Woods Derangement Syndrome

Updated April 7, 2022

I recently reviewed with folks on my email list some of the craziness that has been coming from a small group of left-libertarians on social media I have dubbed the Loser Brigade, and I’m going to do so more systematically here.

I do not recognize myself in their attacks on me, and neither does my sizable listenership. In fact, one of Woods’s Laws is: the more outrageous the claims about Tom Woods, the less the critic has actually listened to or read me.

Now let me be blunt: the people I am responding to do not matter in any way. Nobody has ever heard of any of them, and if you combine their lifetime contributions to the libertarian movement it wouldn’t match what I crank out in a month.

This is not primarily a left/right thing, by the way. It isn’t the scholarly left-libertarians — who are in fact my friends and who have appeared on the Tom Woods Show! — who have a problem with me. (I did an entire week of episodes with my friend Gary Chartier, the most brilliant and academically accomplished of the left-libertarians.) It is people of no distinction or accomplishment who pretend to be outraged by me.

Let me give you some advice. People like the folks I am about to describe to you are, without fail, miserable in their personal lives. They want to spread their misery to you. When you just laugh at them, or you ridicule them, they become more and more deranged. You are not doing what they want.

I insist that you bear this in mind in your own life, because I think it will help you. Anyone who acts the way these people do is never happy. Not ever, not once. They are envious, they are bitter at their own lack of accomplishment, and they hate to see someone enjoying his life — as I most certainly do.

The very last thing they are is crusaders for justice. They are anything in the world but that.

They have even cited Max Boot, and his unfavorable review of one of my books, against me.

This goes to show how unserious they are about war. They would never cite an article by Woods, who favors no foreign aggression of any kind but who they believe to be insensitive, but they have no problem at all citing Max Boot, who has blood all over his hands.

(Not to mention, as you might guess Boot’s review was idiotic, taking me to task for not supporting Woodrow Wilson’s decision to intervene in World War I — libertarians are citing this against me?)

I take solace in this: they accomplish nothing.

When I was writing Meltdown, the New York Times bestseller that exonerated capitalism for the financial crisis, they were doing nothing. (Prove me wrong!)

When I created 400 homeschool videos on Western civilization, so homeschoolers would understand the Western legacy of liberty, they were doing nothing — because if all of them put together could have delivered one of these lectures, I’d be shocked.

When I wrote We Who Dared to Say No to War, with the late Murray Polner, a man of the hard left, and we got a coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly and Ralph Nader bought 1200 copies, they were flapping their gums about outreach to the left, which unlike me they never actually do, since the left doesn’t know who they are and holds them in contempt anyway.

When I was invited to deliver lectures in Iowa by the state Republican Party and I gently but firmly told the attendees that they needed to knock off the warmongering, the Loser Brigade was doing nothing because they would never have been invited in the first place.

I’ve just released a documentary on the last financial crisis, and the NYC premiere featured a panel of luminaries from the financial world.

Meanwhile, the Loser Brigade tweets.

My regular listeners, reading their bizarre claims, are genuinely astonished: what on Earth could justify this level of hatred, and the obvious attempt to make Woods out to be something he clearly is not?

Before I proceed, let me give a little background on myself and my work in the libertarian movement. I do not relish this, believe me, but what is being done to me is so vile that I wish to defend myself as comprehensively as possible.

I received the 2019 Hayek Lifetime Achievement Award from the Austrian Economics Center and the Hayek Institute in Vienna — no mean feat for a lad of 47, I would think.

I spoke at Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic in 2008, and opened for him to crowds of thousands in many major cities. I wrote the mission statement and the statement of principles for Ron’s Campaign for Liberty, an organization he asked me to lead. (I declined because I had a young family at the time and was not keen on moving.)

I have written a dozen books, which have been translated into as many languages and published by prestigious houses like Columbia University Press, Basic Books, and Random House. These include two New York Times bestsellers.

I created my own dashboard university, LibertyClassroom.com, where other faculty and I teach courses in history, economics, and related fields, from a libertarian perspective. No, I can’t change the existing universities but I can create something of my own for the libertarian world, and that’s what I did.

I created 400 videos on history for Ron Paul’s homeschool curriculum, a project to which I devoted two years of my life — and even then I had to move at breakneck speed.

I have released over 2100 episodes of the Tom Woods Show, and my guest list is a who’s who of the libertarian movement. Gene Epstein, formerly of Barron’s, and his son Jim, of the Reason Foundation, say mine is the most ecumenical libertarian podcast in existence. (If the claim is that I’m a terrible right-winger, go look up the word ecumenical.)

With Bob Murphy I released 225 episodes of Contra Krugman, which taught economics by uncovering the errors in Paul Krugman’s New York Times columns.

