Some argue that one should not have heroes, truth being its own witness.

But truth doesn’t move through the ether by itself, it must be carried and honed and broadcast by people, usually people of courage, and it must be made clear. My heroes have all been great expositors of truth.

I believe that there is nothing wrong with having intellectual ‘heroes.’

The problems occur when heroes are held to a higher standard of consistency and advancement than anyone could attain, and then, when their works, actions or shortcomings reveal them to have been only human, they, along with all of their positive contributions, are angrily cast aside. Or when, in a desperate struggle to defend the standing or reputation of their heroes, admirers resort to animadversion toward rivals or critics, a consequence of blinding themselves to reality.

Deserving of heroic standing, in my judgment, are those who have demonstrated intellectual courage, originality, insight, a reliance on reason, compassion, an ability to express themselves, and, most of all, a willingness to stand on principle. All these crusaders had the courage of their convictions; convictions, which, for the most part, at least in certain areas, were both radical and right. Many were not consistent libertarians but in a certain area were inspiring nonetheless.

I like what Duncan Howlett once wrote: “Man climbed out of the jungle and into civilization on the backs of the independent-minded. It was not merely the intelligent who carried the human race forward. It was yet more the courageous, who dared to suggest new thought patterns and who dared to institute new practices in accordance with them. To these bold spirits who have lived in every age, we owe such progress as we have made.”

To be certain, writings and ideas will have quite different effects on one individual as compared to another, which is why even soul mates do not have precisely the same names on their lists. Our intellectual and spiritual heroes, like our libraries, are highly personal. These 45 heroes of mine, all deceased and mostly Americans, are listed in alphabetical order only. While I hold some of them in far higher esteem than I do others, I do not choose to rank them.

To be sure, there have been many other heroes in my life, but most of the others either are still alive or do not fit here.

While there would be many powerful (and interesting) disagreements among this group, and while all of them, like all of us, had imperfections and inconsistencies, each has made my life far richer. I admire them for their honesty, courage and perception, and I commend them without reservation.

ALLEN, Ethan – BARNES, Harry Elmer – BASTIAT, Frederic – BRIGHT, John – BURBANK, Luther – CHILDS, Roy – COBDEN, Richard – EKIRCH, Arthur – EMERSON, Ralph Waldo – FLYNN, John T. – FRANKLIN, Benjamin – GARRETT, Garet – GARRISON, William Lloyd – GEORGE, Henry – GREAVES, Percy — HALDEMAN-JULIUS, Emanuel – HAYEK, Friedrich – HAZLITT, Henry – HENRY, Patrick – INGERSOLL, Robert Green – JEFFERSON, Thomas – KWITNY, Jonathan — LEFEVRE, Robert – MARTIN, James J. — MASON, George – MENCKEN, H.L. – MISES, Ludwig von – NOCK, Albert Jay – PAINE, Thomas – PRIESTLEY, Joseph – RAND, Ayn – READ, Leonard – ROTHBARD, Murray – RUSSELL, Bertrand – SENNHOLZ, Hans — SMITH, Adam – SPENCER, Herbert – SPOONER, Lysander – STIRNER, Max – SUMNER, William Graham – TAYLOR, John – THOREAU, Henry David – TUCKER, Benjamin – TWAIN, Mark – VOLTAIRE (F.M. Arouet).

I have a list of intellectual heroes who, while not all pure libertarians, were all courageous thinkers and writers who were willing to buck the tide of society. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for sure, but also Lord Bertrand Russell. He actually went to prison for his opposition to conscription in England in World War I. In recently reading his 1931 book called “Proposed Roads to Freedom,” I came across the following quote which I had not noticed before:

“My own opinion — which I may as well indicate at the outset — is that pure anarchism, though it should be the ultimate ideal to which society should continually approximate, is for the present impossible, and would not survive more than a year or two at most if it were tried.”

Somehow, his “lovable” opinion (as Murray might have put it) that anarchism is the ultimate ideal to which society should continually approximate does not lessen my respect and admiration for him in the least.

Stock up on your favorite junk food now, folks, because it looks like the federal government is going to be messing with our food supply a whole lot more if regulators at the FDA have their way.  Plans are underway to mandate restrictions on salt. The government – that fine institution that exists ostensibly to protect our rights and property in this land of the free – is planning soon to dictate how much salt will be legally permissible in prepared foods at grocery stores and restaurants.

