This summary of Lew Rockwell’s contributions to the liberty movement will show that Lew has done more to spread libertarian ideas than anyone else not named Ron Paul. Lew was born in Boston in 1944. His father was an “Old Right” Republican who gave Lew a copy of Henry Hazlitt’s classic Economics in One Lesson for for his twelfth birthday! Lew would later edit Hazlitt while working as an editor for the conservative publisher Arlington House. Lew also edited Ludwig von Mises.
In 1979, Lew went to Capitol Hill to work as Ron Paul’s Chief of Staff. Dr. Paul and Lew have been close friends and collaborators ever since. In 1981, Lew left Dr. Paul’s office to start the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, which he named after the great Austrian economist. Lew started the Institute at his kitchen table and grew it into the leading center for scholarship in Austrian Economics and libertarian thought. Lew had help from great libertarian leaders like Burt Blumert, a longtime coin dealer, close friend, and patron of Murray Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt, Mises’s widow Margaret, and, of course, Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard.
Rothbard, Mises’s heir and the dean of Austrian economics and founder of the modern libertarian movement, served as the Institute’s Vice-President for Academic Affairs from the Institute’s founding until his passing in 1995.
This article is a homage to Lew Rockwell, a libertarian world fixture. It is, also, somewhat of a history of libertarianism in America. It is a nice read.