Did Milton Friedman’s Libertarianism Seek to Advance Jewish Interests?
This is an abridged version of the original article, “Did Milton Friedman’s Libertarianism “Defend U$SIsrael Interests” that was was posted on Holy Crusade News.
In his Culture of Critique trilogy Kevin MacDonald shows how many Jewish intellectual movements have developed a culture of critique that undermines those ideas and values that protect White group interests and cohesion.
These Jewish intellectual movements include the Frankfurt School (philosophy, sociology), Boazian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, the New York Intellectuals (literature), Marxism and even neoconservatism.
But how about libertarianism? Is it also a part of the Jewish run culture of critique?
MacDonald gives us a three-step method to answer the question:
1 “find influential movements dominated by Jews, with no implication that all or most Jews are involved in these movements and no restrictions on what the movements are.”
2 “determine whether the Jewish participants in those movements identified as Jews
3. AND thought of their involvement in the movement as advancing specific Jewish interests.” (Kevin MacDonald. Culture of Critique, pp. 11-12.)
The first step is easy. After all, libertarianism has clearly been dominated by Jews. The four biggest names in libertarianism are all Jews: Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard. Furthermore, they all dominated specific sub-schools of the libertarian movement: the Chicago school, Classical Austrian school, Objectivism and the Radical Austrolibertarian school. Also one of the most famous popularizers of libertarianism, Walter Block is Jewish.
The second and third step are more difficult. Therefore we have to study deeper into their lives and identities. First Milton Friedman:
MILTON FRIEDMAN
Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 to Sara Ethel Landau and Jeno Saul Friedman, Jewish immigrants living in Brooklyn, New York. Milton was the youngest child and had three older sisters.
We do not know much about the Friedman family because all his life Milton Friedman was quite secretive about his family and ancestors—the only exception being in 1976 when he received the Nobel prize in economics and he had to write a short autobiography. But even then he did not tell much about his ancestors. He did not even mention that his ancestors were all Jews. In fact, the word Jew does not appear in this official autobiography.
My parents were born in Carpatho-Ruthenia (then a province of Austria-Hungary; later, part of inter-war Czechoslovakia, and, currently, of the Soviet Union). They emigrated to the U.S. in their teens, meeting in New York.
When I was a year old, my parents moved to Rahway, N.J., a small town about 20 miles from New York City. There, my mother ran a small retail “dry goods” store, while my father engaged in a succession of mostly unsuccessful “jobbing” ventures. The family income was small and highly uncertain; financial crisis was a constant companion.
Strangely Milton does not even mention that the birthplace and hometown of both of his parents was Berehove, a Hungarian town. One would think that the Friedman family would be interested in their ancestral town especially since there seems to have been no significant “anti-Semitism.” In fact, the town even had a mikve, a place for Jewish ritual cleansing.
Milton does mention that his parents came from Carpatho-Ruthenia but falsely claims it was a province of Austria-Hungary. Actually it was integral part of autonomous Hungary. The name Carpatho-Ruthenia is usually only used if one wants to emphasise that the area belonged not to Hungary but to “the forgotten people,” ruthenians/rusyns. In fact, only a very small part of the area was inhabited by them. For example, Berehove was majority Hungarian.
Carpatho-Ruthenia is a historic region in the border between Central and Eastern Europe claimed by Hungarians, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Poles, Russians and Romanians. Before World War I, the area belonged to Austria-Hungary and contained many Jews, just like the neighboring Austro-Hungarian Galicia. Many of the most famous Jewish economists came from this area, which is now part of Western Ukraine.
It does not seem likely that Milton’s parents – two young immigrants from Berehove – would accidentally meet in New York. Quite possibly their marriage was arranged by their families.
Curiously, nothing is known of Jeno Friedman’s parents or siblings. Geni.com has no info, nor does any other genealogical service; and there’s nothing in Milton’s Wikipedia entry. Furthermore, Milton seems to never have written anything about his grandfather or possible paternal uncles, aunts or cousins. Nor has Milton’s son David Friedman though he is very interested in history.
This is most curious for two reasons. First, family and genealogy have always been very important in Jewish culture. Second, Milton Friedman was extremely intelligent and that runs in families because intelligence is heritable. Where did Milton inherit his intelligence? Neither of his parents seem to have been very intelligent. They had no higher education and ran a small dry goods store. Milton’s mother’s Landau–Hartman family was very large but seems not to have been very intelligent or otherwise notable unless they were related to the famous Galician Landau family and Joachim Landau who was a member of the Austrian parliament. The famous libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises‘ mother came from this Landau family (Mises bio, p. 9). However, Landau was a fairly common Jewish family name so any direct relation between Berehove and Galician Landaus seems unlikely.
Friedman’s mentor was Arthur Burns who also mentored Alan Greenspan. (In his memoirs p. 63 Greenspan explicitly refers to Burns as “my old mentor”.) Wikipedia reveals that Burns was originally Burnseig but does not tell his original first name. Neither does any other source.
Burns was born in Stanislau (now Ivano-Frankivsk), Austrian Poland (Galicia), a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1904 to Polish-Jewish parents, Sarah Juran and Nathan Burnseig, who worked as a house painter. He showed aptitude early in his childhood, when he translated the Talmud into Polish and Russian by age six and debated socialism at age nine.[2] In 1914, he immigrated to Bayonne, New Jersey, with his parents.[1] (Wikipedia)
Also the young Milton Friedman had a very Jewish upbringing:
As a child, Milton had very strong ties to Judaism, studying in a Hebrew school and, in his words, “obeying every Orthodox religious requirement.” After a stint of extreme piety during the years before his bar mitzvah, he lost his faith and ceased Jewish practice, but he still strongly identified as a Jew and took great pride in both Jewish tradition and his Jewish heritage.
After his father’s death [1927] he faithfully recited Kaddish for the full eleven months, even traveling to neighboring communities to find a minyan. And he was a devout Zionist who strongly identified with Israel and expressed pride in its achievements. (Jewish Press)
In 1929 Milton got a scholarship to Rutgers University and became more secularized but never abandoned his Jewish identity. He became a socialist probably because at the time social beliefs were very common in the Jewish community. However, Milton’s political opinions started to change when at Rutgers university he became a student and protégé of Arthur Burns.
In economics, I had the good fortune to be exposed to two remarkable men: Arthur F. Burns, then teaching at Rutgers while completing his doctoral dissertation for Columbia; and Homer Jones, teaching between spells of graduate work at the University of Chicago. Arthur Burns shaped my understanding of economic research, introduced me to the highest scientific standards, and became a guiding influence on my subsequent career. … Arthur Burns and Homer Jones remain today among my closest and most valued friends. (Autobiography 1976)
Burns convinced Friedman that (relatively) free markets were even better for Jews than socialism.
In 1932 Milton got a scholarship to Chicago University where he met Rose Director who was two years his senior. The influence of Rose and the Director family on Milton has often been underestimated.
Rose Director was born in 1910 in Staryi Chortoryisk, Volhynia, Western Ukraine, Russian Empire. Wikipedia states: “The Directors were prominent members of the Jewish community in Staryi Chortoryisk.” Volhynian Jews were extremely bitter towards the Tsar because they had lost most of the ancient privileges they had enjoyed under Polish rule. However, with their capital and business networks they kept control of the economy. Jewish Virtual Library explains:
The Jews of Vladimir-Volynski (1570) and Lutsk (1579) were exempted from the payment of custom duties throughout the Polish kingdom. The Jews of Volhynia enjoyed the protection of the royal officials, who even defended their rights before the aristocracy and all the more so before other classes. With the weakening of royal authority at the close of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the Jews had the protection of the major landowners, mainly because they had become an important factor in the economy of Volhynia.
