Historical Context: The podcast delves into the history of the conservative movement, focusing on figures like Murray Rothbard and Frank Meyer, highlighting their influence and interactions with Ayn Rand.
Frank Meyer's Influence: Frank Meyer, a key figure in the conservative movement, is discussed in detail, including his transition from communism to conservatism and his role in shaping the National Review.
Rothbard and Rand's Relationship: The podcast explores the complex relationship between Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, emphasizing Rothbard's initial admiration for Rand's work and the eventual philosophical and personal disagreements that led to their fallout.
Vulkar Fund's Role: Both Rothbard and Meyer benefited from the Vulkar Fund, which supported libertarian and conservative thinkers, enabling them to publish significant works like "Man, Economy, and State" and "In Defense of Freedom."
Intellectual Debates: The podcast highlights the intellectual debates between Rothbard and Meyer, particularly their discussions on libertarian and conservative principles, showcasing their enduring friendship despite disagreements.
New Insights: Recently uncovered letters between Rothbard and Meyer provide fresh insights into Rothbard's thoughts on Rand, revealing his early criticisms and the evolution of his views over time.
Impact on Libertarian Thought: The discussion underscores the importance of understanding the historical context of libertarian and conservative thought, as it remains relevant to contemporary discussions and influences figures like Lou Rockwell.
Transcript
[Music] Welcome back to Radio Rothbard. I'm Ryan McMin, executive editor at the Mises Institute. And uh today we are going to be talking a bit about the history of the conservative movement and how it intersects a little bit with uh of course one of our favorite libertarians, Murray Rothbart. And to do that, I have on uh Daniel Flynn today to talk about that. And uh Daniel's like in perfect position to talk about some new stuff, some new developments really in this research. And he is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and uh an American spectator senior editor. Now recently he has published a book called the man who invented conservatism the unlikely life of Frank S. Meyer and that's out from Encounter Books uh just this year here in 2025. And he also wrote recently a a column drawing upon some of this research wrote a column for the quarterly journal of Austrian economics uh here at the mises. Wait, no, this is in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, our other journal, our sister journal to the QJAE. And so, we'll link to that. Check that out. Uh, but he's he's focusing on one aspect in the journal article where he had recently uncovered some new research uh which showed letters with well literally letters uh from Rothbart to Frank Meyer talking about Ein Rand. And I don't know if if you've been around the Mis Institute for a while, you know, kind of like the old talk about this relationship between Rothbart and Ein Rand. This crops up every now and then, and it was fairly interesting uh relationship. And so we have new details about that, some some new details about Rothbart's thought, but I'll let I'll let Daniel get into the details of that. I don't really need to summarize it or anything. Uh but I think before we get into uh this relationship between Murray and and Rand, we need to talk a little bit about who Frank Meyer was so that we have some context I think about what was this discussion about Rand? Why did Murray know Frank Meyer? So Daniel, just I you know I don't think anymore people who follow conservatism or involved in the necessarily know who Meyer was. I don't even think they necessarily know who uh Buckley was, at least in terms of reading a lot of his writings or anything like that. So, so yeah, tell us about Meyer and the conservative movement and all of that stuff. Well, you know, when when Mike Wallace interviewed uh Frank Meyer in 1961, he said, "I'd venture to guess that maybe one in a thousand of my viewers knows who you are." And here we are in 2025. I don't think the situation is all that much better. Um, but I'd rather write a biography about someone that we should know rather than like Winston Churchill or Lincoln or someone like that that everyone knows everything about. Meyer um kind of lived two lives. Initially, he was the Johnny Apples Seed of the Young Communist Movement in Great Britain. I have about 160 pages of MI5 and MI6 files. And he is repeatedly referred to as the founder of the student communist movement in Great Britain. And so while he was doing that, um, here's a guy who was calling for the violent overthrow of Ramsay McDonald, the prime minister of England. And at the same time, what these letters that I found prove is that he was having a relationship with Ramsay McDonald's youngest daughter, Sheila McDonald. One of one of the letters says, "Come to 10 Downing Street. My father's not around." So I don't, you know, pick whatever romantic figure in the history of communism you can come up with, Jay Guaa or John Reed. none of them had the the the gall to pull off what Meyer did. And of course, he was deported um unsurprisingly from Great Britain. But before he got deported, he was a cause celeb. He had Clement Atley giving a speech on the floor of the House of Commons. Um there was a petition that went around with Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, signing it. Michael Strait, who who was the um uh you know, publisher of New Republic later, he says he remembers marching around London chanting free Frank Meyer. free Frank Meyer. He comes to the United States. He's sort of a mid-level manager in in the American party and he a number of things happened. Um, one of them he he joins the army and he realized that the proletariat are not these people that Markx had made them out to be. That's a revelation for him because he sort of grew up wealthy in this high hat hotel in Newark, New Jersey, went to Baleo College was had a lot of social insulation. The other thing that happens is that he read 1945 and that book's the road to surfom by Aayek and ostensibly this is a a book review of the road to surfom in a communist controlled publication. Um and the remarkable thing is that you know it's it's not exactly a positive review but it's a fair review. It's it's a mixed re to positive review and you it's really not so much a review of Hayek as it is you know you're reading a man cracking up that he's having an epiphany that the 14 years of his life as a communist was a lie and so he leaves the party testifies against the communist party in the longest most expensive trial in US history which is the Smith Act trial in 1948 1949 by 1955 he's present at the creation of national review and I think That's where his story picks up for most people that Meyer, you know, was this um the the book review editor for National Review, but he's also sort of the the chief ideologist. He kind of was a commasar in the communist party and a little bit he was a commaar in the uh the post-war conservative movement. What I like about his life is there's this Forest Gump quality where he it weaves through in ways large and small with, you know, Eugene O'Neal, Albert Einstein, HG Wells. He's the first um editor to publish a freelance article by Joan Ddian. By the end of the 1960s, even though he's this sort of anti-hippie