I won the $50,000 first prize in the Templeton Enterprise Awards for my book The Church and the Market.

I’m co-editor of Exploring American History: From Colonial Times to 1877, an 11-volume encyclopedia.

My School of Life program teaches libertarians how to survive in a hostile world: how to build businesses, invest money, create networks of like-minded people, educate their kids, become more skilled at writing and public speaking, be better negotiators, and on and on. Apart from criticizing me and other successful libertarians, have my critics ever accomplished even a sliver of this?

My work has been endorsed (enthusiastically) by Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, the Reagan Administration’s David Stockman (a frequent guest on my show), Barry Goldwater Jr., and Judge Andrew Napolitano (who is the godfather of my daughter Sarah), and has been favorably reviewed in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Publishers Weekly, and numerous other academic and popular periodicals.

Now: is it metaphysically impossible that a person matching this description could be a “white supremacist,” or whatever they’re calling me? No. I suppose it’s not metaphysically impossible. But is it highly, highly unlikely? The question would appear to answer itself.

I’m now going to run through the list of Loser Brigade complaints. This is as thorough as I can make it. Some of the complaints will seem so ridiculous that you won’t believe I’m bothering to answer them, but I want to be comprehensive.

Some of these are drawn from a bill of particulars drafted by a young man (we’ll call him YM) who Tweets a lot, and who describes himself as a libertarian, but who pretty much just repeats establishment opinion (e.g., Tulsi Gabbard is probably a Russian asset, etc.). When I use quotation marks in a particular complaint it is drawn from the YM’s list of no-no’s.

Here goes:

Complaint: “At least once hosted neo-nazi Christopher Cantwell (‘the crying nazi’) on his podcast, saying to him ‘You have been saying a lot of the things that I wish I could say, but for diplomatic reasons and for the fact that I’m too busy to open up more civil wars…You’re doing very important work.'”

This accusation is particularly evil.

When I had Chris Cantwell on my show in 2014 (precisely once; I don’t know why the words “at least once” would be used), he was still a regular host on Free Talk Live, for heaven’s sake. Unless we’re now going to ramp the hysteria level up to 11 and accuse the Free State Project of white supremacy, this would appear to be a relevant consideration.

Ian Freeman, who runs Free Talk Live, is the last person on earth even a hysteric would call a “fascist” or a “Nazi,” which is why no one has bothered trying. And Ian says of Chris, “Until the last year or two of his life, he’d been a libertarian activist with no known racist streak.”

Cantwell appears to have shifted toward white nationalism around 2017.

If you are expecting me to divine the direction someone would take years after his appearance with me, or for me to know a guest better than his own daily co-host does, I think you are being a trifle unfair to the host of a five-day-per-week podcast.

Now let’s get to that quotation from me. This will show you how little honor my critics have, honor evidently being another outdated right-wing institution.

The obvious intention of the quotation attributed to me is to make it sound as if I was speaking in 2014 to the Cantwell of 2017 and saying, “Thank goodness you’re saying all the anti-Semitic things I wish I could say, Chris!”

That’s obviously why the dates are never included. It is a deliberate attempt to insinuate sinister motives on my part.

It leaves you in shock that people of such bad will could exist.

Never explained is: why would I have said such a thing in public? Saying I wish I could utter anti-Semitic statements so I’m glad you’re doing it for me is only about three percent better than actually uttering them myself, so what would have been the point of publicly saying something like this? Their story makes no sense.

What I obviously meant — and which is immediately clear from listening to the episode — was that I was glad Chris had written a series of articles in 2014 against some not particularly bright critics whom I myself had no particular desire to fight with, but whose arguments needed to be answered. He could call people out in ways I couldn’t, since had I done so I would have inadvertently launched various institutional civil wars.

Now make no mistake: the Loser Brigade obviously knows this. They are simply trying to destroy me. (That’s too dramatic, probably: opposition from these folks is like pebbles thrown at the Washington Monument, so if you’re concerned for me, don’t be.) They likewise know I would never behave in this ends-justify-the-means way toward them in return, because I am a decent person with principles.

Complaint: I am said to believe that it should be illegal for women to work outside the home. One member of the Loser Brigade told this to people at the 2018 Libertarian Party convention. I have of course never even thought, much less advocated, such a thing. This is completely made up. Once again, these are not normal people. They do not behave the way you and I do.

Complaint: “Refused 5 times to answer who he’d support for president between Bill Weld and David Duke”

Oooh! Woods must be hiding his secret desire to vote for David Duke! Why, this must surely be the most charitable explanation!