At the close of the 16th century, the noblemen began to lease out their estates to Jews in exchange for a fixed sum which was generally paid in advance. All the incomes of the estate from the labor of the serfs, the payments of the townsmen and the Jews (who lived in the towns which belonged to the estate), innkeeping, the flour mills, and the other branches of the economy were handed over to the lessee. During the term of his lease, the Jew governed the estate and its inhabitants and was authorized to penalize the serfs at his discretion.
During that period, a Jew named Abraham who lived in the town of Turisk became renowned for his vast leases in Volhynia. However, with the exception of these large leases, which were naturally limited in number and on which there is no further information from the beginning of the 17th century, many Jews leased inns, one of the branches of the agricultural economy of the estates, or the incomes of one of the towns or townlets.
A lessee of this kind was actually the agent and confidant of the owner of the estate and the financial and administrative director of the economy of the aristocratic class. As a result of his functions, such a lessee exerted administrative authority and great economic influence, a situation which embittered the peasants, the townsmen, and the lower aristocracy. The lease of estates, together with the trade of agricultural produce derived from them, constituted the principal source of livelihood of the Jews of Volhynia. ..
The emancipation of the peasants in 1861 and the Polish rebellion of 1863 caused far-reaching changes in the economic and social development of Volhynia that affected the Jews. The decline of the estates of the Polish nobility, the construction of railways, and the creation of direct lines of communication with the large commercial centers deprived the Jewish masses of their traditional sources of livelihood and impoverished them. This prompted the Jews to develop industry. Of the 123 large factories situated in Volhynia in the late 1870s, 118 were owned by Jews.
One thing is certain. Most Jews hated the Czar and preferred Austria-Hungary because there Jews were allowed greater freedoms.
According to Wikipedia the Director family emigrated to America in 1913 just before the First World War. Did the Directors emigrate because they had collaborated with the Germans and organized communist resistance to the war? Perhaps. After all, in America Aaron Director became a communist agitator who preached that a communist world revolution was imminent. However, at the same time he went to Yale! This probably indicates that the Director family had a lot of money or at least important connections.
[Aaron] Director was born in Staryi Chortoryisk, Volhynian Governorate, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine) on September 21, 1901.[1] In 1913, he and his family immigrated to the United States, and settled in Portland, Oregon.[1] In Portland, Director attended Lincoln High School where he edited the yearbook.[1]
Director had a difficult childhood in Portland, then a center of KKK and anti-communist hysteria in the wake of World War I. He encountered anti-Semitic slurs and was excluded from social circles.[2] He then moved east to attend Yale University in Connecticut, where his friend, artist Mark Rothko also attended. He graduated in 1924 after three years of study.[1] (Wikipedia)
It would be interesting to know the name of the Yale University dean of admissions who got the two immigrant communist Jews, Aaron and Mark into Yale.
Aaron graduated from Lincoln High in January 1921, and about that time the Yale University dean of admissions visited the school, with the result that Aaron and a slightly younger friend enrolled in Yale in the fall of 1921 as scholarship students. The younger friend was Mark Rothkowitz, later famous as an abstract painter under the name Mark Rothko. (ProMarket.org)
Not surprisingly Aaron and Mark detested Yale as racist and anti-Semitic. They anonymously published a satirical newspaper that accused Yale of being full of stupid anti-Semitic racists.
While at Yale, Director was influenced by Thorstein Veblen and H.L. Mencken, both elitist academics who believed the public lacked the intelligence to make democracy successful, and he eventually came to hold these views as well.[2] He and Rothko[3] anonymously published a satirical newspaper called the Saturday Evening Pest in which he wrote “the definition of the United States shall eternally be H. L. Mencken surrounded by 112,000,000 morons” and called for an “aristocracy of the mentally alert and curious.[4](Wikipedia)
Rothko dropped out of the university but Aaron stayed and graduated.
Rothko received a scholarship to Yale. At the end of his freshman year in 1922, the scholarship was not renewed, and he worked as a waiter and delivery boy to support his studies. He found Yale elitist and racist. Rothko and a friend, Aaron Director, started a satirical magazine, The Saturday Evening Pest, that lampooned the school’s stuffy, bourgeois tone.[8] (Wikipedia)
Mark and Rothko were especially irritated that sports played such a big role at Yale. They explained in their newspaper:
We believe
That in this age of smugness and self-satisfaction, destructive criticism is at least
as useful, if not more so, than constructive criticism.
That Yale is preparing men, not to live, but to make a living. …
That athletics hold a more prominent place at Yale than education, which is endured as a necessary evil. (ProMarket.org)
It is also probably safe to assume that they did not get an invitation to the elitist Skull and Bones. Nor did Yale administration look kindly at Aaron and Mark. Could it be that their antics helped uphold the Jewish quota at Yale? At the time Chicago had a reputation of being Jew-friendly while Yale and Harvard had a reputation of being “anti-Semitic”.
They evidently came under fire from the administration; their last issue contains a supporting letter solicited from Sinclair Lewis, a distinguished alumnus of Yale. Rothko did not return the next fall, and Aaron graduated in 1924 after only 3 years, probably to the relief of the Yale administration. (ProMarket.org)
After Yale, Aaron continued his socialist activism, became a teacher at a labor college and also traveled to Czechoslovakia.
He taught at a labor college in New Jersey, and he traveled to Europe, to England, and as far to the east as Czechoslovakia, before returning to Portland as an educational director at the Portland Labor College. (ProMarket.org)
Neoconservatism
After Lenin and Trotsky lost power to Stalin in the late 20’s Soviet Union, many Jews started to realize that capitalism could be better for the Jews than socialism. This realization and Stalin’s increasing anti-Semitism convinced many Jews not only to abandon socialism, but also to join conservatives in denouncing the Soviet Union. However, this did not mean that these Jews became conservatives. Instead they developed a cult around Trotsky that eventually morphed into neoconservatism that supported relatively free markets but allowed economic interventionism, modernist egalitarian values, secularism, philo-Semitism, open borders, and an interventionist foreign policy.
Like so many other socialist Jews, Aaron Director gradually became a neoconservative. He abandoned his promising career as a communist agitator and became a teacher of statistics at Chicago University. That in itself is quite amazing since he had been a high-profile communist agitator and only had an undergraduate degree even if it was from Yale. Obviously Aaron had powerful friends who kept helping him. One of those friends was the economist Paul Douglas whose wife was a wealthy Jewess, Dorothy Wolff.
In 1927, he [Aaron Director] decided to come to Chicago for graduate study in labor economics with Paul Douglas, then a member of our [Chicago] economics department and later a US Senator from Illinois. After 3 years as a student, Aaron joined the staff in 1930, teaching and assisting Douglas on a book on unemployment. (ProMarket.org)
Aaron also influenced the Jewish Paul Samuelson who would subsequently not only dominate economics education with his popular economics textbook but also win the Nobel Prize in economics. In fact, Aaron was Samuelson’s first teacher.
Aaron was evidently a very effective teacher— the Nobel economist Paul Samuelson recalls that it was a course of Aaron’s that introduced him to economics when he was a college student here and that course first excited his interest in the subject. (ProMarket.org)
Soon Aaron also helped Rose to become a student at the University of Chicago. It was also there in late 1932 that the Director family took Milton Friedman under their wing. Together with Arthur Burns they not only converted Milton to neoconservatism but also helped him in his career.
Paul Samuelson noted that it was Aaron Director and Milton Friedman who together created the second-generation Chicago school. Milton was the writer and Aaron the organizer who literally did not publish anything but used his network to organize an intellectual and political movement. (Samuelson interview, p. 528)
This Second Chicago school was not only much more Jewish and interventionist but also placed a greater emphasis on mathematics. Milton’s Essays in Positive Economy created a methodological revolution in economics. Deductive reasoning from the logic of action was replaced with fancy mathematical formulas, statistics and econometrics. Statistics and mathematical economics were needed for economic interventionism, especially in banking. Mathematics has a certain prestige in academia. It gives whatever one does an air of rigor and intelligence.