kmagin, Bob Dylan moves next door in in Woodstock, New York. So, he really pops off the page in a way that a lot of ideologues don't. They live kind of a lot of them live really gray lives, particularly some of the National Review characters. And he lives in technicolor. He lives in 3D. And he really jumps off the page. And his story with Marty Rothbart picks up in 1954. That's where they meet. And yes, I one of my impressions of uh Meyer, I mean, kind of if I had to define him in one sentence is that he was really kind of the intellectual power behind National Review where Buckley was very much the public figure on TV all of the time and certainly had his own thoughts about things. reading Meyer, it seems he's trying to engage the material on a much deeper, more philosophical level, at least in my reading. And he would get into these debates with Rothbart, too. There's a there's a book that I have here. It's from ISI called Freedom and Virtue, the conservative libertarian debate that they put out like 25 years ago or something like that's just sitting on my shelf forever. and it contains essentially essays by both Meyer and Rothbard uh taking each other to task on these these issues. Well, what's interesting is that they so they meet through the Vulkar fund uh in 1954 and they both become the the kind of reviewers of scholarship and books from Vulkar. Meyer actually has quite a significant role in the publication of man economy and state and that's something I hope to bring out uh in some subsequent article. He um you know they in in in 1955 Meyer comes down to Manhattan and he spends you know what sounds like a real jolly time at with the circle bast he invites them up to Woodstock and Murray's travel phobias which I'm sure you know about and a lot of your your viewers know about prevent him from going up to Woodstock at least at that point. But they keep they have this episttolary correspondence. I mean this is the folder that I have. Um it's, you know, it's 35 letters. There are, um, between Rothbart and Meyer. There are some original, um, manuscripts in there. There's some cards and some other articles that Murray clipped. So, it's a, you know, it's a good chunk of material between the two. I think what's significant is that they never cease to be friends. um that my that um you know when Frank died Murray said I took it as a huge blow that that Frank you know Frank's death um they both of them received funding from the Vulkar fund to to publish what would be I think they're big books I mean would you say man economy and state is Murray's big book I mean there's other books that he wrote that are important too and for my certainly his big economics book yeah yeah and I mean I think I read America's great depression pretty early on I think that's an important book there's other important books that he that he's written And for for Meyer, the the big book that he wrote, it's actually a slim book, is in defense of freedom. Both of them wouldn't have been able to do that without the Vulkar fund money. And for the uninitiated, Vulkar was kind of bankrolling um libertarian and some conservative thinkers in the 1950s all the way into the early 1960s. And both of them were beneficiaries of that large S. And they both remain friends. I mean, I have a letter from from Murray where he says, this is in the late '60s that um you know, why is it that you and and with the with the with the possible exception of John Chamberlain, was it that you, Frank Meyer, are the only one at Nashville Review standing up or in the conservative move standing up for sort of libertarian principles? So, he admired Meyer as I mean, he thought of him as a libertarian. It's it's certainly debatable whether he was or wasn't, but Murray thought of him that way. um just sort of a libertarian who was a was an anti-communist. Well, and one thing that I've that I've actually been meaning to ask him about, Lou Rockwell, uh was an editor at Arlington Press back in late 60s, early 70s or Arlington House Press. Sure. And what was I have this book here, The Conservative Mainstream by Frank Meyer. Sure. It's got this fun picture of him smoking on the back. Um and uh it was it's it's copyright 1969. It's a collection of essays. It's actually pretty good if you if you want to read a bunch of short stuff. Uh and I kind of wonder if uh if Lou had been working at Arlington House when this was put out, if he had any role in this uh whatsoever. So there's yeah, there's these um uh kind of intersections uh between uh the conservatives and the libertarians back then. That was that was before I think things had hardened quite into the distinct uh different schools that they they have in more recent decades. Yeah. And I should add like you know Murray I mean I have a letter of recommendation from Bill Buckley for Murray when he was kind of hard up in 1957 saying this is a brilliant economist. By 1959 he's singing a very different tune about Murray and he views him as sort of a gadfly or something worse than that. Um so obviously they had a relationship Murray and Buckley at one time it was at least cordial but that disintegrates. It never disintegrates for Frank Meyer and Murray and I think that's significant. Well, so they're they're sending letters to each other, right? And and from the mid50s into the late 50s. Uh and so the the next issue then is okay. So what picture do we get of Murray and his relationship with Rand through these letters? And I should note that the article, you can get a good sense of this, a summary of this from this article at the Journal of Libertarian Studies at mises.org. It's called Murray Rothbart's lost letters on Ein Rand. And these are these are letters that he sent to me. So uh the story of Iran is filled with stories of people who first liked her and then they were expelled by her group or they simply left the group in disgust. Uh it seems Rothbart followed a similar path to many others and and so kind of what what do you what do you gain from reading these new letters to Meyer? Well, that that there was sort of a roller coaster of emotions and thought with regard to Rothbard concerning Rand that pretty early on he had three iterations of, you know, interactions with Rand. One was in 52 when the Vulkar fund people took him to meet her. One was in 1954 where we spent a couple days uh with the sort of inner circle of of the the Randians. And the final one was in the aftermath of the publication of um of Atlas Shrugged. Initially from his letters to Meyer, there's a great deal of exhilaration about the publication of Atlas Shrugged. He said, "Listen, Meyer, even if you don't disagree with her, you have to hail her as a genius system builder. I disagree with Markx and I know he was brilliant in his own way. Why don't you, you know, come on board with with um with Rand?" And so um that feeling kind of dissipates when he starts going to meetings and he starts going into um these sort of inner collective um inner objectivist meetings. And part of his problem is philosophical. I think the other part of it is is um I is personal. I think with with Rand for a lot of people it was her temperament. And it was her sort of Russian temperament kind of intolerance and the idea cultivated by Nathaniel Brandon that everyone around her had to be kind of a disciple. Murray wasn't suited for a kind of sickopantic life to live in someone else's shadow. I mean even we talked earlier man economy and state. I mean he he wrote