Jeff Riggenbach

Jeff Riggenbach (1947–2021) was a journalist, author, editor, broadcaster, and educator. A member of the Organization of American Historians and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, he wrote for such newspapers as the New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle; such magazines as Reason, Inquiry, and Liberty; and such websites as LewRockwell.com, AntiWar.com, and RationalReview.com. His books include In Praise of Decadence (1998), Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism (2009), and Persuaded by Reason: Joan Kennedy Taylor & the Rebirth of American Individualism (2014). Drawing on vocal skills he honed in classical and all-news radio in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston, Riggenbach also narrated the audiobook versions of numerous libertarian works, many of them available on Mises.org.

Articles

Hazlitt as National Teacher

11/01/2010 Free Market Jeff Riggenbach

The Free Market 28, no.11 (July 2010) During the academic year that encompassed the fall term of 1964 and the spring term of 1965, I was a freshman in college. I was also in my first year of...

Gore Vidal and Revisionism

08/03/2012 Mises Daily Jeff Riggenbach

Gore Vidal's "American Chronicle" series proved that there was, in fact, a substantial market for skepticism about the glorious American past.

The Education of Robert Neuwirth

11/28/2011 Mises Daily Jeff Riggenbach

Robert Neuwirth is a journalist who is preoccupied with this question: What do people do when the state has made satisfaction of their wants, their natural desire to improve their lives, almost impossible? He’ll give you much to think about, and he’ll provide much contemporary evidence while he’s at it for something he really doesn’t yet believe or even fully understand.

Publications

Why American History Is Not What They Say

10/24/2012 Jeff Riggenbach

Jeff Riggenbach’s book is a godsend for anyone who needs a crash course in revisionist history of the United States. What is revisionism? It is the retelling of history from a point of view that differs from the mainstream, which always treats the

Media

Karl Hess and the Death of Politics

05/06/2010 Jeff Riggenbach

"Some may wonder why it took Hess 20 years to notice all this, why it took a man this obviously intelligent so long to grasp that the Republicans were pretty much the same as the New Deal Democrats he opposed, but with window dressing."...

Frank Chodorov, Educator

12/22/2010 Jeff Riggenbach

You have only a few years to live and cannot hope to remake society in so short a time. Nobody now living will see a free society in America. But, in fighting for it, one can have a lot of fun. Consider the effort as a legacy to your great-grandchildren.

Was Classical Liberalism a “Strife of Interests Masquerading as a Contest of Principles”?

07/27/2010 Jeff Riggenbach

As Barnes noted, there were a number of "middle-class writers" who took more or less this line, but "by far the most influential" of them "was the 17th-century English philosopher, John Locke. Many of his theories were taken up and popularized in America by Thomas Jefferson...