This extreme empiricist-positivist methodology was a success in the sense that it made neoconservative interventionist policy recommendations sound more scientific. Gradually the Chicago school took over a large part of academia and many private policy institutes to the extent that the Chicago school became almost synonymous with free market economics. Competing approaches, i.e., those with that were less mathematics-oriented, more conservative and less interventionist free market schools such as the Austrian school, were pushed to the sidelines.
Professor MacDonald has shown how neoconservatism is basically a Jewish movement that is part of the culture of critique. However, he did not write about the economic aspect of neoconservatism and that such economists as Arthur Burns, Milton Friedman, Aaron Director and Alan Greenspan were also important neoconservative intellectuals. They all were also active in the Republican party. Friedman was famously a close confidant of the neoconservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, whose Jewish grandfather Michel Goldwasser had emigrated from Poland. It was Goldwater who destroyed the last vestiges of the Old Right paleoconservatism and turned republicans into neoconservatives. Later Friedman would also be an advisor to presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan who both had uneasy alliances with neoconservative Jews.
One reason why Friedman is not usually considered a neoconservative is because he often described himself as a libertarian. However, this is an example of deliberate confusion where Jewish intellectuals change the definitions of words. They needed to change the definitions of conservatism and libertarianism to include open borders (especially for Jews), a central bank-led banking cartel (often led by Jews) that finances an interventionist foreign policy that fights wars on behalf of Israel. This is why they needed to develop both neoconservatism and neolibertarianism. They were so successful that the true paleoversions of conservatism and libertarianism hardly even exist anymore. Now conservatism usually means neoconservatism.
Dynastic networks
Despite similar ideologies and backgrounds it took Milton Friedman and Rose Director six years to get married. Later Milton explained that they just had too little money.
What is often forgotten is that the Jewish bankers, such as Jacob Schiff, and communists worked together to topple the Tsar because the Tsar was seen as anti-Jewish. It seems that there were international bankers even in Trotsky’s Jewish Bronstein-Zhivotovsky family.
In fact, Schiff was quite open about his mission to destroy the Tsar. It was Schiff who had financed Japanese to attack Russia in 1905. It was also then that Trotsky’s revolutionary activities almost managed to topple the Tsar. Fear of banker power would also explain why the Tsar was so lenient towards communist revolutionaries and terrorists. Instead of executions, they were sent to Siberia from where they often escaped to the West. For example, after the 1905 Russian revolution Trotsky was only sentenced to Siberia and so allowed to escape to West again!
Foreign policy interventionism
Milton and Rose Friedman’s family backgrounds makes it easy to understand why banking and economics were so personal for them. It was literally about life and death for their families. First they helped to topple the Tsar and then Hitler. Banking and the economy had to be manipulated so as to finance the battle against anti-Semitism. Therefore it is also not surprising that Milton believed America should do everything in its power to crush Nazi Germany. This often led to fights with other students and professors who believed that America should stay out of the World War II. Wikipedia turns this into an anti-Semitic incident.
During 1940, Friedman was appointed an assistant professor teaching Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but encountered antisemitism in the Economics department and decided to return to government service.[35][36] (Wikipedia)
However, later Wikipedia does note the pro-war attitude of Friedman.
In 1940, Friedman accepted a position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but left because of differences with faculty regarding United States involvement in World War II. Friedman believed the United States should enter the war.[39] (Wikipedia)
When America did enter the war, Friedman did everything in his power to help crush Germany. Despite now being a member of the pro-free market Chicago school, Friedman helped create the withholding tax which libertarians consider the most destructive tax of all.
From 1941 to 1943 Friedman worked on wartime tax policy for the federal government, as an advisor to senior officials of the United States Department of the Treasury. As a Treasury spokesman during 1942 he advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation. He helped to invent the payroll withholding tax system, since the federal government badly needed money in order to fight the war.[37] (Wikipedia)
It was the withholding tax that made the warfare-welfare state possible but Milton never had any regrets. Anti-Semites had to be destroyed.
I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn’t found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now.[38] (Wikipedia)
Banking interventionism
The original Chicago school was almost unique in defending the free market in banking. Many of the members of the school presented the Chicago plan which supported free banking and 100% reserves because money is the lifeblood of the economy. If you let the government control money and banking, it controls the whole economy. Milton agreed in principle that free market in money and banking is the best alternative, but in practice wanted the central bank to control the money supply and thus the whole economy.
Why this interventionist an exception to the rule of free market? Perhaps because banking is traditionally a Jewish business. Better bailouts than bankruptcies. Furthermore, without government bailouts gentiles might become upset during bank panics and blame the Jews. Better to have bailouts than anti-Semitism.
Friedman’s interventionist attitude was probably also encouraged by the fact that when he was studying at university, the chairman of the Fed was a Jew, Eugene Meyer. That was very important for Jews because it proved that they could also have powerful positions in the American economy like they had dominated the European economies.
Like his ancestors for over 2000 years, professor Arthur Burns taught his three top Jewish proteges— Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and Murray Rothbard—that Jews could and should have an active role both in politics and banking. Alliances with elites in politics and banking are two sides of the same interventionist coin. Professor Benjamin Gingsberg calls this strategy the Fatal Embrace because throughout history it has led to pogroms and other manifestations of anti-Semitism.
Rothbard had chosen the Austrian school over the Chicago school. He believed in the free market, the gold standard, free banking and 100% bank reserves because that would keep the state totally away from money and banking. This would also be good for Jews because then they could not corrupt the economy the way they had done in Europe. In fact, Rothbard believed that one reason why there had been so little anti-Semitism in America was because the banking system and economy in general had been relatively free. He greatly admired the early nineteenth century Jeffersonian-Jacksonian anti-bank movement that fought for free markets and even abolished the early American central bank.
Arthur Burns was surprised and dismayed by Rothbard’s libertarianism. Burns had expected something very different because he had been the neighbor and close family friend of the Rothbard family. Burns had even promised Murray’s father, David Rothbard, that he would take care of Murray. Apparently the idea was to make Murray into a successful economist and banker like his ancestors.
Burns had already mentored Milton Friedman to become an economics professor in the University of Chicago. Now Burns was mentoring both Alan Greenspan and Murray Rothbard who were almost exactly the same age. Both had East European Jewish ancestors. Murray was not only the most talented of Burns’ proteges but also had an illustrious ancestry full of businessmen and bankers. For some reason Murray never spoke about his banker ancestors, but two years ago the Mises Institute came into possession of an autobiographical essay written while Murray was still a high school student.
With remarkable honesty notes Rothbard writes how Jews had refused to assimilate in Poland.
My father has a very interesting and complex character, combined with a vivid background. Born near Warsaw, in Poland, he was brought up in an environment of orthodox and often fanatical Jews who isolated themselves from the Poles around them, and steeped themselves and their children in Hebrew lore. ..
When my father immigrated to the United States, at the age of seventeen, he had only this spirit to urge him forward. He had a great handicap in that he did not know any established language, since he had spoken only Jewish [Yiddish?] in Poland. The isolation of the Jews precluded any possibility of their learning the Polish tongue.
Rothbard tells more about his mother’s family but again fails to name names. For some reason he took them to his grave and not one historian seems to have studied the subject.
My mother’s background, though different, is just as colorful. Her family abounded in the traditions and characteristics of the old Russian aristocracy. My grandmother’s family, especially, had reached the highest pinnacle that the Jews in Czarist Russia could have achieved, One ancestor founded the railroads in Russia, one was a brilliant lawyer, another was a prominent international banker; in short, my mother’s family was raised in luxury and wealth.