that book to be a a sort of a textbook synopsis of human action but it becomes its own thing because Murray couldn't help but become his own guy. And so, um, I I don't think it was ever going to work. Some of the issues, I mean, one of the things he's by December of 1957, he's already joking with Ralph Reicho and Bruce Goldberg and and other people about he, you know, get alone to these people. They think that animals have natural rights. And so, they start making jokes about the natural rights of cockroaches. And you know, that kind of humor, I mean, that might be characteristic of Murray, but you're not going to be long for that world around the um the the the collective if you're making jokes like that. Now, obviously later they do this play. I don't really get into that in in in um in the article, but it, you know, those kind of jokes expand from there. Um he he talks about them being kind of antipolitics, that they're all about philosophy and metaphysics and that kind of thing. And Murray was to some degree a political animal. um he believed in private courts. I think there's an irony that the Randians voseiferously objected to his idea of private courts and then later they wanted to haul him into their own private court for a denunciation. But that was one of his objections. He said they don't believe in instincts and he did believe in instincts. So there was a philosophical divide. But as he said to Meyer, you know, I'm 98% Randian. I'm n I I believe in natural rights. I believe in, you know,ism. Um I believe in free will. I believe in all these things but I I just you know there I have these few hang-ups. I don't know that it was the philosophical hang hang-ups so much it was the temperament. I mean there is a story that he tells um there's a number of stories that he tells here. I mean what I mean one of them um comes from his wife where Joanne Rothbart was a Christian and the Randians wanted to convert her to I don't know agnosticism or atheism or whatever it was that they were believing or not believing and they couldn't do it and so persuasion started to get kind of annoying. It started to be like browbeating. And Murray was taking um psychoanalysis from Nathaniel Brandon and she said, "Well, I hope this goes well with you and I hope it goes well with Bruce and I hope it goes well with Ralph Reicho." Um but at the end of it, I hope you spit in Nathaniel Brandon's face. I mean, that is how visceral it got for Joanne Rothbart that by December of 1957, she's saying, "Murray, I hope this ends and I hope that you spit in his face when it's over." So he lasts for another seven or so months within the collective, but even by December of 1957, Mari is saying this isn't going to last. And Joanne Rothbart is saying, "Hey, spit in this guy's face, you know." Yeah. The I was really struck by it, right? You use the phrase zigzagging, right, to kind of describe where Rothbart was with Rand at any given time based on these these letters. And it was fun to read. He goes to Meyer and he's saying in one minute, uh, yeah, Rand is awful and then in the next letter, oh, I've reconsidered my earlier opinion of Rand. So, it was very fascinating. I think there was a circle the wagons effect that when Atlas Shrug came out, it had a profound impact on a lot of people. I mean I I'm not a objectivist or anything like that but it you know that whole concept in her books of moochers and lutters I mean you can't help but look at current news articles and see it through that lens if you've read that book. So um I think for particularly for people of a libertarian bent that it was you know it was a life-changing event. It was a life-changing event for Murray. So when there became attacks on Atlas Shrugged um all across the board and a lot of them really condescending attacks on Rand, you had this I mean you see this a lot now. I remember when the Dave Chappelle special came out a few years ago and on Rotten Tomatoes there was like 100% fresh score from the the people and the critics had given it 0%. Atlas Shrugged was a bit like that where the people reading it were saying this is a really great book and the critics were all saying it stunk. And so I think the zigzag for Murray came in the fact that boy, you know, I can say I mean and in this letter in December, he calls her crazy. He says that she's operating a little cult. Um so a lot of the language that you would see later in the sociology of the Einran cult, it's present there in 1957, but I think like within a family, you might feel comfortable attacking your brother or your sister, saying mean things about them. But the second someone outside of your family starts saying mean things, you you know there's a circle of the wagons effect. And I think that partly explains the zigzag. So by the end of December when the Whitaker Chambers review comes out, the famous review where he said, you know, to from every page of Atlas Shrugged drips the idea to the gas chamber, go um Murray was fighting mad. Wrote a a letter to to Bill Buckley. Um wrote a letter to and wrote a note to Myers saying, "Lo, I take back what I said earlier. I misunderstood um about the Randians, but of course he would there would be more zigs and zags to follow. Yes. Because my experience with the whole Rothbar Rand connection just comes from his later works, right? Where he had finally settled on we're not fans of Right. always always there was some sympathetic things to say about the philosophy uh and some of the comments, right? But nothing nice to say about the cult as as Rothbard uh characterized it, which which is fine with me, by the way. I was I've never actually even been affected by Rand very much. I I tried reading the novels. I I I weren't for me. Um and but like them, I admit some of these essays u like in that short book, Capitalism, the unknown ideal, there's some good essays in that. It it also contains Alan Greenspan's essay about the gold standard, which is a good essay. Unfortunately, Greenspan was a horrible careerist who had no real principles whatsoever. So, uh, that's that's just my experience with the Rand people. And you can read on mis.org, by the way, um, the sociology of the iron ran cult. We have it up there. And you also mentioned the play that Rothbart had written about Ran, and that's called Mozart was a Red. It's a oneact play. And a few years ago, our students at Misa University acted it out. Uh it was a lot of fun. Uh it's nice and short, of course. And so, yeah, there's a lot of animosity there. And I recently edited a book by Ralph Reiko in a a 10-hour lecture series that he gave. And he he he embodies, I think, that idea. had some nice things to say about what Ran's thoughts on industrialization were, but overall considered her to be very unsophisticated in her view of history and her acknowledgement of other theorists and and right a crazed egotist and that sort of thing. And well, I I think the importance of these letters, I mean, there's always importance in history just for history's sake, and it's profoundly interesting, but I think it it it settles a few debates. And one of the things that the Randians said about Murray, I mean, obviously he gets kicked out unceremoniously in the summer of 1958. And they claimed that he had plagiarized Ran's ideas. He had stolen her ideas on Aristotle and on um natural rights. And so there was, you know, there was a qu in that later Murray came and trashed Rand, you know, petulently in a sour grapes