JoAnn Rothbard – Anthony G. Flood

“What did I do to deserve a friend like Murray?”

Murray banging out an article or chapter in his and Joey’s second-floor, West 88th Street apartment.

That was the title of my tribute, which went undelivered, for the “Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of Murray N. Rothbard” on March 24, 1995, at his widow JoAnn‘s church, Madison Avenue Presbyterian (at 73rd Street), three weeks after what would have been his 69th birthday. (I still have her handwritten invitation to Gloria and me.) Next March 2nd will mark the centenary of his birth, so the text of my inadequate salute to Murray must serve as a belated notice of his 99th birthday. I hope you’ll consider marking the occasion by having a look nine Rothbard-related posts appended to this one.—A.G.F.

“What did I do to deserve a friend like Murray?”

What friend of Murray’s has not asked that question? I asked it regularly over the last twelve years. After all, unlike many of Murray’s other friends, I had no accomplishments, literary or otherwise, that he could associate me with when I introduced myself. It took some doing for me one night a dozen years ago, after having recently read his The Ethics of Liberty [I am mentioned on the copyright page of the second edition.—A.G.F.], to look up his phone number and call him. I was ready to apologize for the intrusion, keep my questions brief and few, resist the urge to prolong the conversation, and then, after about twenty minutes, thank him for his time.

Ninety minutes into our talk, however, I noticed that he was enjoying the exchange as much as I was! His showing as much curiosity about my interests as I did about his ideas surprised me utterly. As I was being drawn into the vortex of his ideas for the first time, I wondered for a moment if there was something else I should have been doing. But only for a moment. Continue reading ““What did I do to deserve a friend like Murray?””

“The Annotated Napkin”: a memento of Murray

The napkin on which Murray Rothbard sketched for me a diagram of an aspect of the structure of production on July 1, 1986, now on display at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Among the books I donated two years ago to the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama was my copy of Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature (Libertarian Review Press, 1974) the one that its author, Murray Rothbard, had given to me almost thirty years ago when we went out for dinner at Argo Coffee Shop, located at 90^th Street and Broadway, Manhattan, just two blocks from his apartment building.[1] While elaborating on the intricate “latticework” (his metaphor) of a market economy’s production structure, he grabbed a napkin and diagrammed his insight on both sides of it.

Normally, a restaurant napkin wouldn’t last long, but this one had a different destiny. I tucked it inside my library’s newest acquisition, where it remained safe for 28 years until I sent it to Auburn.

Yesterday the Institute’s archivist made my day by sending me a photo of the napkin on display in a plexiglass case, noting that it’s “really enjoyed by our students and visitors.”) The exhibit label reads: “The Annotated Napkin, July 1, 1986, Murray N. Rothbard, Gift of Mr. Anthony Flood.”

Continue reading ““The Annotated Napkin”: a memento of Murray”

Murray Newton Rothbard: Notes toward a Biography

I may be fairly described as (among other things) road-kill along the way to the definitive biography of Murray Rothbard (1926-1995). In 1997 I sought and gained the cooperation of his widow, Joann, and Lew Rockwell, then president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, to begin that project.

All I managed to do, however, was fulfill the prediction that this effort would overwhelm me. My enthusiasm for the idea of telling Murray’s story and expounding his ideas blinded me to the fact, obvious to everyone but me (and perhaps my mother), that I was not up to the task. The life of Rothbard, an intellectual giant, awaits its Hülsmann. And if the interval between the death of Ludwig von Mises and the production of Guido Hülsmann’s Mises: Last Knight of Liberalism is any guide, the wait is far from over.

On display below is barely refined ore mined from not only from secondary sources but, more importantly, from interviews conducted with people who knew Murray: in the first place JoAnn Rothbard, but also Leonard Liggio, Ralph Raico, George Resch, John McCarthy, and James Sadowsky. Readers who have profited from Justin Raimondo’s An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement as well as Murray’s own monograph, The Betrayal of the American Right will discover a fact or two not related in those works, which I highly recommend.

I was pleasantly surprised when, in 2010, Gerard N. Casey, Professor (Emeritus), School of Philosophy, University College, Dublin, and Associate Scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute cited my unfinished essay (first published on my old site in 2008) in his fine monograph Murray Rothbard, a sure milestone on the road to the “definitive biography” project.¹

Murray Newton Rothbard was born in the Bronx on March 2, 1926. His father, David Rothbard, a shoemaker’s son, was raised in Vishigorod, Ukraine, 40 miles north of Warsaw on the Vistula. David, who had attended Hebrew school as a child, abandoned Judaism because its scriptures told of a God who had instigated the violent behavior of the Israelites, and that horrified him. Continue reading “Murray Newton Rothbard: Notes toward a Biography”