The reality:

A punk with zero manners kept demanding I answer his questions, and since I don’t let people bark orders at me I told him to take a hike. This was the nature of my alleged “refusal.”

Complaint: “Ran a podcast with the description ‘The Discrimination Myth: Frank Karsten returns to discuss myths of discrimination that virtually everyone believes, which tend to empower the state'”

I love this one. The YM objects to an episode description. This guy is delicate! He has no idea what was discussed and can’t quote a single sentence from it. He can’t imagine how people’s misperceptions about discrimination might — might, I say — feed into state power.

The left’s entire narrative about discrimination is simply assumed to be correct.

But since we cannot know a priori if it is correct, I’d like to examine it. And instead of refuting me on particular points (he doesn’t know any, because — like the rest of the Loser Brigade — never in his life has he listened to my show), the young man points and shrieks because I’ve raised the issue at all.

Not exactly the freethinking sort, this fellow.

No aspect of that podcast episode is even debatable, I might add. And unlike the Loser Brigade I have nothing to hide, so I’ll actually link you to it so you can listen for yourself.

Complaint: “Taught (teaches?) lessons for Ron Paul’s insane, theocratic Christian homeschool indoctrination program”

The percentage of the Ron Paul Curriculum that could be described as “theocratic” is precisely zero, which is why (as usual) we are given no specifics. Which classes and which lectures promote theocracy, exactly? Ask this question and you can be guaranteed you will receive no answer.

Oh, I’m sure you will get a song and dance about this or that. But keep asking, “Where in the curriculum will I find anything ‘theocratic’? Specifics, please.” Our critic will get flustered and try to redirect you. Be merciless. He has no idea what he’s talking about.

Ron Paul himself made clear from the beginning that his curriculum, while sympathetic to Christianity, would not be a Christian curriculum per se. This is why no marketing materials portray it as a Christian curriculum. (The Christian homeschooling market is huge, so if ours were indeed a Christian curriculum we would be out of our minds not to emphasize this.) He wanted it to be something any family at all could use. If Dr. Paul is lying about this, can we at least see the offending lessons that show him to be a liar?

The curriculum includes the usual subjects, as well as courses on public speaking, starting a home business, personal finance for teens, and other helpful topics that are not typically found in such curricula.

Here is the list of lessons I created for the curriculum, spread over three courses. The “theocratic” aspect would appear to be carefully hidden.

Let’s start with my Government course:

Introduction
Natural Rights Theories: High Middle Ages to Late Scholastics
Natural Rights Theories: John Locke and Self-Ownership
Natural Rights Theories: Argumentation Ethics
Week 1 Review
Locke and Spooner on Consent
The Tale of the Slave
Human Rights and Property Rights
Negative Rights and Positive Rights
Week 2 Review
Critics of Liberalism: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the General Will
Critics of Liberalism: John Rawls and Egalitarianism
Critics of Liberalism: Thomas Nagel and Ronald Dworkin
Critics of Liberalism: G.A. Cohen
Week 3 Review
Public Goods
The Standard of Living
Poverty
Monopoly
Week 4 Review
Science
Inequality
Aid to Developing Countries
Discrimination
Week 5 Review
The Socialist Calculation Problem
Working Conditions
Child Labor
Labor and Unions
Week 6 Review
Health Care
Antitrust
Farm Programs
War and the Economy
Week 7 Review
Business Cycles
Industrial Policy
Government, the Market, and the Environment
Prohibition
Week 8 Review
Taxation
Government Spending
The Welfare State: Theoretical Issues
The Welfare State: Practical Issues
Week 9 Review
Price Controls
Government and Money, Part I
Government and Money, Part II
Midterm Review
Week 10 Review
The Theory of the Modern State
American Federalism and the Compact Theory
Can Political Bodies Be Too Large?
Decentralization
Week 11 Review
Constitutionalism: Purpose
The American Case: Self-Government and the Tenth Amendment
The American Case: Progressives and the “Living, Breathing Document”
The American States and the Federal Government
Week 12 Review
Monarchy
Social Democracy
Fascism I
Fascism II
Week 13 Review
Marx I
Marx II
Communism I
Communism II
Week 14 Review
Miscellaneous Intervention: Postwar Africa
Public Choice I
Public Choice II
Miscellaneous Examples of Government Activity and Incentives
Week 15 Review
The Industrial Revolution
The New Deal I
The New Deal II
The Housing Bust of 2008
Week 16 Review
Are Voters Informed?
Is Political Representation Meaningful?
The Myth of the Rule of Law
The Incentives of Democracy
Week 17 Review
The Sweeping Critique: Robert LeFevre
The Sweeping Critique: Murray N. Rothbard
Case Study: The Old West
Economic Freedom of the World
Week 18 Review

