snipped from The Wanderer, the Catholic newspaper to which Joe contributed; the other, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report. I could be wrong about either or both; I invite readers to correct my memory or render my account more precise, if any of you can.
Having no wish to infringe on copyright, which I believe is held by the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, I can only provide excerpts (which I will take down if FGF believes I exceeded fair use). Joe, a careful writer, was not given to hyperbole, but since what he said about my friend and intellectual hero squares with my experience, I’m happy to give you a glimpse of it. It’s much more impressive coming from him.
Joseph Sobran on Murray’s passing, January-February 1995
Murray Rothbard, R.I.P. (The Wanderer?)
Murray Rothbard, a great champion of liberty, has died, felled by a heart attack at 68. . . . I hardly know how to describe Murray: He was a wisecracking guy who could change the way you looked at the world. That was the effect he had on hundreds of people, including me. He had a breathtaking style, challenging common (mostly liberal) attitudes on every front. Many’s the time I’ve blushed to think I’d accepted some cliché until Murray whacked it. . . .
Murray’s disciples were also his friends, and he unaffectedly treated them as his equals, though there was no such thing as Murray Rothbard’s equal. He had no self-importance; his manner was earthy, friendly, direct, and attentive. To be with him was to think, and to laugh. . . . Murray never aged, never wound down. He seemed to use, and enjoy, every minute of his life.
The son of Jewish immigrants, Murray wasn’t religious, but he had deep sympathy for Catholicism, which he considered the mother of freedom and also of the Western culture he loved. He passionately defended the Church against historic slanders, including those propagated by some of her wayward sons.
It’s sad, even stunning, to lose him. But what a wonderful life his was. . . .
Murray (The Rothbard-Rockwell Report?)
Murray Rothbard was one of a kind. He didn’t remind you of anyone else, and nobody else will ever remind you of Murray. I hardly know where to start. He was an extraordinarily deep thinker who didn’t act like it. . . . He was so much fun to be around that you could easily forget what an imposing thinker he was; it never occurred to him to try to impress people. He had more opinions on more subjects than anyone in the room, but he always listened. The minute he took a liking to you, you had a loyal friend for good. . . .
Murray was born in New York in 1926 and spent most of his life there. His family were Communists, and as a boy he managed to shock them all by asking precociously, at a family gathering, just what was so bad about Franco. . . . Pretty soon he was a libertarian, at a time when there was almost no such thing; for a time he belonged to Ayn Rand’s circle, but even the Randians were too orthodox for him, and he struck out on his own, rethinking politics and economics from scratch. . . . eventually he concluded that there is no justification for the state and called himself an anarchist — an “anarcho-capitalist,” to be precise. . . . Above all he revered his mentor Ludwig von Mises, whose work he extended to new heights and applications in 25 books and about 10,000 articles. (The latter figure is neither hyperbole nor misprint.)
I could praise him all day and still feel I hardly told you a thing about him. . . . His mind was strong and decisive but always open. His latter years didn’t seem like latter years, because he never slowed down. May the world catch up with him.
Yet another remembrance of Joe’s was published in Murray N. Rothbard: In Memoriam (edited by Lew Rockwell Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, AL: 1995,38-39), the PDF of which you may download for free here. It opened with:
It wasn’t like Murray Rothbard to die. Nothing he ever did was
more out of character, more difficult to reconcile with everything
we knew of him, more downright inconceivable. Murray dead is a
contradiction in terms.
And closed with:
We who mourn him have the consolation that his work will outlive us.
I hope you’ll treat yourself to the rest of it and the other wonderful essays in that collection.
Note
[1] Sometime in the 1990s, after the 1992 fire that gutted the Church of St. Agnes (of Fulton Sheen fame), I chatted with Joe on 44th Street after Mass one Sunday. During the restoration of the church on 43rd Street, Masses were held in the old parish school building one block north.