[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 15390-15391]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO RONALD HAMOWY

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. RON PAUL

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, November 16, 2012

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask unanimous consent to enter 
``Ronald Hamowy, R.I.P.'' by Stephen Cox of Liberty Unbound into the 
Congressional Record. The piece pays tribute to Ronald Hamowy, one of 
the libertarian movement's most gifted scholars, who passed away on 
September 8 of this year.
  As a student in New York, Ronald Hamowy attended the seminar of the 
great Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises. While attending the Mises 
seminar, Hamowy become friends with a group of other young libertarian 
scholars. These young scholars banded together in the ``Circle 
Bastiat,'' named after the great 19th century French free-market 
economist. The Circle Bastiat served as a combination intellectual 
support group and social club for the handful of libertarian scholars 
studying, working, and living in New York City in the late forties and 
fifties. Members of the Circle Bastiat, whose leader was Mises' heir 
and founder of the modern libertarian movement Murray Rothbard, would 
go on to play key roles in developing and popularizing the ideas of 
liberty.
  In the 1960s, Hamowy studied under future Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek 
at the University of Chicago's School of Social Thought. While at 
Chicago, Hamowy was one of the founders and editors of the New 
Individualist Review. This publication, which lasted from 1961-1968, 
featured contributions from almost every leading libertarian and 
conservative thinker of the time.
  In addition to helping edit the publication, Ronald Hamowy wrote 
several significant pieces for New Individualist Review. Of particular 
relevance to today is Hamowy's article on how conservative's support 
for a militaristic foreign policy was causing them to abandon their 
commitment to limited, constitutional government and individual 
liberty. I believe history has shown that Hamowy was correct to warn 
conservatives that allowing claims of ``national security'' to justify 
enormous intrusions into our economic and personal lives, would 
inevitably lead conservatives to abandon all pretense of supporting 
limited government.
  Hamowy was a lonely voice in the sixties. At that time most professed 
believers in free-markets supported an interventionist foreign policy, 
while most professed supporters of peace supported the welfare-
regulatory state. In fact, the majority of support for the view that 
one should oppose both the warfare and the welfare state came from 
members of the Circle Bastiat and those influenced by their writings. 
Fortunately, a new generation of conservative activists has 
rediscovered the truths kept alive by thinkers like Hamowy and his 
Circle Bastiat colleagues regarding the link between free-markets, 
limited government, and a non-interventionist foreign policy.
  From 1969 to 1998, Ronald Hamowy was a professor of intellectual 
history at the University of Alberta. During this time, he was also 
associated with a number of free-market institutions, including the 
Ludwig Von Mises Institute, the CATO Institute, and the Independent 
Institute. During the early eighties, Ronald Hamowy edited CATO's 
magazine Inquiry and more recently he served as distinguished fellow of 
social thought at CATO. He also wrote many articles and monographs for 
the Frazer Institute, Canada's leading free-market think-tank.
  One of Ronald Hamowy's most significant contributions to the liberty 
movement was his work undermining the intellectual jurisdiction for the 
nonsensical and disastrous drug wars. Hamowy also produced important 
work concerned the dangers of allowing government to control health 
care. His interest, and expertise, in the dangers of government health 
care should come as no surprise. After all, here was a leading 
liberation scholar, a student of Mises and Hayek and a close friend of 
Rothbard's, living with Canadian socialized medicine. Hamowy thus 
combined his knowledge of Austrian economics and libertarian politician 
theory with his own observations on the failures of the Canadian 
system. Those looking for intellectual ammunition in the fight to 
repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replace it 
with true free-market health care policies certainly can benefit from 
reading Hamowy's work on the subject, such as his 2007 book Government 
and Public Health in America and his 1984 book Canadian Medicine: a 
Study in Restricted Entry.
  Ronald Hamowy will be missed by his many friends in the liberty 
movement. Fortunately, he leaves behind a substantial body of work

[[Page 15391]]

promoting the ideas of liberty that can benefit future scholars and 
activists interested in advancing liberty.

                     [From Liberty, Sept. 9, 2012]

                         Ronald Hamowy, R.I.P.

                            (By Stephen Cox)

