Why Rothbard’s Philosophy is Paramount in Today’s World

The world we live in is not one that can be salvaged by minor reforms or tinkering. The state today is more enormous, cutthroat, and more brazen in its encroachments than anything Murray Rothbard witnessed in his life. The surveillance state, and the monetary system have been weaponized against people at even greater heights. There’s always a new crisis for the elites to use as a power grab. And still, many libertarians cling to the hope that they will create some kind of libertarian utopia by reforming the federal government and restoring liberty. I used to be one of those people.

I served in local government for a number of years. I saw myself as a crusader, trying to fight for liberty from the inside and to reform government into a more libertarian utopia. I believed that if principled people just got into office, we could roll back the machine, protect individual rights, and restore freedom. But now, standing on the other side of that experience, I’ve become more aware of a hard truth: you cannot.

Government cannot be reformed into liberty. The very structure of the state guarantees expansion, not restraint. The incentives of bureaucracy, the intoxication of power, and the myths of “public service” all converge to make the system unreformable. Even at the local level, I saw how the smallest offices serve as arms of coercion. You can’t trim the edges and make it noble. The beast exists to devour.

I think Rothbard saw through this illusion. His philosophy was radical not for the sake of being extreme, but because the truth is extreme.

The state is not simply inefficient or misguided, but it is a criminal organization that thrives on theft and violence. If we call taxation anything less than theft is to concede the state’s moral legitimacy. To speak of “better policies” while leaving the root system intact is to prune the leaves while leaving the poison tree standing.

This is why I believe Rothbard’s philosophy was never about reform, but about completely destroying the power and the institution of the state. The state’s power doesn’t rest only on its armies, bureaucrats, and central banks. It rests most fundamentally on the belief that all of this is necessary for human flourishing. People comply because they believe this is all justifiable and have never realized there is a better alternative. Why does the state work so carefully to control the educational system? To control the narrative is to indoctrinate the masses into a belief system that they do not question, but if the belief can be questioned, the empire crumbles.

I have a sincere love and admiration for Rothbard’s philosophy. His philosophy has lived on by people like Lew Rockwell and others pouring their energies into keeping this framework assessable to the masses. We must not stop there though. If we agree with his philosophy we must take action and I believe go even further.

We must pour our energies into building parallel institutions, systems, etc. The long-term battle is not legislative. This doesn’t mean to imply that we should not vote in elections or build coalitions if someone deems it necessary, but the goal should be to legitimize alternatives that help to destroy and delegitimize the state itself. We have the opportunity to plant institutions outside the state’s reach that could outlast its crises. We have the ability more than ever with technological advances to further decentralized currency and our very lifestyles, etc.

Murray Rothbard gave us a philosophy to guide and anchor us. He realized that liberty is justified because it is morally right. This philosophy must now be applied and turned into a strategy. This strategy is not his, but I would like to believe it’s the natural next step. If you have the opportunity to destroy the state, you should take it. I believe this strategy is the way we accomplish that. I believe the strategy is so paramount that it could build a promising future.

Reformist libertarianism has run its course. The Beltway approach has produced soundbites and policy briefs, but it has not stopped the state. In fact, many beltway libertarians gave in during the Covid crisis by buying into the hysteria. Meanwhile, Rothbard’s radicalism could live on in the energy of decentralized movements such as Bitcoiners who refuse to bow to central banks, in homesteaders and parallel economies that refuse dependence, in communities building their own schools, their own media, their own networks. Families choosing personal sovereignty and economic freedom. I am convinced these are Rothbardian in spirit, whether they know his name or not.

The radical strategy is not about one party or one election cycle. It is about creating the conditions for liberty when the state proves incapable of reform, which is always. Liberty will not be handed down from Washington. It will grow from the ground up, in minds, in communities, in families, and in markets that refuse to obey.

We don’t need a better state. We need to make the state irrelevant. That is the radical strategy that could change the world, I think it is the only strategy that stands a chance.