So Burns had great expectations for Murray. Apparently Burns dreamed that together with Friedman, Rothbard and Greenspan, he would not only dominate academia but also American banking and thus the whole world economy. And now Rothbard refused to play ball!
Rothbard was appalled that the great Jacksonian anti-bank movement had been nullified by the creation of the Fed in 1913. Even worse, it was just a front for three mighty dynasties of the ruling elite: Morgans, Rockefellers and the Schiffs/Rothschilds. Rothbard saw history as a battle between liberty and the tyrannical ruling elite. He was totally against central banking that made the fraudulent and highly destructive fractional reserve banking possible. Bankers were literally the cancer of history. And Jacob Schiff with the help of Warburgs and Rothshilds was at the center of it. Rothbard wanted nothing to do with them!
The praxeological foundations of Murray Rothbard’s study of the ruling elite
Rothbard not only refused to embrace central banking and economic interventionism but also opposed the mainstream empiricist philosophy which used mathematics and statistics to manipulate the economy. Instead Rothbard embraced Aristotelian rationalist philosophy and Austrian School free market economics. Rothbard even started to think that all government statistical research bureaus should be eliminated so that it would be impossible for the government to regulate businesses and society in general!
Burns was not amused especially since he was director of research at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He soon started to sabotage Rothbard’s studies. Burns even blocked Rothbard’s PhD thesis The Panic of 1819 because it claimed that America’s first depression was the result of central bank overexpanding the money supply. Only many years later when Burns left Columbia University to government service did Rothbard finally get his PhD.
But the intellectual war was only starting. For the rest of his life Rothbard would criticize Arthur Burns, Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and all other interventionists as statists and socialists. Often when Friedman wrote a book, Rothbard answered with his own book that showed the errors of Friedman’s logic. The most dramatic episode of this intellectual war dealt fittingly with the monetary history of the United States.
In 1963, together with Anna Schwartz, Milton Friedman published his magnum opus, A Monetary History of the United States. It blamed the Fed for the Great Depression because it did not expand the money supply and so could not bail out enough banks.
In the very same year Murray Rothbard published his own book America´s Great Depression which had a diametrically opposite analysis. Rothbard blamed the Fed for expanding the money supply too much and bailing out banks!
Rothbard believed that if you let banks fail the economy will soon recover like it did in 1921. Of course, some depositors and especially bankers would be wiped out, but that would teach them a lesson for trusting fractional reserve banking. Rothbard did not deny that such shock-therapy might create an anti-Semitic anti-bank movement, but he seemed to considered it a bonus! After all, what was needed was to destroy the fractional reserve banking altogether and reform the monetary system with pure gold standard and 100% reserve banking.
Burns and Friedman were enraged by Rothbard’s book. (According to rumors Greenspan was not enraged but rather amused and almost sided with Rothbard until Burns had a small chat with him.) Instead of answering Rothbard’s arguments they did their best to stop Rothbard from gaining a position in any university. Finally, years later, Rothbard did manage to obtain a position as a professor but only in an obscure community college. However, in the end Rothbard did sort of win the battle of ideas because Paul Johnson cited Rothbard’s thesis in his international best seller, Modern Times.
On the other hand, Friedman won the political battle since Burns and Greenspan took over the Fed, destroyed the last vestiges of the gold standard, and started feverishly expanding the money supply to finance the American welfare-warfare state. Each time there was a threat of a depression they greatly expanded the money supply. This is now standard practice, and interest rates have been pushed down to zero with dangerous consequences. Now the whole world economy is at the brink of abyss of debt.
Zionist interventionism
Considering their backgrounds it is not surprising that Milton and Rose were also fanatical Zionists. In practice libertarianism and Zionism are incompatible though for some reason there has lately been hardly any discussion about this obvious fact in (neo)libertarian circles. Indeed, they were not only Zionists but hard-core Likudniks. They often visited Israel and were very supportive of the extreme-right Likud party which has obvious terrorist roots. Milton even seems to have supported the annexation of the Palestinian West Bank. In his Newsweek column, he downplayed the occupation and even stated: “I had no feeling whatsoever of being in occupied territory.”
Perhaps the Palestinians had a different feeling.
U$Srael
Friedman not only identified as a Jew but was ready to ignore his libertarian principles when the interests of Jews were threatened. This is why he helped to institute the most dangerous and anti-libertarian tax of all: the withholding tax. And after Germany was destroyed, he fully supported not only the creation of Israel but also its expansion as an occupying power. Friedman seems not to have strongly opposed the huge subsidies America sends to Israel every year.
Burns, Friedman and Greenspan seem to have been the brains and architects of the petrodollar system. The idea was to get off the gold standard which limited the expansion of the money supply and therefore the capacity to bail out banks and whole countries. America went off the gold standard in the early 70s when Arthur Burns was the chairman of the Fed. Milton had already laid the groundwork for this exit in his 1953 Essays in Positive Economics by claiming that flexible exchange rates have huge benefits. Ironically, it was Friedman who was the greatest foe of the gold standard despite admitting – only in principle, of course – the moral and economic superiority of the gold standard.
But how to maintain the value of mere paper dollars especially when their amount increases exponentially? Simple: Artificially increase the demand for dollars. Just make sure that international trade and especially oil trade takes place in dollars. All you need is US-Nato war machine that forces all countries to use dollars in the international oil trade. Naturally this suited well the old allies of Israel, the Saudi family. And if some countries like Iraq or Libya refuse to trade their oil in dollars, then it would be easy to either organize a color revolution or if that fails then just bomb them into submission.
All this also fitted very well with the Jewish neoconservative world view where Russia is the enemy. Russia certainly has been biggest obstacle of Israeli expansionist foreign policy. The Fed and the petrodollar system were especially needed to destroy the Russians who stubbornly continue to cling to their nationalism and “anti-Semitic” alliance with Arabs. The Russians even have the gall to support Syria and other opponents of Israel in the Middle East.
The Friedman-Director family had an impressive enemies list and track record: Tsar, Hitler, Soviet Union and finally Putin’s Russia.
With the support of the petrodollar system the Fed could expand the money supply as much as necessary to defend both American and Israeli interests.
Libertarianism vs. tyranny
Rothbard was right. Friedman was no supporter of free market. On the contrary. Friedman together with Burns and Greenspan continued the ancient Jewish tradition of court Jews creating monopoly state capitalists.
So it is easy to answer Kevin MacDonald’s three questions:
- Libertarianism and its Chicago subschool have been dominated by Jews such as Milton Friedman
- Milton Friedman strongly identified as a Jew
- Milton Friedman deliberately used the libertarian movement to advance specific Jewish interests
But why was Rothbard virtually alone in noticing all this? Because Friedman was a brilliant propagandist. He presented himself as a free market supporter even if he was only relatively more libertarian than socialists. But more importantly Friedman was a good liar. This could be seen in his famous article Capitalism and Jews where he claimed that Jews have usually not benefited from government-granted privileges.
To summarize: Except for the sporadic protection of individual monarchs to whom they were useful, Jews have seldom benefited from governmental intervention on their behalf.
How could Friedman be so mistaken? Or rather, such a brazen liar He must have known the truth. His own ancestors came from Eastern Europe where for many centuries Jews had been the king’s privileged state capitalists. For thousands of years Jews had been slave traders, tax-farmers and almost everywhere in Europe enjoyed state granted business and banking cartel privileges.