way because of this charge. Now, there's a what came first, the chicken or the egg argument there. There's no argument anymore because in these letters, Murray is saying the same things that he said in the sociology of the Einran cult in 1972. Here, he's saying them in 1957 to to basically what's a sounding board, Frank Meyer. And we don't get really Frank Meyer's voice because Frank was a phone person. I mean, some of these years he was spending a quarter of his income on his telephone bills. And so Frank and Murray called each other on the phone. Then one of the calls is at 2 in the morning or something like that. So, um, that is is is settled. You know, Murray didn't just make this stuff up as the Randians claimed to kind of get back at her to smear her. He was saying it in real time in 1957. He didn't make it up 15 years ago, 15 years later. Saying the same stuff in this letter that he would say in the sociology of the Einran cult. The other thing that it settles is this idea that he stole um natural rights and uh arisatalism that he got all these ideas from Rand. Now this has always been a very dubious you know if for anyone outside of objectivism this has been profoundly ridiculous because the idea that a guy who got three degrees from an Ivy League institution suddenly came upon Aristotle just upon meeting Iran. I mean that's ridiculous. So, I don't know that there's many people that were sort of waiting to have some sort of confirmation that was false. I mean, it sort of was always false. However, in these letters before before Rothbart is in the inner circle of the Randians, he's saying literally saying to Meyer, I've always been a natural rights guy. I've always been an arisatalian. I've always been this and that. Um, and so their philosophy kind of meshes with my philosophy, the Randians. And so, I I feel comfortable. 98% of the time I feel comfortable because natural rights, Aristotle, this kind of thing, that's what I believe in too. And so the charge that's even been made in recent years that he got all this stuff, he stole it from Ein Rand. Um, that doesn't stand after you read these letters, it can't stand because he would have had to have anticipated what happened 9 months later of being, you know, charged with plagiarism and all this kind of thing and slipped this into letters in in late 1957. And that's obviously preposterous. So um that argument such as there was an argument about that uh there's no argument about that anymore. And I mean I guess just as a final question then uh did this did this in any way affect uh the relationship between Meyers and Rothbard or or Meyer uh did I mean I guess in the end Meyer was proven right like Rothbard ended up agree agreeing with to some extent with probably Meyer's initial um second thoughts doubts about Rand. I suppose I guess it might have improved their relationship. I don't know. I kind of in terms of that, how what do you get out of these letters in terms of did it have any effect on the larger relationship between Rothbart and uh and Meyer or was it just two guys just kind of talking about what was a minor issue in their lives? I I think it well I think it was a major issue in Rothbart's life. I think for Meyer um you know I talked to his son who actually subscribed to the Objectivist newsletter in the 1960s. He said he liked Meyer better than his dad, but he thought that that his father, Frank Meyer, um John Meyer said that he, you know, he thought that Rand was overall, you know, more good than bad. She had some errors. He disagreed with her on some things, but what's remarkable is I have about a quarter million documents in my house sitting on this table all around. Obviously, I have these uh Rothbard letters that are here. Um but they're a part of a larger collection. And you would think that over the course of I don't know 100,000 letters that that Meyer would have talked about Rand. He mentions her a few times. She's not a big deal in his overall overall scheme of things. The other thing with Meyer is that he had these knockdown dragout fights with Harry Jaffa, with Brent Bazelle, with Russell Kirk, with all sorts of figures on the American right. And oftentimes it really didn't damage the relationships. It certainly didn't damage his relationship with Brent Bazelle, with with Russell Kirk. It did. And um with with Murray, I don't think there was any damage to the relationship because you know repeat the letters are very warm. They're seeing each other occasionally. They're talking on the phone. They're writing each other. Um and as Murray said when Frank died that he took it as a great personal blow, his death. So I think um you know Murray did review Frank's book, The Molding of Communists in a in a very kind of negative way. I think he later when you read the sociology of the Einran cult he kind of took some of that back. Um and so he he you know he he could be critical of Meyer certainly Meyer was a virulent anti-communist. He was in favor of the Vietnam War and Murray particularly in 1967 1968 he was um you know disgusted with all that and so he had some disgust in that review of of Meyer's book about communists. Um so they you know they disagreed with things but they they were friends till the end. They debated together at Harvard in 1971. Um and obviously the Vulkar things ends in the early 60s but there was a bond there because they were the only the only two guys at Vulkar that were basically giving their impromater to scholarship to to reviews and because they were both doing it. I know Murray's stuff's online. I have Frank's reviews and they could be quite harsh about people that were their friends because the only people reading those reviews were people inside of Vulkar. So the type of reviews Frank was writing for National Review, they might give a friendly review to someone because they're a friend of the magazine or something like that. But within the Vulkar stuff, it was you know it could be harsh and they they were linked because of that forever. Well, Daniel Flynn, thank you for joining us today here on Radio Rothbart. And uh if you're interested in any of this, I know a lot of these names are probably going to be unfamiliar to a lot of uh the listeners. Whitaker Chambers doesn't come up a lot anymore in daily discussion. He doesn't you can get if you're just interested in the Rand stuff, go and and read the Journal of Libertarian Studies article. If you're interested in Meyer, this is the man who invented conservatism, my new book, The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. Um, there's a lot of stuff on libertarians. I mean, Frank was mentored by Rose Wilder Lane. He's very tight with Frank Cherof. He mentors David Broadi later. So, there's a fair amount of libertarian stuff. It's more more conservative movement stuff, but I think if you're if people are interested in the history of it, go to the book. If you're just interested in the Rand Rothbart stuff, certainly go to the Journal of Libertarian Studies article. I think the book uh your book could offer some additional nice context too for people who are interested in the libertarian side of things like say Rothbart's book the betrayal of the American right and those sort of things I think you would get a lot more depth of understanding as as to what was going on in the larger right-wing philosophical discussion at that time so I do encourage even hardline libertarians to be familiar with this period of time and thinking because I do think it is relevant to where we are now uh in terms of libertarian thinking and and where Murray was and where Lou Rockwell um got a lot of his um I don't want to say influences but just in terms of understanding what the the intellectual millu was at the time. I mean you can't I don't think you can really ignore this stuff if we're looking at people who were writing in the 80s 90s and even early 2000s. So yeah, check out the book. It's the man who invented conservatism. And then the article uh from the journal of libertarian studies is Murray Rothbart's lost letters on Rand. You can find that at mises.org. So thank you Daniel for joining me today. Thank you everyone out there for listening. We'll be back next time with more. We'll see you then. [Music]
