Man, Economy, and Liberty

26

Himself, at Sixty
With Apologies to Ogden Nash

Robert Kephart and Dyanne Petersen

Silent Cal’s in the White House, and Babe Ruth’s in his prime,

Long before Keynesian Voodoo made a buck worth a dime,

Ma and Pa Rothbard had met at an anarchist ball,

And soon Conceived In Liberty a child to be called

Murray N. Rothbard, our honored guest at this session,

He grew up on the West Side, during America’s Great Depression.

Prohibition was in, moonshine and bordellos,

Here in the Manhattan playground of that runt, Fiorello.

He survived adolescence, as the war reached a halt,

And grew into manhood, a handsome young Galt.

Then on to Columbia after the second war ended,

He was the campus right-winger, but rarely commended

For singing the praises of Lindbergh and Taft,

Those Columbia pinkos thought him slightly daft.

Now hardened for battle our hero debates,

The most likely tactic for smashing the state.

Forget armed revolution, that would bring no improvement,

But wait—we could start—a Libertarian Movement.

A movement for liberty throughout the land,

Murray suggests the idea to—Ayn Rand.

“A is A,”she responds, and then starts to holler,

“My economists heroes they have to be—taller.”

“Rothbard, you’re a hooligan, like all of the rest,”

“Nixon and Greenspan, I like them the best.”

He wasn’t discouraged by Ayn’s rude rebuff,

But objectively speaking, he’d had quite enough.

So the movement matures, and the years tick away,

Strange people pass through, and some of them stay.

Now the Libertarian Party spurs Murray to action,

He loves all 500 members, and all 5,000 factions.

Words are his weapon, ideas are the ammo,

He becomes for the movement, a scholarly Rambo,

Our hero offends some, but he never does bore ’em,

When he milks sacred cows in Libertarian Forum.

In the “movement” you’re no one, and no issue is burning,

Unless the Libertarian Forum’s knife is in the jugular turning.

“Mr. First Nighter” is brutal to films he dislikes,

The same goes for books, plays and music despite

His love for the arts, Fats Waller, Big Bands,

And Chuck Bronson’s “Death Wish,”of course, is just grand.

From the Curmudgeon’s pet causes, we learn much of his id,

The gold standard, The Party, and Short People’s Lib.

But you’ll never see Murray give the Gipper a break,

He exposes his rhetoric and hair color as fake.

His revisionist history has a good many fans,

But none are in Israel, though a few in Falklands.

And conspiracy theory, he thinks right in the main,

And offers as proof, Koch, Cato and Crane.

The Kochtopus Monster makes him rant and rave.

Also Bella Abzug, Bill Buckley and the Kondratieff Wave.

But don’t think the Curmudgeon is unreasonably tough,

I’m here to tell you that he’s just a cream puff.

When the movement’s history is written, they’re sure to acknowledge,

The hot air, and that vote in the electoral college.

But history can’t ignore, try it ever so hard,

The brilliant corpus of work of Murray Rothbard.

His lifelong companion is Joey, his wife,

An exceptional woman who shares Murray’s life.

When Murray proposed, Joey agreed they should try it,

And she has enriched both his life and his diet.

He’s our joyful, witty, optimistic sage,

Three score by the calendar, but he acts half his age.

He returned from the West Coast, and it set me a’reeling,

When he offered to share both his space and his feelings.

But California corruption, the laid back revival,

Won’t wash in New York, where the word is survival.

So I end with two questions, and he’s not worth his salt

Unless he tells us tonight: “Who is John Galt?”

And one final question, try to answer this, Smarty,

What is an anarchist doing in the Libertarian Party?

___________________

Delivered at the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s birthday party celebration, New York, March 1, 1986, in honor of Murray N. Rothbard on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.