History + Comedy = Rothbard

If anything is simultaneously obvious and brilliant, it is Rothbard’s insight that governments are glorified gangs of criminals. How can anyone who knows the basic facts of history disagree? If you strip virtually any chapter of world history down to a postcard, it’s a story of vicious murderers killing each other in order to enslave nearby civilians. Nearly every guy nicknamed “the Great” was a serial killer on a massive scale – and not the nice kind, either.

If all this is so obvious, why don’t most works of history have a Rothbardian flavor? The answer, in short, is that most historians are serious. When they tell the story of William the Conqueror, for example, they take a considered, pompous tone, and treat all the key historical players with respect. They’ve usually got their facts straight, of course. But they don’t want to write the “story of William the Mass Murderer,” so they briefly mention his body count, then move on to William’s land titling policy.