Rothbard's Lost Letters on Ayn Rand
Summary
Transcript
[Music] Welcome back to Radio Rothbard. I'm Ryan McMin, executive editor at the Mises Institute. And uh today we are going to be talking a bit about the history of the conservative movement and how it intersects a little bit with uh of course one of our favorite libertarians, Murray Rothbart. And to do that, I have on uh Daniel Flynn today to talk about that. And uh Daniel's like in perfect position to talk about some new stuff, some new developments really in this research. And he is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and uh an American spectator senior editor. Now recently he has published a book called the man who invented conservatism the unlikely life of Frank S. Meyer and that's out from Encounter Books uh just this year here in 2025. And he also wrote recently a a column drawing upon some of this research wrote a column for the quarterly journal of Austrian economics uh here at the mises. Wait, no, this is in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, our other journal, our sister journal to the QJAE. And so, we'll link to that. Check that out. Uh, but he's he's focusing on one aspect in the journal article where he had recently uncovered some new research uh which showed letters with well literally letters uh from Rothbart to Frank Meyer talking about Ein Rand. And I don't know if if you've been around the Mis Institute for a while, you know, kind of like the old talk about this relationship between Rothbart and Ein Rand. This crops up every now and then, and it was fairly interesting uh relationship. And so we have new details about that, some some new details about Rothbart's thought, but I'll let I'll let Daniel get into the details of that. I don't really need to summarize it or anything. Uh but I think before we get into uh this relationship between Murray and and Rand, we need to talk a little bit about who Frank Meyer was so that we have some context I think about what was this discussion about Rand? Why did Murray know Frank Meyer? So Daniel, just I you know I don't think anymore people who follow conservatism or involved in the necessarily know who Meyer was. I don't even think they necessarily know who uh Buckley was, at least in terms of reading a lot of his writings or anything like that. So, so yeah, tell us about Meyer and the conservative movement and all of that stuff. Well, you know, when when Mike Wallace interviewed uh Frank Meyer in 1961, he said, "I'd venture to guess that maybe one in a thousand of my viewers knows who you are." And here we are in 2025. I don't think the situation is all that much better. Um, but I'd rather write a biography about someone that we should know rather than like Winston Churchill or Lincoln or someone like that that everyone knows everything about. Meyer um kind of lived two lives. Initially, he was the Johnny Apples Seed of the Young Communist Movement in Great Britain. I have about 160 pages of MI5 and MI6 files. And he is repeatedly referred to as the founder of the student communist movement in Great Britain. And so while he was doing that, um, here's a guy who was calling for the violent overthrow of Ramsay McDonald, the prime minister of England. And at the same time, what these letters that I found prove is that he was having a relationship with Ramsay McDonald's youngest daughter, Sheila McDonald. One of one of the letters says, "Come to 10 Downing Street. My father's not around." So I don't, you know, pick whatever romantic figure in the history of communism you can come up with, Jay Guaa or John Reed. none of them had the the the gall to pull off what Meyer did. And of course, he was deported um unsurprisingly from Great Britain. But before he got deported, he was a cause celeb. He had Clement Atley giving a speech on the floor of the House of Commons. Um there was a petition that went around with Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, signing it. Michael Strait, who who was the um uh you know, publisher of New Republic later, he says he remembers marching around London chanting free Frank Meyer. free Frank Meyer. He comes to the United States. He's sort of a mid-level manager in in the American party and he a number of things happened. Um, one of them he he joins the army and he realized that the proletariat are not these people that Markx had made them out to be. That's a revelation for him because he sort of grew up wealthy in this high hat hotel in Newark, New Jersey, went to Baleo College was had a lot of social insulation. The other thing that happens is that he read 1945 and that book's the road to surfom by Aayek and ostensibly this is a a book review of the road to surfom in a communist controlled publication. Um and the remarkable thing is that you know it's it's not exactly a positive review but it's a fair review. It's it's a mixed re to positive review and you it's really not so much a review of Hayek as it is you know you're reading a man cracking up that he's having an epiphany that the 14 years of his life as a communist was a lie and so he leaves the party testifies against the communist party in the longest most expensive trial in US history which is the Smith Act trial in 1948 1949 by 1955 he's present at the creation of national review and I think That's where his story picks up for most people that Meyer, you know, was this um the the book review editor for National Review, but he's also sort of the the chief ideologist. He kind of was a commasar in the communist party and a little bit he was a commaar in the uh the post-war conservative movement. What I like about his life is there's this Forest Gump quality where he it weaves through in ways large and small with, you know, Eugene O'Neal, Albert Einstein, HG Wells. He's the first um editor to publish a freelance article by Joan Ddian. By the end of the 1960s, even though he's this sort of anti-hippie kmagin, Bob Dylan moves next door in in Woodstock, New York. So, he really pops off the page in a way that a lot of ideologues don't. They live kind of a lot of them live really gray lives, particularly some of the National Review characters. And he lives in technicolor. He lives in 3D. And he really jumps off the page. And his story with Marty Rothbart picks up in 1954. That's where they meet. And yes, I one of my impressions of uh Meyer, I mean, kind of if I had to define him in one sentence is that he was really kind of the intellectual power behind National Review where Buckley was very much the public figure on TV all of the time and certainly had his own thoughts about things. reading Meyer, it seems he's trying to engage the material on a much deeper, more philosophical