My first interaction with Tom Woods as of 7:56 PM 10/5/10

The following is the account of an amusing (to those who, unlike Woods, actually know me) correspondence between myself

 and Tom Woods on a friend's wall.

name withheld via Thomas E. Woods Jr.: If the title "The Man" were not already claimed by Ron
Paul, Tom Woods would have it. Hands down.

Tsunami: dude, false! "The man" is basically in open dissension against Church teaching on markets,
he's postulating a "free market" which has never existed in truth, and his postulation has this
rhetorical effect that any problems are dealt with thus: if something bad happens, it's because we
don't have a free market, and if something good happens, it's because of the free market that
didn't exist a second ago. Now, if he actually wanted to be precise, he would start being like
Acton and making the darn distinction between free markets and free enterprise.

If he did, though, he'd be opening a can of worms he's not willing to open! As it is, he seems to
think that markets, taken in themselves, are not the exchange of fallen human beings, but the
exchange of some sort of God-supervised system, like Newtonian gravity, where God, as the Supreme
Market Pantokrator, is sitting at the ground of it, ensuring morality through mixed agencies. This is
absurd! I simply, *as a Catholic*, cannot abide his anthropology. Paradise is not Somalia during those
infamous fifteen years. And as much as we may have an excess of government, and we most certainly do,
one cannot accordingly deny the whole of government! Rothbard is a shill for a foul
anthropology, one which cannot hold at all, and Woods is his willing prophet, even to the point of
treating Leo XIII as though he, despite being a most perceptive anthropologist in his own right and
a pioneer of Catholic socio-economic teaching, has no business talking about economics! How dare he
impugn THE MIGHTY ROTHBARD?!

And indeed, the mighty Rothbard has much to speak for. His position regarding the termination of
infants, for example; or his defective conception of the human being as a willing natural being; or
his proceeding mistaken conception of contract law. But this is not Rothbard, this is Woods, and I
needn't pick the economic fight; I can repudiate him simply on the fact that he has no conception of
the nuance of Catholic social teaching.

I have three bones to pick with him, which are fundamental in character.

He thinks man is an isolated atom, who can be made to be good in the absence of government by virtue
of the mythical free market;

He has NO conception of a common good over and above the private goods of the participants in that
mythical free market;

and he has no conception of the good beyond efficiency. This is no good at all, in the end,
because the good is destroyed when expediency is placed above virtue and the good of a community,
which necessitates government.

I do not think that he has real answers for these, and he has less than kind things to say about the
thought of the Church on these matters.

Tom Woods: name withheld, I'm sorry you were subjected to that string of cliches. No matter how much one writes about the market, no matter how much one clarifies his position, it always comes back to the
cliches. I will guarantee you that your friend has read me only in caricature and not my actual books
and articles. No one could view my position this cartoonishly who had actually read it. Pat Buchanan
promised to award Rothbard, who was his economic adviser in 1992, the Medal of Freedom if elected;
Joe Sobran likewise spoke highly of Rothbard. I will await your friend's denunciation of these men.

The know-nothing traditionalist is the most maddening stripe of Catholic. I expect the Left to
do nothing but study their own navels; I expect more of traditionalists.

Tom Woods: Here's a link for your buddy:
http://www.thomasewoods.com/on-chris-ferrara

Incidentally, Otto von Habsburg, teh Crown Prince of Austria, said Ludwig von Mises was "one of the
truly great men of our century." I guess the Habsburgs don't even get Catholic social teaching.
What a world!

Tsunami: Please don't make the error, by the way, of associating me de facto with traditionalist
Catholics. I am a Catholic, and I am traditional, but I am not what the usual combination of those
two words yields. I HAVE read Ferrara, as it happens; but my distaste for market libertarianism
is nothing so new, and was certainly around before I interned at Acton junior year. I have nothing to
say regarding Sobran and Buchanan, except that good men are nevertheless sometimes deceived into
following bad ideas concerning human freedom in the name of bending the stick the other way, and that's
why places like the Mises Institute exist.

Don't get me wrong; I think Austrian economics is a good way of understanding how to grow an economy,
when understood as free enterprise and not the canard of the free market; I do not however think
it is enough to have "free enterprise" for the purposes of government, because it is by the action
of government that this is protected. And part of the reason we have free enterprise is our duties
demand it, and part of those duties is the duty to the common good, the dreaded "distributive justice"
which has been part of Catholic Social Teaching for since Thomas and which von Habsburg was very aware
of, but which every single advocate of Rothbard virtually abandons in favor of the end-all of
self-interest. Unless you can surprise me with some intricacy of your position I am not aware of? I am
ever optimistic.