Our big brothers are alarmed at how much salt we Americans are consuming ‘on average’ with the alleged consequences of high blood pressure leading to coronary artery disease. It is unfortunate but this notion that most citizens are too stupid or too ignorant to be allowed to make their own decisions about what they should put in their mouths or shopping carts is deep-seated.

My husband worked on Capitol Hill for five years until the atmospheres of blatant self-serving and patronizing elitism finally got too much for him. At one point, he’d have taken almost any kind of work just to get outside the “Beltway” and back among regular people.

As for folks being uninformed about their food choices, I say rubbish!  Our middle daughter is a physician specializing in family medicine in southern Indiana. I know for a fact that she has counseled patients with risk factors for heart problems to limit their salt intake. Her patients are informed about the proper diet for optimal health and she provides information for them on websites. Other physicians and healthcare professionals do the same. The information is out there.

To my daughter’s chagrin, more than a few of her patients ignore her advice and her warnings, and many often suffer the consequences in the form of high blood pressure, diabetes, and coronary heart disease. But she strongly believes, as do I, that the people who come to her with their health concerns have every right to make their own choices about what they will or will not put in their stomachs. If we cannot control our own bodies, what do we have the right to control?

Once again, it’s the federal government seeking to protect us from ourselves, as if the average American is unable to take responsibility for what he or she does.

Don’t be fooled. Once the FDA starts down the slippery slope of regulating ordinary foodstuffs based on their perceptions of health – as has already have done in several cities with trans fats – there is no longer a logical stopping point for intervention. Limiting intake of sugar could be next. Actually, in my personal opinion, too much sugar may be as dangerous to our health as too much salt. Research last fall at the University of California at Davis found that our bodies tend to naturally regulate salt intake, whereas consuming too much sugar causes dental cavities, insulin resistance, obesity, diabetes and, yes, coronary artery disease.  Will the FDA decide to outlaw Twinkies?

My point is, it is no one else’s responsibility to prevent you from eating doughnuts or drinking beer or putting away two bags of potato chips in front of your favorite TV program after working hard all day at your job. Likely you know what the best choices would be but the fact remains that you have the choice. The federal regulators want to take those choices away. They believe that we are a bunch of numbskulls blindly bent on destroying ourselves. We know we shouldn’t pig out too often on certain foods the same way we know we ought to exercise and we shouldn’t smoke cigarettes. But we don’t need anyone strong-arming us to make healthy choices. We retain those basic rights.

My two favorite junk foods are buttered popcorn with a liberal sprinkling of salt and Blizzards (cookie dough) from Dairy Queen. There is no way I’m going to stand by quietly and let some regulator tell me I can’t savor those pleasures once in awhile. I own my body.

By Janny Wilcke, reprinted from the Henry County Local, Eminence, Kentucky

October 22-23, 2010
Louisville, Kentucky

Conference Conveners:
Manisha Sinha (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Departments of Afro-American Studies and History)
Kevin Barksdale (Marshall University, Department of History)

The Filson Institute for the Advanced Study of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South proposes a two-day academic conference to examine calls for secession or disunion in the United States from the Revolutionary era to the Civil War. The conference, which takes place in Louisville, Kentucky, at The Filson Historical Society, marks the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession.

The conference seeks to explore the moments in U.S. history between 1783 and 1865 when Americans threatened or acted upon a perceived “right” to secede from or nullify the laws of national or state authorities. Nearly hundred and fifty years ago, in December 1860, South Carolina declared its independence and seceded from the Union, helping to plunge the nation into Civil War. Secessionists believed they defended and upheld political values and traditions established during the Revolutionary era. Some claimed that the Declaration of Independence established a precedent for principled rebellion in opposition to “tyranny,” while states’ rights advocates defended secession as a constitutional right. But southern secessionists were not the first to appeal to the Revolutionary tradition of disunion and rebellion or to the Constitution: between the Revolution and the Civil War many groups and political leaders, discontented with conditions in the nation, invoked the right to leave the union or nullify federal laws.

Or see Secession, State, and Liberty, edited by David Gordon, a conference volume published some 15 years ago.