Here’s Western Civilization to 1492:

Introduction and Overview
Hebrew History I
Hebrew History II
Hebrew History III
Week 1 Review
Hebrew Religion and the Hebrew Contribution
Minoan Crete
Mycenaean Greece
Homer, The Iliad
Week 2 Review
Homer and Hesiod
Classical Greece: Overview
Pre-Socratics, I
Pre-Socratics, II
Week 3 Review
Socrates
Plato: Introduction and Overview
Plato’s Worldview
Plato and The Republic
Week 4 Review
Aristotle: The Philosopher
Aristotle’s Ethics
Aristotle’s Politics
Classical Greece: The Polis, Sparta
Week 5 Review
Classical Greece: The Polis, Athens
The Persian Wars
The Peloponnesian War
Herodotus and Thucydides
Week 6 Review
Greek Drama, I
Greek Drama, II
Classical Greece: Art
Greek Religion
Week 7 Review
Greece and Western Liberty
Alexander the Great
The Hellenistic World
Hellenistic Philosophy
Week 8 Review
Rome: Beginnings and Foundations
Struggle of the Orders
Expansion of Rome
Toward the Empire, I
Week 9 Review
Toward the Empire, II
Toward the Empire, III
The Augustan Settlement
Latin Literature: The Golden Age
Week 10 Review
The Silver Age of Latin Literature
Rome After Augustus
Second-Century Rome
Roman Art
Week 11 Review
Christianity: The Background
The Birth of Christianity, Part I
The Birth of Christianity, Part II
Early Christian Sources I: The New Testament
Week 12 Review
The Spread of Christianity
From the Underground Church to the Edict of Milan
Early Christian Texts II: Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, Apostolic Fathers, Apologists
The Development of Christianity I
Week 13 Review
The Development of Christianity II
Monasticism, Part I
Monasticism, Part II
The Church and Classical Culture I
Week 14 Review
The Church and Classical Culture II
Rome: Third-Century Crisis
Diocletian and Constantine
Rome and the Barbarians, Part I
Week 15 Review
Rome and the Barbarians, Part II
Rome: Significance
St. Augustine I
St. Augustine II
Week 16 Review
The Church and the Barbarians
Merovingians and Carolingians
The Papal-Frankish Alliance
Charlemagne
Week 17 Review
The Carolingian Renaissance
Christianity in England and Ireland
Christianity in Germany
Midterm Review
Week 18 Review
Islam
Byzantium I
Byzantium II
After Charlemagne
Week 19 Review
Ninth- and Tenth-Century Invasions
Feudalism and Manorialism
Medieval Art
England: William the Conqueror
Week 20 Review
The Gregorian Reform, Part I
The Gregorian Reform, Part II
The Church-State Struggle and Western Liberty
Christendom
Week 21 Review
The Great Schism
France: Capetians to Louis IX
The Medieval Church: Sacraments and Liturgy
The Medieval Church: Popular Piety
Week 22 Review
Crusades: Background
The First Crusade
Later Crusades
The End of the Crusades
Week 23 Review
The Albigensian Crusade
The Mendicant Orders
England: Magna Carta
France: Philip the Fair
Week 24 Review
The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
The Rise of Universities
Scholastic Philosophy
Thomas Aquinas: Biography and Overview
Week 25 Review
Thomas Aquinas and the Quinque Viae
Thomas Aquinas and the Divine Attributes
Just War Theory
Later Scholasticism
Week 26 Review
The Cathedrals
The Rise of Towns
Economy in the High Middle Ages
The Medieval Contribution to Western Prosperity
Week 27 Review
The Holy Roman Empire I
The Holy Roman Empire II
Medieval Literature
Dante and the Divine Comedy
Week 28 Review
Philip IV vs. Boniface VIII
Marsilius of Padua and the Attack on Papal Power
The Avignon Papacy
Fourteenth-Century Crisis
Week 29 Review
England in the Fourteenth Century
France in the Fourteenth Century
The Hundred Years’ War
The Great Western Schism
Week 30 Review
The Fall of Byzantium
The Renaissance: Ideas
Petrarch and the Renaissance
Renaissance Humanism I
Week 31 Review
Renaissance Humanism II
Machiavelli
Renaissance Art I
Renaissance Art II
Week 32 Review
Renaissance Art III
Renaissance Art IV
The Northern Renaissance
The Renaissance Popes
Week 33 Review
Renaissance Italy: The Key Political Units, Part I
Renaissance Italy: The Key Political Units, Part II
Fifteenth-Century France
Fifteenth-Century England
Week 34 Review
The Holy Roman Empire to the Fifteenth Century
The Church on the Eve of Reform
Centralization in Spain
The Age of Discovery, Part I
Week 35 Review
The Age of Discovery, Part II
The Age of Discovery, Part III
Concluding Remarks
Preview of Western Civilization II
Week 36 Review