Some interesting history on banking. These quotes were from an old book by Dr. Willard Cantelon The Day the Dollar Dies
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https://thesaker.is/not-a-step-back/#comment-890702
https://thesaker.is/not-a-step-back/#comment-890737
https://thesaker.is/a-hard-look-at-rent-and-rent-seeking-with-michael-hudson-pepe-escobar/#comment-890507
https://thesaker.is/blood-gold/#comment-889813
https://thesaker.is/blood-gold/#comment-889819
https://thesaker.is/blood-gold/#comment-889826
This is an absolutely wonderful article. The author deserves a tremendous amount of credit. I’ll send this out to friends all over the world. The TOO label will be removed just in case it gets into the wrong European hands.
Agreed, certainly. I also commend to your attention the much longer original article at Holy Crusade News (the author has provided a link). While the original is considerably more digressive, readers with sufficient time and patience will find much of interest in what was dropped in order to produce the present tighter article, one that is clearly better suited to the TOO context.
For anyone who makes the short trip to the Holy Crusade site, there is something else worth noting there: an excellent article analyzing “The Poisonous Lure of the Arch-empiricists John Derbyshire, Steve Sailer, and Ron Unz.”
Marco de Wit understands that, signals to the contrary notwithstanding, these guys are not truly our friends.
Many Swedes I’ve known including an otherwise perfect woman, phyically and emotionally, whose father had been an investment consultive salesperson, behaved at least borderline personality disordered when Ayn Rand’s ideas were discussed. That was clearly environment rather than race. Libertarianism has had so much better access and treatment by the media than White racial nationalism. But then again so has our tolerance for general ignorance of moneylending and planned inflation and those who live by it pointing most toward government-hating as opposed to so-called anti-Semitism.
What an extraordinary article! Well done to the author, for making this argument as brilliantly as he does. It reads like a detective story or a narrative of scientific discovery. Excellent, excellent workday Marco de Wit!
Neoliberalism is the blind spot of most conservatives. Like marxists infiltraded and took over the workers movement, jewish usurers and international merchants infiltrated and took over conservatism. Neoliberal economic theories is jewish in essence: it´s all about how to create “wealth” through parasitical exploitation and financial tricks. A jewish economy is based on usury, buying stuff cheap and selling it expensive, and peddling vices (sex, drugs, luxury articles). A european economy is based on agriculture and industry.
Without Jews we wouldn´t have these silly debates about “socialism vs. capitalism”, we would just have a normal market economy and a normal public sector.
This is bullish*t.
Europes economy is very much based on luxury gods, like Swiss watches, French fashion brands and Italian ones. Like high quality leather luggage and the like.
And that industry has few jews in Europe.
I was thinking of jewelry, velvet etc. Stuff that´s attractive to vain, pompous people. And I doubt that european industrial economy rely on swiss watches, silly clothes and leather bags.
The industry for clothing is huge in Europe.
It is also large in Asia and other parts of the world.
Clothing is one of the largest businesses in the world.
High quality clothing is not silly. It’s quality.
European industries include vehicles, chemicals, technology, plus food from farms.
There are probably no more than 2 million Jews in Europe.
And of course, Jews are not over-represented in the fashion industry.
Actually it’s a lot of people with partly gypsy background in that industry on the owner side of fashion brands but to what degree I don’t know.
In Europe there are NOT many jews in this industry and especially not in the manufacturing side although there are a few and I don’t mind them. Although most of them are probably just part jews and look a bit like this.
So it is mainly a European Christian industry. A very important one indeed. Probably a lot larger in monetary size than vehicles also. European economy is hugely diverse. It includes clothing, vehicles, mining, technology of all kinds innovation companies,
And also you may argue against luxury car makers with the same argument. Also they tend not to be environmental friendly. But it does create jobs and it is high quality products. I like that. And not only luxury clothes and luxury cars are made in Europe or partially in Europe, also midrange priced ones. Apparently you don’t like whole industries therefore I consider you anti white, anti christian and anti European, but again it might just be lack of knowledge.
Just because you don’t have taste…
@ Anne and anon.
Also you claim agriculture is an important industry.
In relation to it’s size of BNP it is small and largely subsidized by the government.
However it is important to have good quality food and the like from the sector so I respect it.
Also some writer at this site dissed Levi’s as a jewish company that sell overpriced goods.
Like last time I checked, Levi’s sold their jeans at the low prices at mass-market chains for mainly inexpensive stuff.
Also the company. launched jeans, a great high quality and greatly popular garment.
Well well. When a country does great such as the USA did before covid, this increases the value of it’s money and hence their exported products to become more expensive.
Hence for a country to be competitive it then prints money in digital form these days and physical, in order to make the currency not go too hight. This makes sure the industry survives. This is a constant war in currencies between regions and countries in effect to benefit their countries.
The change in monetary value also benefits those with loans on their house over time, because over time their loans become small compared to their income due to the evaluation of money.
It does force people who made money to invest in the markets (shares) to not loose money compared to others. This fuels a huge sector filled with economists and speculation. And a constant competition between listed companies, to perform increased profit (however huge they are) to get investors to buy their shares and to keep the shares going up so that people won’t sell the shares in their company to invest in other companies with more rapid expansion. Which can be unrealistic, since many companies can hit a roof so to speak where they may have huge stabile profits but not great growth. This may then be compensated by paying out higher dividends, but may regardless lead to panic among CEO’s who may often resort to steal to try to get larger profits.
Another issue is that the mathematics used by economists according to people I know that studied both mathematics and economy is weird and the economists don’t get it themselves. They have no clue on what they are doing and don’t know even basic university mathematics.
Also you have too many economists and old money that want to make money which makes for bubbles and it makes for what people think are secure investments in established companies instead of new ones (because these economists often don’t have the knowledge to invest in new companies for the most part, and don’t want to take risks).
I think the state should make for increased investments in venture capital and new companies by having less dividend taxes or none on capital invested within a year in newly started companies.
Also the removal of whites from a lot of the places probably over a majority of them in technology by the massimprtation of others who are desperate to get into these fields leads to less innovation.
Just look at what that whites have invented and built, this is one of our fortes. The asians don’t have the culture for it and tend to be less innovative on average (what have East Indians ever invented, nothing), hence this is a huge problem for the USA economy. Because the economy in the USA has been driven a lot by innovation and white built technology and the like.
The system also keeps the money in the banks and on the stock market which benefits economists.
With the system they look out for their own caste, or class or work or however you wanna put it.
So the system with the federal reserve benefits banks. That work with the federal reserve and so on…
I have small hat fatigue.
My God why won’t they just leave us alone?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe its because of our own incompetence?
There is by the way a quote that always puzzled me for its tremendous truth from Paul Warburg in which after witnessing the roaring 20’s said:
“The world lives in a fools paradise based upon fictitious wealth, rash promises and mad illusions…We must beware of booms based upon false prosperity which has its roots in inflated credits and prices.”
Paul Warburg became incensed by the political class of his day whom he referred to as little more than incompetents.
More punctuation, please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rothbard wasn’t averse to naming the Jew:
“While we are on the Jewish Question, we can now deconstruct the alleged ‘white male’ nature of the Clintonian ‘economic team.’ We have,so far, on the economic team the following: Secretary of Treasury Lloyd Bentsen, elderly white male Texan (surely Texas is big enough and brassy enough to deserve its own category); Leon Panetta, director of Office of Management and Budget, Italo-American male; Laura D’Andrea Tyson, head of Council of Economic Advisors, WASP female; still the remaining four top-level economic teamsters are all Jewish: Robert Rubin, co-head of Goldman-Sachs, head of the new National Economic Council, Jewish male; Roger Altman, of the Blackstone Group, Under Secretary of the Treasury); Jewish male; Alice Rivlin, Deputy head of OMB, Jewish female; and Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor, Jewish male. In short, of the seven top people on the Clintonian economic team, we have: one male WASP Texan; one Italo-American male; one Jewish-American female; three Jewish American males. Boil it all down, and shuffle things around, and what looks superficially like white male dominance becomes Jewish dominance.”