Concerning Walter’s article today, there is never an end to the argument over words and their meanings in ideological and political discourse. Whenever any word has come to a point of eliciting positive feelings in common use, it is bound to be appropriated, usually in some incomplete or distorted way, by those who want to appeal to its supporters. As was once true of liberalism, it has become true of libertarianism. As it was true of free enterprise, it has also become true of capitalism. To the degree that ideas regarding economic or political freedom gain traction, to that degree will the words and phrases that best describe those concepts be taken over and used by others. This continual process of expropriation cannot be stopped, and it is, in my opinion, absolutely futile to give up the use of adequate words. At my first FEE seminar 40 years ago, it was carefully explained that we were neither conservatives nor libertarians. When I asked what exactly we were, Leonard Read replied that we were all believers in the “freedom philosophy.’ Later that day, Hans Sennholz, in answer to the same question, replied that we were all “advocates of the private-property order.” While deeply affected by what I learned from FEE in 1970, I never had much use for the euphemisms coined in Leonard’s effort to avoid using “libertarian,” which he had once loved, because he was convinced it had been appropriated by ‘anarchists.” His refusal to employ a very useful term for someone who makes liberty a paramount priority achieved nothing. I recommend not giving up on good words, else we lose them all.

Jeff Riggenbach’s audio essays on the libertarian tradition are outstanding. I became fully aware of them only this past week and downloaded them to an iPod. My commute to my campus is an hour each way, and while I have enjoyed many lectures and interviews over the past few years – Lew’s interviews, Antiwar’s ‘radio’ show, presentations by Bob Higgs, Hans Hoppe, Ralph Raico, Murray Rothbard, FEE, Russ Roberts’ EconTalk, even Bob LeFevre – this series by Jeff has been a ‘peak experience’ for me. In interviews, I always wish that I could ask the questions, and listening to lectures is sometimes irritating when you cannot see the slides or maps.

Jeff’s essays are the absolute best because he is erudite, they’re written to be read out loud, and Jeff is the best announcer out there for this kind of stuff. He has decades of experience, a wealth of knowledge, and immense credibility with me. He will think I’m kissing up for some reason but my enthusiasm could not be more genuine. Thirty years ago, the late Jeffrey St. John and I sat in a restaurant on Capitol Hill in D.C. and conceived a radio show that would explain libertarian ideas, philosophy, and history in a scholarly but wholly accessible way. This week, as I’ve been listening to Jeff’s essays on Ayn Rand, J.R. Tolkien, Cass Sunstein, etc., I was taken back to that idea that Jeffrey and I imagined. This project of Jeff’s is, without a doubt, the closest thing to it – and, in honesty, even better. Thanks to the Mises Institute for making it available to the ‘remnant’ out here.

My graduate history professor and old friend, Art Ekirch, once said to us, “Believe ANYTHING is possible. The worst things for an historian to say are, ‘That just couldn’t be true’ or ‘I refuse to believe that’.”

Our discussion – many decades ago – was whether there could have been a political conspiracy behind the assassination of President James Garfield as opposed to just a “disappointed office seeker” or, as Murray used to say, “another lone nut.” As a result, I’ve always believed that virtually anything is possible and, indeed, I have long prided myself on my Menckenesque level of outright cynicism.

But I admit that I, a grizzled veteran, have actually been shocked this last week while reading Tim Weiner’s book “Legacy of Ashes.” His six-decade history of the CIA, from its beginnings as a cancerous remnant of WWII intelligence to this post-9/11 era, presents a crystal-clear picture of a federal government run amok. I have read books that have described the devastating effects of U.S. ‘covert action’ from Endless Enemies by Jonathan Kwitny to Blowback by Chalmers Johnson, but Weiner’s book deals not with the policies and their consequences as much as with the agency itself, the decisionmakers, and the approaches it took. It’s impossible to estimate how many millionaires in the world – both U.S. citizens who worked for or contracted with the CIA, and also foreign crooks, thieves and degenerates around the world – were created with billions of unaccounted-for American dollars. The critics of the Weiner book have mostly centered on a) a defense of the CIA officers and directors on the grounds that – even if they were inept – they were also patriotic and well-meaning, or b) a criticism of his failure to blame other influences, such as corporate interests and the Pentagon, for the directions and policies of the agency. No one says Weiner exaggerated.

The arrogance, the scope, the secrecy, the devastation – breathtakingly evil!