A memory of Murray Rothbard: “Oh, Liberty!”

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.
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Massimo Mazzone March 3, 2015 , 9:36 pm Vote0
Wally,
You have no idea how envious I am of people like you. Thanks to the Internet, everybody has the opportunity of reading what great men like the ones you mentioned wrote, but only a few have the privilege to have met and get to know them personally, as human beings.
For my part, I will have that privilege this week, I am going to spend some time with another pioneer, Spencer McCallum. 🙂
Wally Conger March 3, 2015 , 9:41 pm Vote0
It’s terrific, Massimo, to have met these pioneers of the modern libertarian movement…but it also keeps me aware of how damn old I’m getting. 🙂