level, at least in my reading. And he would get into these debates with Rothbart, too. There's a there's a book that I have here. It's from ISI called Freedom and Virtue, the conservative libertarian debate that they put out like 25 years ago or something like that's just sitting on my shelf forever. and it contains essentially essays by both Meyer and Rothbard uh taking each other to task on these these issues. Well, what's interesting is that they so they meet through the Vulkar fund uh in 1954 and they both become the the kind of reviewers of scholarship and books from Vulkar. Meyer actually has quite a significant role in the publication of man economy and state and that's something I hope to bring out uh in some subsequent article. He um you know they in in in 1955 Meyer comes down to Manhattan and he spends you know what sounds like a real jolly time at with the circle bast he invites them up to Woodstock and Murray's travel phobias which I'm sure you know about and a lot of your your viewers know about prevent him from going up to Woodstock at least at that point. But they keep they have this episttolary correspondence. I mean this is the folder that I have. Um it's, you know, it's 35 letters. There are, um, between Rothbart and Meyer. There are some original, um, manuscripts in there. There's some cards and some other articles that Murray clipped. So, it's a, you know, it's a good chunk of material between the two. I think what's significant is that they never cease to be friends. um that my that um you know when Frank died Murray said I took it as a huge blow that that Frank you know Frank's death um they both of them received funding from the Vulkar fund to to publish what would be I think they're big books I mean would you say man economy and state is Murray's big book I mean there's other books that he wrote that are important too and for my certainly his big economics book yeah yeah and I mean I think I read America's great depression pretty early on I think that's an important book there's other important books that he that he's written And for for Meyer, the the big book that he wrote, it's actually a slim book, is in defense of freedom. Both of them wouldn't have been able to do that without the Vulkar fund money. And for the uninitiated, Vulkar was kind of bankrolling um libertarian and some conservative thinkers in the 1950s all the way into the early 1960s. And both of them were beneficiaries of that large S. And they both remain friends. I mean, I have a letter from from Murray where he says, this is in the late '60s that um you know, why is it that you and and with the with the with the possible exception of John Chamberlain, was it that you, Frank Meyer, are the only one at Nashville Review standing up or in the conservative move standing up for sort of libertarian principles? So, he admired Meyer as I mean, he thought of him as a libertarian. It's it's certainly debatable whether he was or wasn't, but Murray thought of him that way. um just sort of a libertarian who was a was an anti-communist. Well, and one thing that I've that I've actually been meaning to ask him about, Lou Rockwell, uh was an editor at Arlington Press back in late 60s, early 70s or Arlington House Press. Sure. And what was I have this book here, The Conservative Mainstream by Frank Meyer. Sure. It's got this fun picture of him smoking on the back. Um and uh it was it's it's copyright 1969. It's a collection of essays. It's actually pretty good if you if you want to read a bunch of short stuff. Uh and I kind of wonder if uh if Lou had been working at Arlington House when this was put out, if he had any role in this uh whatsoever. So there's yeah, there's these um uh kind of intersections uh between uh the conservatives and the libertarians back then. That was that was before I think things had hardened quite into the distinct uh different schools that they they have in more recent decades. Yeah. And I should add like you know Murray I mean I have a letter of recommendation from Bill Buckley for Murray when he was kind of hard up in 1957 saying this is a brilliant economist. By 1959 he's singing a very different tune about Murray and he views him as sort of a gadfly or something worse than that. Um so obviously they had a relationship Murray and Buckley at one time it was at least cordial but that disintegrates. It never disintegrates for Frank Meyer and Murray and I think that's significant. Well, so they're they're sending letters to each other, right? And and from the mid50s into the late 50s. Uh and so the the next issue then is okay. So what picture do we get of Murray and his relationship with Rand through these letters? And I should note that the article, you can get a good sense of this, a summary of this from this article at the Journal of Libertarian Studies at mises.org. It's called Murray Rothbart's lost letters on Ein Rand. And these are these are letters that he sent to me. So uh the story of Iran is filled with stories of people who first liked her and then they were expelled by her group or they simply left the group in disgust. Uh it seems Rothbart followed a similar path to many others and and so kind of what what do you what do you gain from reading these new letters to Meyer? Well, that that there was sort of a roller coaster of emotions and thought with regard to Rothbard concerning Rand that pretty early on he had three iterations of, you know, interactions with Rand. One was in 52 when the Vulkar fund people took him to meet her. One was in 1954 where we spent a couple days uh with the sort of inner circle of of the the Randians. And the final one was in the aftermath of the publication of um of Atlas Shrugged. Initially from his letters to Meyer, there's a great deal of exhilaration about the publication of Atlas Shrugged. He said, "Listen, Meyer, even if you don't disagree with her, you have to hail her as a genius system builder. I disagree with Markx and I know he was brilliant in his own way. Why don't you, you know, come on board with with um with Rand?" And so um that feeling kind of dissipates when he starts going to meetings and he starts going into um these sort of inner collective um inner objectivist meetings. And part of his problem is philosophical. I think the other part of it is is um I is personal. I think with with Rand for a lot of people it was her temperament. And it was her sort of Russian temperament kind of intolerance and the idea cultivated by Nathaniel Brandon that everyone around her had to be kind of a disciple. Murray wasn't suited for a kind of sickopantic life to live in someone else's shadow. I mean even we talked earlier man economy and state. I mean he he wrote that book to be a a sort of a textbook synopsis of human action but it becomes its own thing because Murray couldn't help but become his own guy. And so, um, I I don't think it was ever going to work. Some of the issues, I mean, one of the things he's by December of 1957, he's already joking with Ralph Reicho and Bruce Goldberg and and other people about he, you know, get alone to these people. They think that animals have natural rights. And so, they start making jokes about the natural rights of cockroaches. And you know, that kind of humor, I mean, that might be characteristic of Murray, but you're not going to be long for that world around the um the the the collective if you're making jokes like that. Now, obviously later they do this play. I don't really get into