– The Irrepressible Rothbard : the Rothbard-Rockwell Report Essays of Murray N. Rothbard, p. 397.
“Milton believed America should do everything in its power to crush Nazi Germany. This often led to fights with other students and professors who believed that America should stay out of the World War II”
Friedman was against appeasement and peace, and wanted war. When Jews want war it’s evil, anti-Semitic and immoral to support peace. When others want war they are immoral war mongers. To determine which is the moral position, peace or war, you first have to determine which side Jews support and that is the moral position, the other position is anti-Semitic. Appeasers are people that oppose wars that Jews want, thus appeasers are also anti-Semites. I got it.
German Jews were arrested and quarantined (sent to Concentration, aka Work Camps) after the war began (note the word “after”) because they were considered potential enemies to wartime Germany, the same as America’s attitude toward Japanese except with more justification. Germany also referred to the Soviet Union, which was founded by Jews and in which Jews played a leading role as “Jewish-Bolshevik”.
Jews politicking in Great Britain, the USA and France (with its Jewish President Leon Blum prior to the start of the war) led to these countries attacking Germany. Historian David Irving revealed huge payoffs by Jews to Churchill that brought Churchill to their side and he began propagandizing for war in 1936. Israel’s first President Chaim Weizman wrote in a letter to Churchill before the war that he (and American Jews) would bring the USA into the war on Britain’s side if Churchill would support the Jews with a separate Jewish fighting contingent and their goals in Palestine. Weizman wrote to Churchill that they had done it in WW I and they could do it again.
All this and the Jews leading role in the USSR explains Germany’s harsh position towards Jews once the war began, including massacres in the USSR while the allies were committing massacres in Dresden, Hamburg and all of Germany’s other cities. It was a war between Germans and Jews.
And there were no gas chambers.
Thomas Kues asked several years ago for an explanation of the presence of T4 (former) euthanasia officials in the KZ system, and the “Brack” method. Can anything be added to Carlo Mattogno’s “Inside the Gas Chambers” on this?
Worth noting that opponents of humanitarian eugenics proposals today deliberately confuse them with murder.
The “hoax” reference is to Arthur Butz’ classic revisionist work.
Rothbard’s skepticism towards the Holocaust narrative was the subject of some hilarity at his 60th birthday party.
https://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/fields_pclib_lte.htm
In this tedious but convincing article, which makes me think of Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together, De Wit proves indeed the point that money is another pillar of Jewish undermining and gaslighting, although I see it as a relief that there was a guy like Rothbard of Jewish descent who wanted Reality back, no bailouts and no Federal Reserve.
I can see how the article might be said to be tedious in its failure to answer in fewer than twenty words the plain-language question posed in its title. Yet if one reads the title’s question as implicitly asking whether there is truth in Friedman’s career-long claim to be a libertarian economist—a claim that Austrian libertarians, including Rothbard, Rockwell, and Hoppe, have consistently denied for sixty years—rather than primarily, if not exclusively, an articulate forwarder of Jewish interests, the article might better be characterized as rewardingly tenacious in demonstrating that the answer to that implicit question is no.
The theme of On Liberty by John Stuart Mill is that one should be free to do whatever one wants as long as it does not harm others. It sounds reasonable at first glance. It also tells us that we have no obligation to our parents or our children; that we can care for our families if we see fit, but not otherwise. The same idea is that we have no duty to Queen and Country.
Do Jews care about their families, their tribe, their [ stolen ] land? Yes.
Does their commitment to their own translate into hatred of others, the rest of us, the goyim? Biden and Harris will be taking over America and destroying it. Who is in the shadows behind them?
Interesting point on Mill. Remember Mill’s father wrote the history of the East India Company, and must be assumed to be aware of the part played by Jews in India. Mill senior was responsible, more or less single-handed, for JSM’s education and one must assume indirect influence of Jews was applied to JSM.
… Including ‘Principles of Political Economy’ (which I forgot to mention).
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NB Well done to Marco de Wit for investigating family trees, a process pioneered by Miles Mathis. It promises to expose many previously-hidden links and connections, quite apart from the intellectual links, which de Wit is surely correct in looking for the Jewish comon threads.
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The only ‘complaint’ I have is the bit about ‘identifying as Jews’, which makes it sound as though they openly and clearly and loudly announce “We are Jews!” when in fact of course it’s an internal matter, mostly unrevealed.
@ Rerevisionist
Miles Mathis said Kevin MacDonald was a Jewish agent and TOO is part of the “controlled opposition”.
Has Mathis done YOUR “genealogy”?
How do we know that you are not part of the “controlled opposition”?
In the shadows: not Sheldon Adelson or Jared Kushner, at any rate. Now Soros Sr & Jr another matter.
Mill was actually rather sound on the Nationalities Question, basically acknowledging that Diversity was antagonistic to liberty. He also more or less believed in ethnonational separation and political self-determination. I am not a classical liberal, btw, though I do think they have much to teach conservatives and nationalists, even if we have much to teach them, too.
Mike,
Thanks for bringing up Mill. “On Liberty” is my favorite book by him. I have not read all his work but “Utilitarianism” is extremely boring. Unfortunately, I had to teach it in my Intro to Ethics course in college. “On Liberty” in not perfect. However, there is one thing about “On Liberty” that I really love. We should have freedom of speech. And we should all agree to argue with one another. Because if we have an argument with someone and we are wrong, we can come to see our mistake, change our mind, and come to believe the truth. Whereas, if we are right, we can learn to defend the truth against another false objection. Unfortunately, in my 65 years, I have come to see very few people to appreciate this obvious point.
Further information re Jews and finance, search writings by Jerry Muller, Jacques Attali, Manfred Lehmann, Meir Tamari, Norman Cantor, Paul Johnson, Niall Ferguson, Peter Schaefer, James Petras, Josh Nathan-Kaziis. See also “Slavery in medieval Europe,” “Antonia Fernandez Carvajal”, “Loans and Interest in Judaism,” Wiklpedia.
One thing for sure, ending the draft during Vietnam War was great for Jews. Milton Friedman pushed that.
1. Smart educated Jews no longer had to share barracks with dumb brutish goyim.
2. Superior Jews don’t have to die like dumb goyim in wars. You see, Jewish lives are precious. Jews were willing to fight in WWII because the enemy was the Jew-Killer Nazi regime. But when there are no Jews to save, Jews would rather not sacrifice their own lives in wars.
And Jews certainly will not sacrifice their own lives to save goyim.
Indeed, the notion that any Jew should die for goyim is laughable to the Tribe. Jews kvetch about how the US didn’t act fast enough to save Jews in WWII, but if some country was murdering millions of goyim, Jews would not send Jewish boys to die to save goy lives. How many Jews lined up to be sent to Rwanda to end the genocide there? None. Vietnam War was about ‘saving’ goyim from communism. Why should any Jew die for that? No wonder so many Jews opposed that way. Muhammad Ali said, “Viet Cong didn’t call me no ni**er”, and Jews really felt, “I ain’t risking my sacred Jewish ass for no ‘g**ks’.” Of course, Jews couldn’t say such publicly, so they made a big stink about they are opposed to the war for humanitarian reasons.
3. Since the end of the Cold War, most wars have been Wars for Israel. Jews support those wars because ‘volunteer’ goyim do all the fighting and dying.
Let Jews foment and direct the wars from the top, and let goyim serve as dogs and do the killing and dying.
If the US military was based on the draft, Jews would have to serve and fight like everyone else. But as it is all-mercenary, most troops are working class whites, blacks, and browns.
4. Even though Jews support the Wars for Israel, they would be far less supportive IF their own kids might have to go and die in wars. But if dumb goyim are doing all the fighting and dying while Jews enjoy privilege and command all the elite positions, then it’s A-Okay.