Here’s Western Civilization from 1493:

Introduction
Review of Western Civilization to 1492
The Church on the Eve of the Reformation
The German Reformation, Part I
Week 1 Review
The German Reformation, Part II
The German Reformation, Part III
Other Protestant Figures
John Calvin
Week 2 Review
The English Reformation, Part I
The English Reformation, Part II
The Catholic Reformation, Part I
The Catholic Reformation, Part II
Week 3 Review
Sixteenth-Century Portraits: Charles V
Sixteenth-Century Portraits: Philip II
The French Wars of Religion
Sixteenth-Century Portraits: Elizabeth I
Week 4 Review
The “Eutopians”
The Thirty Years’ War
The English Civil War
The Levellers
Week 5 Review
Oliver Cromwell
The Glorious Revolution
John Locke, Part I
John Locke, Part II
Week 6 Review
France Before Louis XIV
Difficulties and Revolt in Spain
Constitutionalism
Absolutism
Week 7 Review
Mercantilism
Louis XIV, Part I
Louis XIV, Part II
The War of the Spanish Succession
Week 8 Review
The Hohenzollerns
The Habsburgs
Russia: Peter the Great
A Survey of Art
Week 9 Review
The Scientific Revolution, Part I
The Scientific Revolution, Part II
The Scientific Revolution, Part III
The Enlightenment, Part I
Week 10 Review
The Enlightenment, Part II
Adam Smith
Europe in the 18th Century, Part I
Europe in the 18th Century, Part II
Week 11 Review
Enlightened Absolutism
The American Revolution, Part I
The American Revolution, Part II
The American Revolution, Part III
Week 12 Review
The French Revolution, Part I
The French Revolution, Part II
The Reign of Terror
Napoleon, Part I
Week 13 Review
Napoleon, Part II
The American and French Revolutions Compared
Edmund Burke and the French Revolution
Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Women
Week 14 Review
The Industrial Revolution, Part I
The Industrial Revolution, Part II
Slavery and Its Abolition, Part I
Slavery and Its Abolition, Part II
Week 15 Review
What Was the Source of Western Prosperity?
The Congress of Vienna
The Conservative Reaction, 1815-1830
The Growth of State Education
Week 16 Review
Education Without the State: The Case of England
Liberalism, Part I
Liberalism, Part II
Liberalism, Part III
Week 17 Review
Liberalism, Part IV
Socialism
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Week 18 Review
Midterm Review
The Revolutions of 1830
The Revolutions of 1848
Marxism, Part I
Week 19 Review
Marxism, Part II
Marxism, Part III
Marxism, Part IV
Naturalism
Week 20 Review
The Crimean War
The Unification of Italy
The Unification of Germany
The Second Industrial Revolution
Week 21 Review
Southeastern Europe: New States Emerge
France and England in the Late 19th Century
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia
Imperialism
Week 22 Review
Did The West Grow Rich Through Imperialism?
Modernism, Part I
Modernism, Part II
The Coming of World War I
Week 23 Review
World War I, Part I
World War I, Part II
World War I, Part III
The Paris Peace Conference
Week 24 Review
The Russian Revolution and Its Aftermath, Part I
The Russian Revolution and Its Aftermath, Part II
The Russian Revolution and Its Aftermath, Part III
The Russian Revolution and Its Aftermath, Part IV
Week 25 Review
The Broken World of the Interwar Period
Communists, Fascists, and Others
Nazis!
The 1930s and the Coming of the War in Europe
Week 26 Review
The Beginning of World War II
Axis Invasions in Southern and Western Europe
The United States as a Neutral
Global War: Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor
Week 27 Review
Total War Mobilization: Propaganda, Production, Transportation
Military Matters
The Final Solution and Other Mass Murders
Bombing and Mass Destruction
Week 28 Review
1944: The Beginning of the End: Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and More
Coordinating the Allied Effort: Allied Planning
January 1945: Barbarism on All Sides
The End of the War
Week 29 Review
The Axis in Ruins
The Nuremburg Trials
Origins of the Cold War
Two Power Blocks and Orwell’s 1984
Week 30 Review
The Economic Miracle
Decolonization
European Union and Cold War
The Cold War from the ’50s to the ’70s
Week 31 Review
Art and Architecture in the Twentieth Century
The World of the Sixties
The Middle East and Western Civilization to the Seventies
The Soviet Union from Brezhnev to Gorbachev
Week 32 Review
The Collapse of the Soviet Empire
Migration, Economics, Nationalism, Ethnic Cleansing
The West and the Rise of Asia
Lessons: Liberty, Technology, Society, and the State
Week 33 Review

Imagine looking at that list and — instead of being at least mildly impressed — thinking: “tHeOcRaTiC iNdOcTrInAtIoN!” Then you’ll have a sense of the kind of person who invented the Black Legend about Tom Woods.