Tom Woods: my first name (if I may), when you say Austrian economics is a good way of doing thus and so, you are confirming my fears. Austrian economics is a body of descriptive knowledge. It is not a list of
policy prescriptions. Austrian economists as private individuals may make such recommendations,
but "Austrian economics" has nothing to say about them one way or another. That's why I find it so
funny when traditionalists say Austrian economics is "immoral" or whatever. Shows they don't know the
first thing about what they are criticizing. How could the concept of heterogeneous capital, or
marginal utility, be "immoral"?

As for the "common good," sorry, but I am not enamored of a phrase that sociopaths can exploit on
behalf of looting and enslaving. That doesn't mean we have no obligations to our fellow men, which is
the usual caricature of the anti-state position. The point, rather, is that it does not follow that
it is the state, rather than the individual conscience, that must do the enforcing.

St. Thomas was willing to tolerate prostitution if the attempt to prohibit it would be more disrputive
and harmful to souls. If prostitution can be tolerated, though, then surely private property --
a positive good -- can, when the alternative (and it is the only alternative) is some form of state
violence. I do not wish to empower this most deadly of institutions, an institution that bears zero
resemblance to the practically invisible "state" as St. Thomas knew it.

You may disagree with this judgment of mine, but to say I'm not allowed to think it, or to caricature
me as someone who believes individuals are "atoms" just because I don't believe in the initiation of
violence against innocent people, is really absurd. Everyone is owed respectful treatment, rather than
these crude generalizations. I have never met anyone, by the way, who believes this crazy
"individuals are atoms" nonsense.

Tsunami: Alright, well, if as they say this just got real, then I'd like to open with some
bridge-mending.

I apologize for my tone initially. It would be far too easy to dismiss myself by saying that the
manner in which I talk to name withheld is perhaps more fiery than my usual, but that is not enough to
excuse me from speaking too rashly about someone who, up until you actually showed up, I didn't know
would be present. It was imprudent and generally not befitting a Christian, and I do apologize. I
hope that this, at least, will show you that, though I have read Ferrara's work, I must say, like
Olivia to Sir Toby, that I am not allied to his misdemeanors as a matter of course. The man tilts
at windmills, it's just that this time when it comes to Libertarianism I think he might have the
right idea, socially though not always prudentially.

I'll leave this post separate and continue below.

Tsunami: Now, with that, I am not unacquainted with Austrian economics. I went to school with
David Friedman's grandkids, spoke to him on a fairly frequent basis about his social theories,
and read Machinery of Freedom when I was still in high school. My mom worked with Milton Friedman on
school choice in California when I was in grade school. We've known the Acton Institute for some
time, and I interned there a few summers ago; indeed, the way I know name withheld is that I recommended
two other people to intern there, and name withheld knew one of them even before he interned with them. (For the cause of civility, I am determined to strive to be the example in making this a polite discussion,
both out of that general courtesy I really should have shown earlier and out of my special respect
for name withheld, who someday will re-enact "Well, Did You Evah" with me in a study filled with rich mahogany. :-D ) I took great umbrage at Ferrara's snipe at the Institute in his latest work, because I think
it characteristic of his shotgun tactics that he often shoots people he doesn't really know.
I have read a good portion of von Mises, and I have read Rothbard, and Hayek was required reading for
me in high school. That I have read Milton Friedman, and watched with glee as he destroyed a
young Michael Moore on Youtube, I will say so. So I'm not unacquainted with the field. And I fear you
are mistaking my meaning by isogesis, because what I meant to say was precisely this, that Austrian
economics are good in respect of themselves, in that they are essentially the modus of free
enterprise taken in an isolated manner. Other economic systems than that which allows man
naturally to exercise his right to private property don't work. So I'm not disagreeing with you in
this, actually. I am not thinking of Austrian econ as a set of prescriptions like "lower taxes,
privatize, etc." although as you say many Austrian economists will advise such things based on the way
enterprise fundamentally works. Nor am I calling "Austrian economics" immoral; far from it! I was
one of the only defenders of Smith in my undergraduate seminar!

I will say this, though, that too much is attributed to the role of the economy in
Libertarian economic conceptions. And a sign of this is your reaction to the common good. Don't get
me wrong; it has been misused, as a concept, far too often. One could say the same about Austrian
economics. Ought we then to throw out the common good, or a practical understanding of economics? I
daresay either move would be dangerous.

Tsunami: As to dear St. Thomas, my patron, namesake, and current and past object of study, I
fear that you yourself misunderstand him. For a start, his entire concept of private property is
conditioned by distributive justice and the universal destination of goods. If Jean Valjean
crawls up, starving, to your window, he is allowed to take that loaf of bread from your store to feed
his family. This is a basic principle of Catholic social teaching; and part of it involves respect
for it, naturally, in the courts. In other words, in Thomas' society, that man is able to take bread
from my store to survive, and the courts must say that the bread, because of his need, belonged to
him.

Now, I'm not sure you DISAGREE with this, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on it, so I can better
see where you are coming from, if, that is, you are still willing to have this exchange. I know that
you are a busy guy.