that in in in um in the article, but it, you know, those kind of jokes expand from there. Um he he talks about them being kind of antipolitics, that they're all about philosophy and metaphysics and that kind of thing. And Murray was to some degree a political animal. um he believed in private courts. I think there's an irony that the Randians voseiferously objected to his idea of private courts and then later they wanted to haul him into their own private court for a denunciation. But that was one of his objections. He said they don't believe in instincts and he did believe in instincts. So there was a philosophical divide. But as he said to Meyer, you know, I'm 98% Randian. I'm n I I believe in natural rights. I believe in, you know,ism. Um I believe in free will. I believe in all these things but I I just you know there I have these few hang-ups. I don't know that it was the philosophical hang hang-ups so much it was the temperament. I mean there is a story that he tells um there's a number of stories that he tells here. I mean what I mean one of them um comes from his wife where Joanne Rothbart was a Christian and the Randians wanted to convert her to I don't know agnosticism or atheism or whatever it was that they were believing or not believing and they couldn't do it and so persuasion started to get kind of annoying. It started to be like browbeating. And Murray was taking um psychoanalysis from Nathaniel Brandon and she said, "Well, I hope this goes well with you and I hope it goes well with Bruce and I hope it goes well with Ralph Reicho." Um but at the end of it, I hope you spit in Nathaniel Brandon's face. I mean, that is how visceral it got for Joanne Rothbart that by December of 1957, she's saying, "Murray, I hope this ends and I hope that you spit in his face when it's over." So he lasts for another seven or so months within the collective, but even by December of 1957, Mari is saying this isn't going to last. And Joanne Rothbart is saying, "Hey, spit in this guy's face, you know." Yeah. The I was really struck by it, right? You use the phrase zigzagging, right, to kind of describe where Rothbart was with Rand at any given time based on these these letters. And it was fun to read. He goes to Meyer and he's saying in one minute, uh, yeah, Rand is awful and then in the next letter, oh, I've reconsidered my earlier opinion of Rand. So, it was very fascinating. I think there was a circle the wagons effect that when Atlas Shrug came out, it had a profound impact on a lot of people. I mean I I'm not a objectivist or anything like that but it you know that whole concept in her books of moochers and lutters I mean you can't help but look at current news articles and see it through that lens if you've read that book. So um I think for particularly for people of a libertarian bent that it was you know it was a life-changing event. It was a life-changing event for Murray. So when there became attacks on Atlas Shrugged um all across the board and a lot of them really condescending attacks on Rand, you had this I mean you see this a lot now. I remember when the Dave Chappelle special came out a few years ago and on Rotten Tomatoes there was like 100% fresh score from the the people and the critics had given it 0%. Atlas Shrugged was a bit like that where the people reading it were saying this is a really great book and the critics were all saying it stunk. And so I think the zigzag for Murray came in the fact that boy, you know, I can say I mean and in this letter in December, he calls her crazy. He says that she's operating a little cult. Um so a lot of the language that you would see later in the sociology of the Einran cult, it's present there in 1957, but I think like within a family, you might feel comfortable attacking your brother or your sister, saying mean things about them. But the second someone outside of your family starts saying mean things, you you know there's a circle of the wagons effect. And I think that partly explains the zigzag. So by the end of December when the Whitaker Chambers review comes out, the famous review where he said, you know, to from every page of Atlas Shrugged drips the idea to the gas chamber, go um Murray was fighting mad. Wrote a a letter to to Bill Buckley. Um wrote a letter to and wrote a note to Myers saying, "Lo, I take back what I said earlier. I misunderstood um about the Randians, but of course he would there would be more zigs and zags to follow. Yes. Because my experience with the whole Rothbar Rand connection just comes from his later works, right? Where he had finally settled on we're not fans of Right. always always there was some sympathetic things to say about the philosophy uh and some of the comments, right? But nothing nice to say about the cult as as Rothbard uh characterized it, which which is fine with me, by the way. I was I've never actually even been affected by Rand very much. I I tried reading the novels. I I I weren't for me. Um and but like them, I admit some of these essays u like in that short book, Capitalism, the unknown ideal, there's some good essays in that. It it also contains Alan Greenspan's essay about the gold standard, which is a good essay. Unfortunately, Greenspan was a horrible careerist who had no real principles whatsoever. So, uh, that's that's just my experience with the Rand people. And you can read on mis.org, by the way, um, the sociology of the iron ran cult. We have it up there. And you also mentioned the play that Rothbart had written about Ran, and that's called Mozart was a Red. It's a oneact play. And a few years ago, our students at Misa University acted it out. Uh it was a lot of fun. Uh it's nice and short, of course. And so, yeah, there's a lot of animosity there. And I recently edited a book by Ralph Reiko in a a 10-hour lecture series that he gave. And he he he embodies, I think, that idea. had some nice things to say about what Ran's thoughts on industrialization were, but overall considered her to be very unsophisticated in her view of history and her acknowledgement of other theorists and and right a crazed egotist and that sort of thing. And well, I I think the importance of these letters, I mean, there's always importance in history just for history's sake, and it's profoundly interesting, but I think it it it settles a few debates. And one of the things that the Randians said about Murray, I mean, obviously he gets kicked out unceremoniously in the summer of 1958. And they claimed that he had plagiarized Ran's ideas. He had stolen her ideas on Aristotle and on um natural rights. And so there was, you know, there was a qu in that later Murray came and trashed Rand, you know, petulently in a sour grapes way because of this charge. Now, there's a what came first, the chicken or the egg argument there. There's no argument anymore because in these letters, Murray is saying the same things that he said in the sociology of the Einran cult in 1972. Here, he's saying them in 1957 to to basically what's a sounding board, Frank Meyer. And we don't get really Frank Meyer's voice because Frank was a phone person. I mean, some of these years he was spending a quarter of his income on his telephone bills. And so Frank and Murray called each other on the phone. Then one of the calls is at 2 in the morning or something like that. So, um, that is is is settled. You know, Murray didn't just make this stuff up as the Randians claimed to kind of get back at her to smear her. He was saying it in real time in 1957. He didn't make it up 15 years ago, 15 years later. Saying the same stuff in this letter that he would say in the sociology of the Einran cult. The other thing that it settles is this idea that he stole um natural rights and uh arisatalism that he got all these ideas from Rand. Now this has always been a very dubious you know if for anyone outside of objectivism this has been profoundly ridiculous because the idea that a guy who got three degrees from an Ivy League institution suddenly came upon Aristotle just upon meeting Iran. I mean that's ridiculous. So, I don't know that there's many people that were sort of waiting to have some sort of confirmation that was false. I mean, it sort of was always false. However, in these letters before before Rothbart is in the inner circle of the Randians, he's saying literally saying to Meyer, I've always been a natural rights guy. I've always been an arisatalian. I've always been this and that. Um, and so their philosophy kind of meshes with my philosophy, the Randians. And so, I I feel comfortable. 