The YM describes the Ron Paul Curriculum as “insane,” but by this point I suspect the reader is getting an idea of who the insane one is.

Complaint: “Regularly hosts notorious white supremacist Stefan Molyneux on his podcast”

I’ve never heard Molyneux advocate laws that would assign a legally superior position to one race over another, but he is certainly a controversial figure and not for everyone. I’ve interviewed plenty of those. I’ve interviewed numerous left-libertarians on my program, too. For that matter I’ve interviewed a left-wing sociology professor who favors abolishing the sex offender registry.

In other words, you never know what you’re going to get on the Tom Woods Show. I interview people. Some of these people are quite controversial. If that means you need a fainting couch, I may not be the podcast host for you.

Complaint: “Constantly pals around with Lew Rockwell, an uncontroversially, fabulously racist paleoconservative who also likely authored the notorious Ron Paul newsletters”

The YM, I wish to point out, happens to be a big Ronald Reagan fan (so not exactly a radical libertarian). When it emerged recently that Reagan had made a racist joke about Africans to Richard Nixon, the poor kid bent over backwards to make excuses for Reagan. So take his alleged concerns about racism with the level of seriousness that he himself evidently does.

Meanwhile, Lew (who did not write the newsletters, incidentally), has made available to the whole world an enormous amount of libertarian and Austrian School literature: books, articles, speeches, courses, seminars, and the like, featuring Carl Menger, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, Israel Kirzner, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Gustave de Molinari, Henry Hazlitt, and hundreds more. Lew has also made available, also for free, the entire print runs of academic libertarian journals, and since the 1990s has hosted the Austrian Economics Research Conference, where hundreds of academics from all over the world present technical papers in Austrian economics.

At a time when Official Libertarianism pretended not to know who Will Grigg — our greatest champion against police abuse — even was, it was Lew who gave him a platform.

Unlike our critics, Lew is radically antiwar and anti-state. He is one of the great benefactors of our movement, and I am delighted to count him as a friend. I see zero evidence of “racism” on his part. (Is “fabulously racist” something like racist, but with sequins?) Every one of his key issues — antiwar, anti-Fed, anti-drug war — would disproportionately benefit minority communities; I can’t imagine how a libertarian could consider that debatable.

Complaint: “Wrote a book called The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, filled with insane, ultra-conservative historical revisionism”

There is of course nothing “insane” inside The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, unless you think the basic narrative you learned in seventh grade is essentially correct. (If it is, I can’t imagine why anyone would become a libertarian.)

My critic supports certain American wars, whereas I as a radical libertarian criticize them all. My critic favors Hamiltonian nationalism, whereas I favor the compact among states as Jefferson envisioned it. To him this is “insane.” Alrighty.

Complaint: I wrote an article critical of the abolitionists.

They actually get one right for a change. I did write such an article — 26 years ago, during my pre-libertarian years. At that time, like many utilitarians and traditionalists, I did not believe in the existence of natural rights. But (it should be unnecessary to point out) the article did not criticize the abolitionists for opposing slavery (since like all normal people I obviously opposed slavery); it instead discussed matters of social philosophy and theology.

I might add that having long since emerged from my paleoconservative phase — and by the way, I happen to like the paleocons, who oppose war and the empire, which is more than I can say for some libertarians and much of the Left — I’ve long since abandoned my skepticism of natural rights, as anyone who reads or listens to me has known for years. In fact, I gave a public lecture on natural rights theories for Campaign for Liberty 10 years ago (and I in turn made that talk into an episode of my podcast), and I teach them in my government course for the Ron Paul Curriculum. For that matter I no longer advocate protectionism or criticize capitalism.

Complaint: The “League of the South.” I’ve been pretty open about the meeting Jeffrey Tucker invited me to in 1994, and I’ve told the whole story here.

Complaint: I have said that “if control over immigration were devolved to the most local level possible,” people would tend to “sort themselves according to very different demographic patterns.”

Guilty as charged. But is this debatable? In a world of states and public property, the migration and residential patterns of individuals would obviously be different from what they would be in a purely private-property society. How could they not be? And since the purely private-property society is our goal (or at least it is for me, a radical libertarian), the closest approximation to the outcome that would obtain in that case would come in the short run from decentralizing decision-making about immigration down to the lowest possible level.

