Words of wisdom from Murray Rothbard

I'd like to adress the issue of war, which will undoubtedly present itself under the presumably hawkish Obama administration.

This is an excerpt from an article entitled "Myths of the Cold War," written by the Anarcho-capitalist, Murray Rothbard, in 1966, in the the Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought. In this article, Rothbard, the ultimate enemy of Communism, denounces the anti-Communist Hawks. Let his words give strength to those of us who despise war as much as we do Islamic fundementalism:

"There is, indeed, something exceedingly odd about the argument that Americans should be cremated in a nuclear holocaust, because this is necessary to "preserve their Honor" by trying to liberate the slaves of communism. There are, let us say, 800 million people living behind the Iron Curtain. The very fact that all these people are still alive testifies to the fact that they, every one, prefer life under communism to death, with or without Honor. But if all the 800 millions prefer life under communism to death, prefer "slavery" to death, who are we to have the unmitigated gall to advocate murdering millions of Americans and Russians in order to free these slaves? If the Russian muzhik prefers his slavery to death, this is a choice which he has the right to make, and an anti-Communist who sends missiles to murder him to make sure that he dies Honorably is, simply… committing murder. And this – murder – mass murder – is what all the fancy and high moral slogans about Death With Honor boil down to.

Many Americans may each, individually, prefer death to life under communism. And that is their privilege. But they have no right, and as professed libertarians they have certainly no right, to murder countless millions of people because of this choice. In short, they have no right to cremate other people: Americans, Russians, or what have you, who would make the opposite choice, who would opt for survival. The War Hawks like to talk of their noble disregard for human life, on behalf of the spiritual ideals of honor, etc., and of their opponents’ miserable atheistic regard for life as a supreme value. But what is there noble, what is there spiritual, what in fact is there Christian, about mass murder of those innocents who do not share these values? Surely, it would be both more libertarian, more courageous, and more Christian for such conservatives quietly to commit suicide and insure their martyrdom that way, rather than drag millions upon millions of innocents to their death along with them.

If, then, the new crusaders are itching to liberate the slaves who look askance at liberation, their only truly honorable course would be to outfit themselves individually and corporately, without involving the rest of us Americans, or Americans officially as a nation, and go winging their way to fight the Russians on their own. With this kind of war, Americans can only be the gainer, whoever wins: if by some quirk the crusaders win, then those Russians left alive will be free (if they don’t die of radiation poisoning before they can enjoy their freedom), and if the crusaders lose, then they will have had their coveted Death With Honor, and the rest of us will be left alone to conclude peaceful agreements with the Russians."