Last night the speaker at the Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which The Future of Freedom Foundation co-sponsors with the student-run George Mason University Econ Society, was Thomas DiLorenzo, whose most recent book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution—and What It Means for Americans Today, which was the focus of Tom’s talk.
Tom, who teaches economics at Loyola University in Baltimore, is one of the libertarian movement’s most noted economists. He is an adherent of the Austrian school of economic thought and serves as a senior faculty member at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Among his ten other books are The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe, and How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present.
About 85 GMU students and FFF supporters listened to a fascinating presentation, one in which Tom traced the ongoing debate between the advocates of freedom and free markets and the advocates of statism and central planning all the way back to similar debates that were taking during the founding period of the Republic. On the side of economic liberty were people like Thomas Jefferson and on the side of statism and central planning were people like Alexander Hamilton.
As Tom pointed out, and as we all know, the debate goes on today. The statists continue to hurl our nation toward bankruptcy and ruin while we free-market advocates continue doing our best to save our nation from their statism. The big problem libertarians face, as Tom pointed out, is the economic ignorance among regular Americans as well as the blind trust they place in the lovers of power and big government.
Among the many interesting points that Tom made was concerning the year 1913, which was a watershed year in American history. Reflecting the bad direction that America was embarking upon, that was the year that the U.S. ratified the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments and established the Federal Reserve System. Among the interesting statistics Tom pointed out was that today’s U.S. dollar is worth about 3 cents compared to the value of the dollar in 1913, compliments of the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Everyone seemed to have a great time. We served loads of pizza and soft drinks before the talk and lots of delicious cookies following the talk. Then we showed The Americanization of Emily, a great antiwar film from 1964 starring James Garner and Julie Andrews.
We’ll soon be posting a video of Tom’s talk on our Internet Classroom Website. When we do so, there will be a link in our FFF Email Update. I highly recommend watching this great talk. It would be difficult to find a better comparison between the intellectual battle that libertarians are facing today with the battle that our freedom-loving counterparts were waging at the inception of our republic.