Perhaps you disagree with me on that, but if there’s supposed to be something actually sinister about it, I must be too dense to see what it is.

And now for the next-to-last bit of insanity: Woods is against “race mixing.”

I heard that and thought: these people have well and truly lost their minds. Where in heaven’s name could they be getting this?

Never in my life have I said or written a word about that subject, or ever so much as hinted that interracial relationships were the business of anyone other than the individuals involved. (Unlike the Loser Brigade, which literally mocks the Nonaggression Principle, I actually believe in it.)

As my friends well know, I myself spent two years in an interracial relationship. And I assure you, we did not call the authorities on ourselves!

Evidently I used the phrase “ethnic cohesion” in an article 27 years ago, and that is what they are basing this claim on.

Since you’re a normal person, you assume I must be joking.

I’m not.

The reference was to the policy in the Soviet Union of moving ethnic Russians into the Baltic states for the purpose of rendering them more readily amenable to state domination.

From this they charitably conclude that I must favor state suppression of interracial relationships.

I’m not kidding.

Yes, people like this exist.

Woods Derangement Syndrome, we may as well call it. It really deserves a name of its own.

It might be worth recalling that Stalin undertook the Holodomor in order to destroy Ukrainian nationalism, the better to make subjects out of the Ukrainian people. It was almost as if Ukrainian culture had served as some kind of resistance mechanism against Soviet domination.

Whoops, there I go: I said the word culture. We all know that can only mean fascism!

Imagine being so coarse and unlearned.

Their crazy anti-Woods jihad relies on preposterously uncharitable interpretations of isolated sentences. Normal people look and say, “You got that from that sentence?”

These are not normal people.

Gene Epstein, formerly of Barron’s and now director of the Soho Forum, the premier libertarian debate series in the country, speculated on the Tom Woods Show not long ago as to why people like this attack me.

I’ll give you a hint: no aspect of his theory involved, “After an honest review of your work, they concluded you are a bad person.”

Complaint: Woods’s wife was too young.

If you are living a sad, degenerate life, you have to believe that other people, who certainly appear to have healthier lives, are in reality just as bad as you, if not worse, so those pangs of conscience aren’t quite so severe.

The people behind this complaint tried to alienate Joshua Smith’s daughter from him, and told nonstop lies about him and his family, when Josh was running for Libertarian Party chair. Compared to that, inventing a story about me is nothing.

As Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.'”

They are asking people to believe that despite the magnifying glass that’s been on my life for the past 25 years, a major scandal managed to go unnoticed for two decades, and then just happened to emerge on the eve of the Libertarian National Convention, at the hands of people who were pulling out all the stops to oppose the caucus I belong to, and at the precise moment when my caucus was about to take over the party.

To call that implausible would be a bit of an understatement.

The whole fake story is stupid, ridiculous, and evil, and people who wanted so badly to believe it were relying on some comments from a psycho (I must be the only person on Earth with a psycho in the family) who also claimed earlier this year that I had “abandoned” my family (!).

I had known Heather’s family because her mother worked for my magazine at the time, so I met and spoke to Heather (who was born in 1983) in 1999, well before we started dating. Contrary to the story, I did not court her until late 2001, when she moved to New York. We were married in August 2002, when she was 19. I shouldn’t have married her, though, because according to a member of the Brigade, “societal expectations” now frown on marrying young.

“Societal expectations” evidently envision people pissing away their 20s sleeping around and calling it “liberation.” In the traditional Catholic world, we’re rather more serious about our lives and about getting on with being adults. A glance at the marriage announcements at any trad chapel in the United States will bear this out — a huge percentage of parishioners are married between 18 and 21.

Of course the one subculture the Brigade has zero sympathy for or knowledge about is traditional Catholicism, since it consists of normal people doing normal things, and no genitals being removed. The same people trying to manufacture a scandal in my life describe drag queen story hour as simply the innocent reading of books to children. I am not joking about that. Not normal, these people.

The idea of a proper courtship, furthermore, which Heather and I had in New York, in which she lived in one place and I lived somewhere else, instead of the two of us living together, is considered old-fashioned and unsophisticated.

Our relationship was entirely honorable. Being traditional Catholics, Heather and I were chaste until the wedding night, and went on to be married for 13 years and have five beautiful daughters. Not quite the story of exploitation and horror the crazies were hoping for, which is why most of them had to give up on the story. It made no sense. People were quite understandably responding with, “Are you referring to the woman he had five daughters with?”

Her mom in fact refuted the story, so if we had been dealing with people arguing in good faith, that should have been the end of it from the get-go. But these are ends-justify-the-means amoralists, so (as we’ve seen above) the truth makes zero difference. Whatever advances the revolution.

