Deb and I are in the process of “purging,” which means digging through boxes and boxes of books and assorted binders and odd bits of paper. As expected, this exercise hasn’t failed to uncover, well, a lot of crap. But it’s also revealed a few genuine diamonds.

One of those diamonds is The John Randolph Club Songbook. Deb and I picked this item up in late October 1994 at the fifth annual meeting of the John Randolph Club, a then-coalition of paleo-conservatives and paleo-libertarians that two decades ago brought together such luminaries as the late Murray Rothbard (whose birthday we commemorate this week), Lew Rockwell, the late Samuel Francis, the late Joe Sobran, Justin Raimondo, and many others from the Mises Institute, the Rockford Institute, and the Center for Libertarian Studies. This meeting, just three months before Murray’s death, was held in Arlington, Virginia, within spitting distance of Mordor. And one evening after dinner, ice chests of beer were wheeled in, we all gathered around a piano, and we sang every damn tune out of the Songbook. Of course, a few were written by Murray, and I’ll never forget him singing with tremendous gusto that night.

Here’s one of the tunes:

OH, LIBERTY

adapted from Ralph Raico’s “Circle Theme”
music to “America the Beautiful”

It’s ours to right the great wrong done, ten thousand years ago.
The nation-state, conceived in hate, remains our only foe.
Oh liberty, Oh liberty,
Our victory is nigh,
Fulfill our fate, destroy the State,
And raise the banner high.