Freethought, de Cleyre wrote, was "the right to believe as the evidence, coming in contact with the mind, forces it to believe. This implies the admission of any and all evidence bearing upon any subject."
"Everyone who opposed his views, according to Laffemas, was selfish, ignorant, and/or a traitor, and should be dealt with accordingly. All who disobeyed the regulations and prohibitions should suffer confiscation of their goods as well as death."
"Do you think Alan might basically be a social climber?"—Ayn Rand
The fact is that, exactly as Mark Lilla fears, when people distrust authority in a generalized way and start thinking for themselves, often without much relevant information to guide them, they'll make many decisions that they'll later regret. But whose decisions are they to make?
It is natural to wonder what scholar today has inherited the mantle of Rothbard. To me this is the wrong way to look at it. Rothbard vastly broadened that mantle so that hundreds, thousands, and millions of people can wear it.
"His widely published 'Letter to Washington' described the party of Hamilton as 'disguised traitors' who were 'rushing as fast as they could venture, without awakening the jealousy of America, into all the vices and corruptions of the British Government'."
To put it differently, morally significant action has to be freely chosen, not mere proper behavior.
With Man, Economy, and State, Mises concluded, "Rothbard joins the ranks of the eminent economists."
Roosevelt solidified trends toward centralization that had been at work since the 1860s and institutionalized what amounted to a revolution in the American form of government.
But because of his interaction with Robert LeFevre in Colorado in the '50s and '60s, libertarian ideas were among those he toyed with and dramatized in certain of his stories.
