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NOTES
1. The Open Letter is reprinted in Joan Kennedy Taylor, ed., Liberty Against Power: Essays by Roy A. Childs, Jr. (San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1994), pp. 145-56, under the subtitle it carried in The Rational Individualist, "Objectivism and the State." Despite disagreements with the editor on some matters, I strongly recommend this book not only for the essays it contains, but for the short biographical essay by Taylor. The influence Roy had on the libertarian movement cannot be gauged simply from his essays. It extended through the books we read, many of which we might not never have heard of but through him, to say nothing of his lengthy letters and telephone calls and faxes, facts for which Taylor has a deep appreciation. There is also a warm tribute by Thomas Szasz.
I discussed the immediate influence of the Open Letter in the first part of my series on the illegitimacy of the republic, "This government is illegitimate ... and you don't have to be an anarchist to see it." The interest that letter generated — and still generates — can be gauged by the number of Websites at which it may be found. Here are a few:
http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/Extro/OpenLettertoRand.asp
http://www.blancmange.net/tmh/articles/racolar.html (quick-loading)
http://www.free-market.net/forums/main9711/messages/424873627. html
http://no-treason.com/wild/Childs_Open_Letter_to_Rand.html (quick-loading)
It is even available in Polish! — http://sierp.tc.pl/childs.htm (quick-loading)
2. At this same meeting, Morris was
excited that Roy had recently managed to win Robert D.
Kephart over to free-market anarchism. Kephart, an
entrepreneur with a reputation for high energy, was
then the publisher of the conservative weekly, Human
Events. His change of mind was to have far-reaching
consequences for the libertarian movement and for Roy
and me, both personally and professionally.
3. In the July 1973 issue of Books
for Libertarians, Kephart announced his intention to
publish Libertarian Review in the fall of 1973. From
market tests he ran that summer, however, he
determined that the libertarian movement and the
market for libertarian books was still not sufficiently
robust to follow through with that plan. Even so, with
the September 1973 issue he began using the "Justicia"
logo that was later carried over to Libertarian Review
until it was dropped in mid 1977. And in October 1974,
he began using the name "Libertarian Review," though
there was no immediate change of format.
4. Rampart Journal of Individualist
Thought, Spring 1968 (Vol. IV, No. 1), pp. 84-98. The
Rampart Journal was a publication of Robert LeFevre's
Rampart College. In the Open Letter, Roy characterized
his arguments in this earlier piece as "ineffective and
weak." I find them interesting and provocative, if not
quite as compelling as those he produced in later
works.
5. "The Cashing In: The Student
'Rebellion'," in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial
Revolution (New York: Signet Books, 1971), p. 38;
The Objectivist Newsletter, July-September 1965. The
comments on civil disobedience are on p. 40. "The
Cashing In" was also reprinted in the paperback edition
of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
6. Rampart Journal, Summer 1968
(Vol. IV, No. 2), pp. 1-18. In using the term "autarchy"
Roy is reflecting the thought of Robert LeFevre, whose
essay "Autarchy" (Rampart Journal, Vol. II, No. 2) he
quoted: "[Governments] will be abandoned when YOU
demonstrate ... that your will is strong enough to
control your actions within a framework of
non-molestation. Do this in your own case with your own
life in your own affairs and no political agent or agency
can justify its existence on grounds that you require
its help." (p. 16; quoted in Childs, as it happens, also on
p. 16) LeFevre eschewed the term "anarchism."
7. Roy was never misled to believe
that either conservatives or the New Left were
genuinely anti-state. For the sake of analysis he is
merely taking them at their word, or rather taking the
general impression that each, for its own purposes,
created.
8. Rand, The Objectivist Newsletter,
February 1965, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 7-8; reprinted in
Leonard Piekoff, ed., The Voice of Reason: Essays in
Objectivist Thought by Ayn Rand (New York:
Penguin Books, 1989, pp. 17-22). Excerpts can be
found http://www.freedomkeys.com/ar-whodecides.htm.
9. Formerly the Institute of
Objectivist Studies. Bidinotto's essay can be found at http://www.vix.com/objectivism/Writing/RobertBidinotto/ContradictionInAnarchism.
html.
10. Kephart was a pioneer in the
marketing of spoken-word cassettes. His Audio Forum
featured recordings of speakers ranging from
conservative heroes (such as Douglas MacArthur,
Winston Churchill, and even Madame Chiang Kai Shek) to
libertarians (such as Leonard Read, Murray Rothbard,
and Karl Hess). Later, he used Audio Forum to market
entire investment conferences. By mid 1979 he had
sold Audio Forum to Jeffrey Norton Publishers, Inc.