Even when it comes to war crimes, it is goyim on the ground who get charged and convicted EVEN THOUGH it’s the criminal Neocons who spread lies and instigate bloody wars on bogus grounds that hide the fact of “Is it Great for Jews?”
In that sense, ending the draft was bad for the nation. It was a boon for the elites. It spared Jews from military service, and this made Jews even more war-mongering since it’d be only the goyim who’ll do all the dying.
This is how Jews think:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/uploads/5/scr.jpg
http://dailyandreaostrov.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-great-anomaly-just-when-us-was.html
The IDF consists of Jews. Fritz Lenz once ascribed Jewish lack of military enthusiasm to selection whereby their most soldierly members were slaughtered in ancient times.
In analysis of the relationship between Jews and other nations where they live, it is important to distinguish the successive phases in their social psychology during the past hundred years or so. However, “We never feel secure unless we are supreme” (the late Rabbi Hugo Gryn); the persistent provocative paradox of of combined self-righteousness and fear, a “political autism”.
(1) The impact (despite Richard Evans) of the “Protocols” on interpreting Jewish involvement in communism as a sinister “racial” conspiracy.
(2) The impact of Nazi ideology and actions on Jewish opinion, and response 1933-1945.
(3) The establishment of Israel and its support by Jewish lobbying especially in the USA and UK.
Oswald Spengler recognised the “phase” aspect of Jewry, but was mistaken about its final disintegration in the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Vol.II, ch.ix).
Excellent article.
MF used to be a hero of mine 30 years ago. He isn’t any more. Up until now, I never considered him a neoConservative. I know he was close to Buckley and Buckley was close to Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol. These are the two co-founders of neoCoservativism. I quickly read your article and I didn’t note if you said that MF did or did not support Gulf War I and Gulf War II. It seems to me that if he were a neoConservative, he should have supported both. Rothbard wrote an excellent article on MF called “Milton Friedman Unraveled” and in my view totally destroyed him. Rothbard also supported Pat Buchanan for President in 1992 and in my opinion was a good Jew.
Dr. Friedman was the 2nd most evil person of the last century. He lied about being libertarian. He favored guaranteed income [“negative income tax”]. Anyone supporting such schemes is a socialist. The C. Manifesto calls for an income tax. As a young economist in 1942 Dr. Friedman established income tax withholding.
Feel free to draw your own conclusions. . .btw his “monetary theory” called for constant inflation, raising the money supply by 3-5% per year. He lied and asserted that this would not be inflation so long as productivity also rose around the same %.
See, he was trying to provide a “scientific” rationale for constant inflation, as his banking buddies wanted that- I presume. Other buddies helped to hide inflation, also by lying, in this instance about the Consumer Price Index. Notice how no one discusses inflation anymore? Remember 1980 when inflation and interest rates neared 20%? I do.
Friedman whored himself out to the (((bankers))). . .
“Your assignment Milton, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out a way to adulterate money without the public being any the wiser.”
Adulteration is a crime and and cannot be openly called for. Dr. Friedman:
“Okay, call it ‘increasing the money supply’ .” This means adding more nothing to “money” already made out of nothing. Now they needed an excuse for increasing the fake money [this is inflation]. . .ah, for a stable price level. So money must increase along with rises in productivity to achieve a stable price level. What’s so good about stable prices? The good Dr. never gave a clear answer. During the 19th century prices fell due to more productivity. . .no one complained.
The prime directive was hiding the crime of adulteration, meaning hiding the crime of inflation. That I submit makes Dr. Friedman an accessory to a rather huge crime. Unfortunately he succeeded.
…” money is the lifeblood of the economy.”
This is an incorrect analogy that is very widespread in the public .
Commercial freight is by analogy “the lifeblood of the economy”.
Money is by analogy the oxygen ( the primary catalyst ) of the economy .
Oil is by analogy the predominant fuel of the economy .
The money and oil cartel rules/energizes the world .
The USA Rockefeller branch is the largest one of the Rothschildean empire .
I recall seeing some favorable mentions of Milton Friedman’s brand of economics by some conservative groups. For example, there is a 2008 article still on the national Eagle Forum website by the late Phyllis Schlafly, “Survival Message for College Students.” Along with condemning multiculturalism, radical feminism, etc., she wrote, “Beware of the corruption in the Economics departments that teach the failed economics of socialism rather than the successful free-market economics of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman.” What more could Friedman have asked for (as a Jew) than being taken into the bosom of the Christian right wing?
I was a reader of Lew Rockwell’s and Mises.org sites (founded by the late Jew Burton Blumert, also Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign manager) for decades and did learn a lot from them. Eventually I noticed that each November, the Lew Rockwell site would rush to point to LBJ, CIA, and “Dallas” as the ultimate culprits in the JFK assassination, end of story. After learning of Michael Collins Piper’s take on Mossad-Israel involvement, it made me wonder if sometimes they weren’t holding back on some issues.
I almost stopped reading this article half-way through, but forced myself to finish it and was very glad I did.
Although I’ve always been pretty good at math, I have often struggled with economics. This article provided some great insights for me (and has encouraged me to look further into the ideas of Rothbard).
Thank you Marco de Wit. Just wanted you to know that your excellent writing managed to resonate beyond the benches of the proverbial choir.
The inappropriateness of mathematics in economics is argued here:
https://mises.org/library/economic-science-and-austrian-method
A short and accessible work that well illustrates the parlous state of the discipline as it is taught today.
Thank you, Trenchant – I’ve downloaded Hoppe’s essay and added it to my reading list. At first glance, it definitely looks interesting, and accessible enough for someone at my level!
I just came upon this 45 page pdf article called “The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective.” Milton Friedman was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. Not easy reading but may be of interest.
uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mt-pelerin.pdf
I enjoyed the comments a bit more than the article. The article was informative but read like an indictment without a crime. Friedman used too much math in his academic research? He flagrantly cavorted with fellow Jews who are not under-represented among talented academics? He married a Jew?
Murray Rothbard was a bird of paradise who lacked the temperament for a traditional academic career. He was too good a writer to be a successful professor and thus produced lapidary economic polemic journalism. Not the result of sabotage and not a net loss for our culture.
Friedman’s technical work was a bit of a mixed bag. But as a popularizer he defended liberty passionately and effectively. He opposed Hitler vigorously. What Jew wouldn’t? And Hitler declared war on us, Friedman didn’t talk us into it.
He was a great man. The article has failed to dim my admiration.
Why did Hitler declare war on us? Pearl Harbor (war with Japan). Who wanted it? Who caused it by provoking Japan? FDR and Churchill under the spell of furious Zionist /Talmudic Jews. This needs to be known but…
https://big-lies.org/hexzane527/why-was-war-between-usa-and-germany-put-off-till-1941.html
Why was war between USA and Canada put off till 1941?
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Look at the menu at https://big-lies.org/hexzane527/index.html for a whole set of questions on Jews and WW2, promoting the (obvious, in retrospect) idea that Hitler was just another Jew actor.
@ Rerevisionist
Nuclear weapons are all imaginary and Adolf Hitler was a Jew?
The moon was made of green cheese by aliens and David Icke is a Lizard?
Well worth seeing is Murray Rothbard’s hilarious satire of an Ayn Rand soiree online, “Mozart was a Red”. Well worth reading is his sharp critique of “Egalitarianism” also online. Not quite a Spinoza or a Weininger, but interesting nonetheless.
Rothbard fell short of describing Objectivism as a Jewish personality cult, but not by much.
https://think-liberty.com/philosophy/ayn-murray-lovehate-relationship/
“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes it’s laws.”
Whether or not the quote is rightly attributed to Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild, Friedman totally internalized it.
