Liberty Maven

So far, in Liberty Maven’s ongoing series Liberty Heroes, we have profiled Walter E. Williams, Andrew Napolitano, and Barry Goldwater.

Next up is Austrian economist Thomas J. DiLorenzo.  Born 1954, DiLorenzo teaches American Economics at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, a senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and author/co-author of several books, most notably:

• Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe
• Abraham Lincoln: Friend or Foe of Freedom?
• How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, From the Pilgrims to the Present
• Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution–and What It Means for Americans Today

Well known for shunning the typical politically-correct line of thinking, his well-researched and masterfully eloquent works are eye opening to many whose only knowledge of political and economic topics resulted from the revisionist history often taught in government schools.

DiLorenzo is steadfast in his claim that the interventions of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt exacerbated the economic problems of the 1930s and prolonged the Great Depression.  As he wrote in the opening paragraph of The New Deal Debunked (again) (a followup to his earlier article A New, New Deal):

FDR’s New Deal made the Great Depression longer and deeper. It is a myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt “got us out of the Depression” and “saved capitalism from itself,” as generations of Americans have been taught by the state’s educational establishment.

In addition to his discussion on economics, DiLorenzo’s scathing reviews of often-revered Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton are noteworthy.  In his books as well as in essays such as Speaking Truth to the Lincoln Cult he points out that the popular “history” of Lincoln is more mythology than fact.

The gigantic collection of myths, lies, and distortions that comprise The Legend of Abraham Lincoln is the ideological cornerstone of the American warfare/welfare state.

DiLorenzo cites a litany of sources to paint a picture of Lincoln as a masterful politician who spent his entire political career to convert our republican form of government (one that was very limited in scope and highly decentralized, as the Founding Fathers intended) to a highly centralized, controlling state.  And despite the fact that our fifth grade schoolteachers told us that Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to “free the slaves”, DiLorenzo shows us (often in Lincoln’s own words) that he was basically ambivalent on the subject of slavery.  Instead of taking one side or the other, he used it as a political football to achieve his real political goals, such as denying states the right to secede from the union and implementing the mercantilist policies of his hero, Henry Clay.  DiLorenzo details how Lincoln trampled on the Constitution, subverted state’s rights, and pushed our nation into a civil war that has changed us forever.

On Hamilton, DiLorenzo says:

Hamilton was a compulsive statist who wanted to bring the corrupt British mercantilist system – the very system the American Revolution was fought to escape from – to America. He fought fiercely for his program of corporate welfare, protectionist tariffs, public debt, pervasive taxation, and a central bank run by politicians and their appointees out of the nation’s capital.

Building on Hamilton’s statement that our national debt is a “public blessing” and his overt disdain for “an excessive concern for liberty in public men” such as Thomas Jefferson, DiLorenzo unravels the romantic mythology surrounding this founding father, detailing how his policies are now revered by many a big-government politician.  Read his recent article highlighting his new book on this subject.

If you missed the most recent interview with Thomas DiLorenzo as reported on Liberty Maven, be sure to check it out.

Also recommended are his various writings available on LewRockwell.com.