Even though many of the older tapes ceased to be listed
in their catalogue, those to which Audio Forum retains
rights can still be purchased from Norton, provided one
can convince the order-taker that the tape really exists
and that Audio Forum has it. The would-be purchaser
should make it clear that he understands that the
recordings (because of their age and because they were
not recorded under studio conditions) do not exhibit the
same high quality as later Audio Forum tapes and that
this is acceptable to him. The Childs-St. John debate is
item #173, and is now labeled "R.A. Childs vs. Jeffrey
St. John / Anarchism vs. Limited Govt."
11. The timing here is a little
problematic. The Individualist was nearly always late,
sometimes months later than the date on the cover, and
any essay published in it in the early 1970s must be
thought of as having been completed anywhere from one
month to six months before the date on the issue in
which it appeared.
12. In a review of The Common
Sense of Politics (Books for Libertarians, July
1972, p. 3), Roy wrote that Adler's attempt to refute
anarchism "is more convincing than almost any other
work I have read.... Although it is wrong, this is the
best statement of a revised Aristotelian-Thomistic
political philosophy that I have seen, and I have profited
from it a great deal."
12a. In a private e-mail, George Smith has informed me that he saw the completed Part 5, but does not possess a copy of it. Why it was never sent to The Individualist for publication is not known. The Last Ditch will be very grateful to anyone who may be able to supply a copy of this work. (July 4, 2003)
13. A response to Roy's discussion
of Mises was published in The Individualist, May 1972: Robert M. Cloes, "The Praxeological Approach," pp.
18-21.
14. His paper, "Land Reform and the
Entitlement Theory of Justice," is reprinted in Taylor,
pp. 185-208.
15. Journal of Libertarian Studies
1, no. 1 (Winter 1977): 23-33; it is reprinted in
Taylor, pp. 157-78, and can be downloaded from http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/1_1/1_1_4.pdf.
16. "Anarchist Illusions," in Taylor,
pp. 179-83. The fragment can be read at http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/Extro/AnarchistIllusions.asp.
17. Taylor "feels" that the
arguments of limited-government libertarians like
herself were decisive. She reports that Roy had said
that the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80 had been a
"turning point for him." That, at least, would be
consistent with his later considering the chaos of 1982
Beirut to be an example of real-life anarchy.
18. Smith's account of this
conversation, "On the 'Secret Refutation' of R.A. Childs,
Jr.," can be found at http://objectivism.cx/~atlantis/objectivism-l/msg01827.html.
19. In an earlier, longer review of
Power and Market (The Individualist, July 1970,
pp. 14-16) Roy remarked that Rothbard had not
given sufficient attention to how a market in defense
would function: "In chapter one [Rothbard] gives
summary answers to the questions of how a free
market can enforce the rights of person and property
against aggressors without a government.
Unfortunately, he doesn't go into this practical problem
enough...."
20. Reprinted as "Ayn Rand and the
Libertarian Movement" (Taylor, pp. 265-81). It is on
the Web in four parts listed at http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/other/power.html. (Scroll down to "Related Links.")
21. It may be relevant in
considering Roy's views of political action to mention
that in 1971 or 1972 he told me that he had been
approached to ghost-write a campaign book for —
hold on to your hat — George Wallace. He did not
tell me who had approached him, but he did seriously
consider taking on the project; apparently there was
some real money at stake. He joked that if Wallace was
elected, he might actually be in a position to influence
the administration. At least I hope he was joking.
22. I treat this error in my reply to
Jacob Hornberger's Five Questions.
23. In a statement of
autobiographical revisionism Roy says that one of his
mentors as a teenager was "Murray Rothbard,
particularly through my acquaintance with one of his
associates, the late Wilson Clark." (pp. 180-81) One
would never guess that Roy and Rothbard enjoyed a
close friendship over those early years. As for Wilson
Clark, I never heard Roy speak of him except once and
that in a gutter context I will not repeat. To mention
him in this context would have been a slap in Rothbard's
face. Wilson Clark it was who delivered the famous
"necktie speech" that resulted in the "inglorious end" to
the first New York Libertarian Conference. His
ultraleftist message was carried on by other speakers,
and in the end a contingent left the conference to join a
ridiculous New Left "action" against Fort Dix in New
Jersey. A few years later, Clark was working on left-wing environmentalist projects. Whether any of his
writing influenced Roy in the "nuclear power" disputes I
cannot say.
Accounts of the first New York Libertarian Conference
may be found at http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/confer.htm and in Murray N. Rothbard, "The
Conference: Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back,"
Libertarian Forum, November 1, 1969 (volume 1,
number 15), pp. 1-3, which is included in the bound
volume that may be available from BestBookBuys.
Justin Raimondo, in An Enemy of the State: The Life
of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books:
Amherst, N.Y., 2000), quotes a letter from Rothbard to
Bob Kephart (p. 280; letter dated June 13, 1992), in
which Rothbard says, "Roy and I had pretty much
reconciled in the last year [or] two; the last time he
called it was about two weeks before he died."
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