Rothbard produced one hell of a lot more than economic polemics. What the hell are you talking about? He was one of the most genuinely prolific scholars of our time. He was a major political economist; historian; historian of economic thought; and a minor political theorist. And yes, he was a fantastic political writer and nearly unrivaled intellectual polemicist. He was superior to Friedman, esp because his economics was correct, and Friedman’s was not.
That said, in an age of rabid and repugnant socialism, Milton was still one of the good guys (despite the horror of withholding).
I’ll have to disagree. If you support socialization of money, as did Friedman, then any advocacy for subsidiary freedoms is either disingenuous or misdirected. One ring to rule them all.
If you’ve been wrongfully incarcerated, fighting for choice in prison menus is the wrong battle.
As Tonto might have said, “What you mean ‘us,’ Mr. Block?”
I take it that Mr. Block thinks that Hitler was unaware of the Lend-Lease Act, not to mention the even more egregious violations of this country’s oft-proclaimed neutrality prior to December 8, 1941. You know, minor stuff like helping the Brits with their U-boat hunts and various other things that FDR and Churchill quietly agreed upon. Even now many of these handshake deals are considered matters too delicate to be revealed to mere citizens.
There is also the notorious Rainbow Five Plan, which FDR almost certainly disguised as a leak to his inveterate foe Colonel McCormick. McCormick’s “Chicago Tribune” published the plan on December 4, just three days prior to the assiduously provoked Japanese “sneak” attack on the soon-to-be-junked hulks sitting quietly in Pearl Harbor, all four of the Pacific Fleet’s carriers having been ordered several days earlier to steam due east for pointless exercises. What a remarkable conjunction of innocent coincidences!
Could it be that Mr. Block is simply too thick to see that the sorry fact that no Jew would be likely to oppose a war of aggression whose object was destruction of Christian Europe undermines rather than supports the nonsensical claim that Friedman was a passionate defender of liberty for any but him and his ilk? Must he be asked to recall how the Jews’ enthusiasm for war ran out of gas when the small matter of participation in the flesh raised its hoary head? As a waggish film buff pointed out to me about fifty years ago, there were more Jews in uniform in Hollywood war movies than ever were to be found in Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific theater. What is more, a suspiciously large number of Jews who failed to evade the draft—the percentage of Jews in uniform was significantly below the Jewish percentage of the US population, however indecorous it may be to notice the fact—still managed to drum up enough influence to wangle desk jobs. But perhaps they did less harm there than they might have done to those unfortunate enough to serve alongside them in the field.
I need hardly add that Block’s cheap sneer at Rothbard marks him as being at least as fundamentally dishonest as Friedman was.
Pierre, Block is quite obviously working off a calendar known to neither of us.
On my sample, Kristallnacht occurred ca. FIVE years AFTER their proclamation, that JUDEA DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY. Not exactly a reflexive reaction.
If you spout such things, with your fat asses couched in leather armchairs atop Manhattan, overlooking Central Park, a safe ocean away, aren’t you making yourselves into LEGAL belligerents, even if you momentarily lack sovereign territory ?
i
I am glad I held off on answering Block’s post. I said to myself (for I had no doubt you would not let this pass): “M. de Craon will surely lower the boom on this offender; better not get between him and his punishment.” And what a magisterial refutation it is!
Two questions for those who have studied the subjects more thoroughly than I have done:
1. In declaring war on the USA did Hitler hope and mistakenly expect Imperial Japan to attack and occupy the eastern USSR rather than extending control of Asia, with Australia and New Zealand as ultimate targets, plus an “anti-white” ideology?
2. Did not the occupation of non-German Czecho-Slovakia and Kristallnacht unnecessarily undo the relative goodwill of other nations towards Germany and appreciation of its internal achievements, thereby gratuitously aiding the war-lobby in the USA and UK, and increasing the view that Hitler was a dangerous international anarchist?
These responses to your questions are inherently incomplete. They neither aim nor pretend to constitute a comprehensive explanation of German motivations for entering the war against the USA.
(1) Answer: Most unlikely. Hitler and his government were surely aware of the strategic debates within the Japanese high command regarding updated war aims after the catastrophic Japanese defeat in the Soviet-Japanese War of 1939. Search using the term “Nomonhan” for the full story. Furthermore, as Germany would also have known that the Japanese considered themselves betrayed by the timing of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, the post–Pearl Harbor declaration of war against the USA might have been an attempt to smooth troubled waters. But ultimately, that would have been marginal when compared with the incontrovertible evidence that the USA had been cooperating with Britain in actively prosecuting the war against Germany. Thus, the Rainbow Five Plan, which outlined the terms of full US military, air, and naval mobilization in a presumptive conflict with the Axis powers, was widely believed in Germany to be clearly indicative of FDR’s intentions—as indeed it was.
(2) Answer: no. A yes answer to this question would necessarily contain an assumption that everyone in Europe had already forgotten the Triple Entente’s post–Great War perfidy, a perfidy largely made possible by late US entry into that war. Franco and Salazar certainly knew the score, as did the Nordic nations.* Don’t forget, too, that when the Germans gobbled up western Czechoslovakia, the Poles gobbled up its east. So much for Slavic brotherhood! As for Kristallnacht, our respected colleague and friend Charles Frey (see his comment above) has already clarified the context of that predictably exaggerated instance of Jewish suffering.
As for the war lobbies in the various Western nations, their senior membership consisted entirely or overwhelmingly of Jews, none of whom required persuasion to reify a centuries-old plan of white Christian genocide. Here in the USA, a nation then as now protected by two vast oceans, opinions of Hitler one way or the other had little if any effect on the great mass of American citizens, who overwhelmingly opposed US entry into the war—as did most of the senators and congressmen whom those citizens kept in office in those halcyon days before (((election rigging))) had become child’s play. It took a carefully provoked and managed attack on Pearl Harbor to make Americans, including Charles Lindbergh, willing to go to war.
There is much to say about that attack, but let me confine myself to pointing out that it had no appreciable effect on the army’s or navy’s warmaking capability, thanks to the planning of Marshall and the navy’s top brass. What were destroyed were ships meant for support functions or headed for mothballing or scrapping and mostly older, short-range aircraft that were hardly more important in materiel terms than the ships.** As for the oft-proclaimed Japanese cruelty and savagery, what has long been soft-pedaled is that the attack was scrupulously targeted at Pearl’s military and naval establishment; it produced no destruction of civilian property or fuel facilities and fewer than twenty civilian casualties, none of which were intentional (compare that with what Churchill’s RAF was already doing to Germany’s cities).
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*Apropos which, I suspect that the German invasions of Denmark and the Netherlands troubled senior European leaders far more than the Czecho situation. The people of both countries were very sympathetic to Germany but were looking to stay clear of war.
**I am indebted for the impetus to learn what I know about the Pearl Harbor fleet to a scholarly presentation made by US Navy Captain Edward L. Beach (1918–2002) as part of a World War II naval strategy conference in DC in, I believe, 2001 or 2002. It was broadcast in part on C-SPAN. Captain Beach’s specific topic was the scapegoating of Kimmel and Short, a matter he had studied for decades and had recently written a published book about, and in laying the charade bare he demonstrated that internal evidence alone sufficed to demonstrate that FDR and the high command knew what was afoot because of the care they took to set the two commanders up to take the blame for lack of preparedness while Washington was in fact protecting the navy’s true strategic assets: its carriers and destroyer escorts.
Thank you for an interesting response.
Japanese cruelty in warfare and to prisoners is quite adequately documented.
Are you by any chance descended from Pierre le Grand the notorious medieval aristocrat?
Are you descended from Casper the Friendly Ghost? Do your own legwork, especially since you’re already pretty sure that you have most if not all of the answers.