Rothbard splitting hairs unconstructively

I have a great respect for Rothbard, and, to be sure, his writings were the ones to truly push me out of minarchy and into anarchy, and I will always regret never being able to thank him personally for the lessons he has taught me posthumously. That being said, today I was a bit disappointed in him. On the Mises homepage today, a work of his entitled Do You Hate the State? can be found. In it, Rothbard complains that some of his AnCap contemporaries do not appear to harbor the same utter hatred for the state that he possesses, but Rothbard admits that at least they still propose that market anarchy would be the best possible solution to the problem of running an efficient society. 

One thing i have always loved about the libertarian ideal (and one of the most persuasive points about it) is its massive inclusion. Sure, it has a few (I guess one really [NAP]) strict principles, but for the most part it is pretty inclusive. For example, in our ideal society, If one wanted to form their own micro-society in a socialist fashion, they would be free to do so. Another example of Libertarian inclusion can be found in other, less obvious circumstances. 

For example, as many of you probably know by now, I am a Christian. There are a few others here that I know of that share my "faith" or whatever you want to call it. But I will also say that I have many libertarian friends (both online and off) that are strict atheists, deists, and even a couple buddhists and muslims (I have yet to meet a hindu Libertarian but I hope to meet one some day). In all my time reading these forums as well as my as-of-now short stent of writing on them, I have never encountered any real contempt among us on the grounds of religion. Just the other day, on this thread in fact, I was questioned on a comment I had made about my faith by what I would later find out to be an atheist. Not once did I pick up even the slightest hint of superiority from this person, nor did they attack me in any way (let alone any of my more religious comments.

I think the major reason for this is two fold. First, most of us know we can't afford to make enemies, at this point, over topics such as religion. Second, we recognize that, for the most part, such a personal aspect of someone's life, such as religion, does not hinder their ability to think rationally in economics, regardless of however irrational we believe their spiritual belief to be. Most of the time, any questions we may pose to someone of a different belief, I have found to be mostly for the educational purposes of the asker. They just want to understand further the religion they are asking about. Their mission has rarely been to poke holes in another's belief. The few times I have witnessed this have been at first provoked by the other party. Perhaps we take the NAP to the extreme: "I will not attack your belief until you first attack mine or ask for my opinion."          

So, now I get to the point of my post and then to my question. In my opinion, if there is one thing Rothbard is good at, it is splitting hairs. Usually this is for a good, constructive reason or in a case where the splitting of the hairs is like splitting an atom; it makes for an explosive difference when we really think about the topic. However, in the case of this essay by Rothbard, I do not think he is doing anyone a service. I will be the first to say that I practice a very public, very flagrant hatred of the state, oftentimes to my own detriment (you can thank me later...tee hee). Conversely, I think it is counterproductive to the cause of Liberty to take someone like David Friedman or Eric Mack, and publicly ridicule them solely for the reason that in their writings they don't "hate the state enough."

For one, prose heavy in "state-hate" is probably not the best way to reach initial audiences who have not been exposed to austrian/libertarian writings. State-hate is great for riling up the choir (forum members of Mises.org), but for the average joe, it sounds pretty fringe and, to some, even downright mad, indeed. I think there is a place for this kind of writing just as there is for Rothbards. If  there had only been Keynes and Rothbard, I probably would have ended up a Keynesian. I consider having someone like Milton Friedman around to be paramount to my journey; someone to nudge me in gently.

Second, why take authors who agree with you "in the end". Sure, they might not say that the state is inherently evil, but they still agree with and support your theory of market anarchy as the best way to "organize" society. Attacking them will do little to no good for your message.

Thoughts?

In the spirit of constructive hairsplitting I must ask, where are you getting 'ridicule' from?

When we boil down your complaint does it come out to the fact that you aren't too cool on radicalism and so you dont want to read texts that promote it?

nirgrahamUK:

but this is beside the point. This is just a matter of preference. Rothbard stated a particular preference at a point in time and put it in writing. We can agree and disagree. We can have interesting discussion about it, but lets not get crazy personal and over-invested.

You are right. I am probably just getting a little wound up. I just don't understand him on this one.