(Not to mention: this being rural Oklahoma, the fact that I’m still alive more or less proves that nothing untoward happened.)

And that’s it. There is nothing here. Contrary to these lunatics’ disgusting insinuations, none of this corresponds to any of the slanderous names I’ve been called. It’s all bullshit from nobodies, as usual. We did nothing wrong and we make no apologies.

I’m told that the chief of the Brigade is basing this complaint on speculating as to what our telephone conversations all those years ago consisted of, and of course coming up with the least charitable (and most wildly uncharacteristic) possible answer. You know what we talked about? Church history, economics, and music. Nerd topics.

His henchmen have since defiled a video of my daughters — not the kind of thing people who are innocently pursuing justice normally do. But it’s something people filled with hate would do, and I have never seen people more filled with hate and resentment than this bunch.

Heather is retired from all Internet drama these days, and indeed she was always better than I was at taking my own advice: our lives speak for themselves, and we do not respond to bad-faith actors. She couldn’t be more right.

Even after the very unfortunate divorce we remained close: Heather surprised me by flying from Kansas to New York to attend my famous debate with Michael Malice on Alexander Hamilton, and in 2017 she directed my 1000th podcast episode event in Orlando. That is an exceptionally long time to remain in the hypnotic trance I am alleged to have placed her under.

Some people have expressed concern to us that our daughters are being exposed to something extremely nasty because of these people’s stupid attacks. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Our daughters are aware of this weird smear campaign, and they understand that it’s the price we pay for our otherwise pleasant and comfortable lives. It’s helped them learn about what frustration and envy can do to certain kinds of people.

Another thing I have taught them is this: even though these nobodies have done this to me, it would be wrong for us to do the same to them. The nobodies know I would never make up a story to harm them. (They have nothing I could take from them even if I were so inclined.) It’s the same reason I’m antiwar: there are some things, I teach my children, that you simply cannot do to your enemy, period.

And speaking of my daughters, this video will give you a sense of them. Confident, well spoken, bright, and with poise, they appear to have been raised in a pretty good household. (You will also spot Heather in the video, who does not appear to be desperate, exploited, or under a hypnotic trance.)

The best and most honorable way to put me in my place is much more straightforward than all this. Just produce better content than I do.

Write better books. Release 2100+ of your own podcast episodes. Create a better adult enrichment product than my Liberty Classroom. Release a better homeschool curriculum.

But notice what that involves.

Work. And brains.

In other words, forget it.

They’ve had ten years to produce a homeschool curriculum to rival the one I created with Ron Paul. Ten years!

So where is it? Where is their alternative?

There isn’t one, and there never will be. We are not dealing with creators here. We are dealing with the opposite.

I create, and they attack.

So, why all the attacks lately?

Here’s why.

The heroic Mises Caucus of the Libertarian Party is making enormous strides heading into the national convention in Reno. Ron Paul calls it “the libertarian wing of the Libertarian Party.” (Did I mention that we’re dealing with the 37 libertarians who don’t like Ron Paul?)

A whole lot of us are tired of the abuse that’s been directed at us, the tendentious interpretations of everything we say and do, and, at the top, the poor communication of libertarian ideas.

You may say, “Woods, I don’t care about the Libertarian Party.”

I get it.

But:

It has “libertarian” in its name, which means it is from the LP that most people will learn about our ideas.

So we all need to make sure that if the LP exists, it’s at least representing us in a way that isn’t embarrassing and grotesque.

Well, the Loser Brigade, which criticizes ol’ Woods for being a “right-wing libertarian,” is quite happy to continue nominating ex-GOP politicians, while Woods the right-wing fuddy-duddy actually wants to nominate a radical libertarian.

Ain’t that something?

The other thing about these folks:

They snipe at Ron Paul and me, but they accomplish nothing.

They have no K-12 homeschool curriculum. They have no LibertyClassroom.com. They don’t have a dozen books, and certainly no bestsellers. Their works haven’t been translated into over a dozen languages. They do not lecture all over the world. They do not write books for prestigious publishing houses.

They Tweet.

Meanwhile, the Mises Caucus of the Libertarian Party grows and grows.

And the nerds who long for Bill Weld — if you ever wondered if anyone actually loved Bill Weld, by the way, these are them — don’t know what to do about it.

Folks, you can be with the goody-two-shoes nerds, or you can be with Dave Smith, Scott Horton, and me.

Help us make things happen.

I’m pretty sure these folks thought they could slander us forever, and there would be no consequences.

No such luck, Chuck.

We’re coming.

Like and support what I do?

Then join me inside the Tom Woods Show Elite:

http://www.SupportingListeners.com

P.S. See also my post “How to Deal With Haters.”