98% of the time I feel comfortable because natural rights, Aristotle, this kind of thing, that's what I believe in too. And so the charge that's even been made in recent years that he got all this stuff, he stole it from Ein Rand. Um, that doesn't stand after you read these letters, it can't stand because he would have had to have anticipated what happened 9 months later of being, you know, charged with plagiarism and all this kind of thing and slipped this into letters in in late 1957. And that's obviously preposterous. So um that argument such as there was an argument about that uh there's no argument about that anymore. And I mean I guess just as a final question then uh did this did this in any way affect uh the relationship between Meyers and Rothbard or or Meyer uh did I mean I guess in the end Meyer was proven right like Rothbard ended up agree agreeing with to some extent with probably Meyer's initial um second thoughts doubts about Rand. I suppose I guess it might have improved their relationship. I don't know. I kind of in terms of that, how what do you get out of these letters in terms of did it have any effect on the larger relationship between Rothbart and uh and Meyer or was it just two guys just kind of talking about what was a minor issue in their lives? I I think it well I think it was a major issue in Rothbart's life. I think for Meyer um you know I talked to his son who actually subscribed to the Objectivist newsletter in the 1960s. He said he liked Meyer better than his dad, but he thought that that his father, Frank Meyer, um John Meyer said that he, you know, he thought that Rand was overall, you know, more good than bad. She had some errors. He disagreed with her on some things, but what's remarkable is I have about a quarter million documents in my house sitting on this table all around. Obviously, I have these uh Rothbard letters that are here. Um but they're a part of a larger collection. And you would think that over the course of I don't know 100,000 letters that that Meyer would have talked about Rand. He mentions her a few times. She's not a big deal in his overall overall scheme of things. The other thing with Meyer is that he had these knockdown dragout fights with Harry Jaffa, with Brent Bazelle, with Russell Kirk, with all sorts of figures on the American right. And oftentimes it really didn't damage the relationships. It certainly didn't damage his relationship with Brent Bazelle, with with Russell Kirk. It did. And um with with Murray, I don't think there was any damage to the relationship because you know repeat the letters are very warm. They're seeing each other occasionally. They're talking on the phone. They're writing each other. Um and as Murray said when Frank died that he took it as a great personal blow, his death. So I think um you know Murray did review Frank's book, The Molding of Communists in a in a very kind of negative way. I think he later when you read the sociology of the Einran cult he kind of took some of that back. Um and so he he you know he he could be critical of Meyer certainly Meyer was a virulent anti-communist. He was in favor of the Vietnam War and Murray particularly in 1967 1968 he was um you know disgusted with all that and so he had some disgust in that review of of Meyer's book about communists. Um so they you know they disagreed with things but they they were friends till the end. They debated together at Harvard in 1971. Um and obviously the Vulkar things ends in the early 60s but there was a bond there because they were the only the only two guys at Vulkar that were basically giving their impromater to scholarship to to reviews and because they were both doing it. I know Murray's stuff's online. I have Frank's reviews and they could be quite harsh about people that were their friends because the only people reading those reviews were people inside of Vulkar. So the type of reviews Frank was writing for National Review, they might give a friendly review to someone because they're a friend of the magazine or something like that. But within the Vulkar stuff, it was you know it could be harsh and they they were linked because of that forever. Well, Daniel Flynn, thank you for joining us today here on Radio Rothbart. And uh if you're interested in any of this, I know a lot of these names are probably going to be unfamiliar to a lot of uh the listeners. Whitaker Chambers doesn't come up a lot anymore in daily discussion. He doesn't you can get if you're just interested in the Rand stuff, go and and read the Journal of Libertarian Studies article. If you're interested in Meyer, this is the man who invented conservatism, my new book, The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. Um, there's a lot of stuff on libertarians. I mean, Frank was mentored by Rose Wilder Lane. He's very tight with Frank Cherof. He mentors David Broadi later. So, there's a fair amount of libertarian stuff. It's more more conservative movement stuff, but I think if you're if people are interested in the history of it, go to the book. If you're just interested in the Rand Rothbart stuff, certainly go to the Journal of Libertarian Studies article. I think the book uh your book could offer some additional nice context too for people who are interested in the libertarian side of things like say Rothbart's book the betrayal of the American right and those sort of things I think you would get a lot more depth of understanding as as to what was going on in the larger right-wing philosophical discussion at that time so I do encourage even hardline libertarians to be familiar with this period of time and thinking because I do think it is relevant to where we are now uh in terms of libertarian thinking and and where Murray was and where Lou Rockwell um got a lot of his um I don't want to say influences but just in terms of understanding what the the intellectual millu was at the time. I mean you can't I don't think you can really ignore this stuff if we're looking at people who were writing in the 80s 90s and even early 2000s. So yeah, check out the book. It's the man who invented conservatism. And then the article uh from the journal of libertarian studies is Murray Rothbart's lost letters on Rand. You can find that at mises.org. So thank you Daniel for joining me today. Thank you everyone out there for listening. We'll be back next time with more. We'll see you then. [Music]