       Ronald Hamowy, who honored Liberty by becoming one of its 
     Contributing Editors, died at 11:30 a.m. on September 8, in a 
     hospital in Baltimore. The final cause of death was sepsis. 
     Ronald had suffered for years from heart and kidney problems, 
     and he had been hospitalized for several months.
       He was one of the libertarian movement's most important and 
     vital scholars. An historian of the 18th century, he was 
     known for his impeccable standards of research and writing. 
     To discerning researchers of the Enlightenment--left, right, 
     or center--his word was law. If there was a scholarly myth or 
     illusion, he was the one who was trusted to puncture it. He 
     was the person who meticulously set things straight. Many 
     times, when I have mentioned his name in an academic 
     conversation, the reply has been, ``Ronald Hamowy! You know 
     him?!''
       For libertarians, Ronald will always be recognized as a 
     bright star of the post-World War II generation--but unlike 
     many other grand old men of this or that era, he never became 
     a Grand Old Man. He retained to the end his youthful joy and 
     sense of first discovery. To him, any new fact--or any old 
     movie, viewed on his constant friend, Turner Classics--was a 
     pleasure to be greeted as if it were the first one in the 
     universe. Even when ensconced as chairman of an august 
     intellectual conference, Ronald let his eyes sparkle and his 
     mouth crinkle with laughter, and with some little Count 
     Basie-like verbal gesture he set the whole house laughing 
     with his infectious wit.
       Ronald was born in 1937, in Shanghai, China, the scion of a 
     cosmopolitan Jewish family. His father was born in Syria; his 
     beautiful and beloved mother in Egypt. He grew up in New 
     York, where he supported himself with a number of jobs (one 
     of them was running the streets, selling pop records). During 
     his graduate work at the University of Chicago, he co-edited 
     (with Ralph Raico) the New Individualist Review, a lively, 
     beautifully produced libertarian intellectual journal. If you 
     read it today, you will be sure to enjoy every word of it. 
     Liberty--this journal--was consciously modeled on the 
     American Mercury and the New Individualist Review.
       The most important thing was Ronald's ability to 
     distinguish pseudo-individualism from the real thing. Nothing 
     could be too real for him.
       Ronald's advisor at Chicago was Fredrich Hayek, but Hayek 
     contributed little to Ronald's studies. Hayek was above it 
     all. Ronald was on his own, as students of Great Academics 
     always are. His first dissertation topic required him to do 
     research at the Bibliotheque National in Paris, where he 
     found the research conditions impossible. Migrating to 
     Oxford, which had resources adequate to another topic in 
     which he was interested, he needed the sponsorship of some 
     Oxford academic, to get permission to exploit the library. He 
     approached Sir Isaiah Berlin, who rebuffed him. Berlin was 
     ``taking no more students.''
       Ronald, who was only half as tall as other people, looked 
     up at the great Sir Isaiah. ``Listen,'' he said. ``I'm very 
     smart. I'm very hard-working. And I'm funny.'' All that was 
     true. Sir Isaiah looked down at the small student in front of 
     him, laughed, and said, ``All right.''
       Ronald was hard to resist. And he knew it. But he was one 
     of the funniest people I've ever known. If Ronald couldn't 
     make you laugh, you really weren't worth the effort. And his 
     wit was always . . . intellectually understood. No vulgarity. 
     No easy laughs. Nothing but fun. But not coy, either.
       One person who resisted Ronald was Ayn Rand. As one of the 
     young libertarians (Ronald's friend Murray Rothbard was 
     another) who were invited to her apartment for intellectual 
     discussions, he was cast into oblivion after a difference of 
     opinion about . . . Rachmaninoff. Guests were asked to say 
     who their favorite composers were, and when Rand's turn came, 
     she said ``Rachmaninoff,'' with specific reference to his 
     second piano concerto. ``Why?'' Ronald asked. ``Because he 
     was the most rational,'' Rand responded. At which Ronald 
     laughed, thinking it must be a joke. He knew that the 
     composer had dedicated that concerto to his psychiatrist--and 
     anyway, rationality had nothing to do with its greatness. But 
     Ronald's laughter resulted in exile, and the loss of friends 
     who were dear to him.
       Ronald was a professor in the Department of History at the 
     University of Alberta from 1969 until his retirement in 1998, 
     at which time he immediately moved back to the United States. 
     He detested conformist cultures, and he regarded both his 
     department and, it is fair to say, Canada itself as epitomes 
     of conformism. I once asked him what was wrong with Canada, 
     and he said, ``I'll tell you. If you walk into a store in 
     Canada, and you find a customer having a dispute with a sales 
     clerk, 90% of the other customers will immediately side with 
     the clerk. That person is regarded as an official, and 
     therefore the one to obey.'' He attributed this defect of 
     Canadian culture in large part to the migration to Canada of 
     people opposed to the American Revolution. They set the tone.
       Ronald himself was always a revolutionary. He was outraged 
     by any offense to individualism, so much so that he engaged 
     in a ferocious online conflict with other gay libertarians, 
     who regarded the movie Braveheart as a tribute to the heroic 
     individual. Ronald pointed out that the movie was 
     historically ridiculous and anti-homosexual to boot. He 
     argued, convincingly, that works of art really do need to be 
     judged by their fidelity to historical truth, whenever they 
     recommend themselves as historically true. But the most 
     important thing was Ronald's ability to distinguish pseudo-
     individualism from the real thing. Nothing could be too real 
     for him. One day, when he and I were discussing various 
     versions of libertarian thought, I asked him where he stood, 
     and he replied (knowing I would not sympathize entirely), 
     ``Basically, I agree with Murray''--meaning with Murray 
     Rothbard's very radical libertarianism.
       I believe that the antiwar strain of libertarian thought 
     was important for Ronald. I remember accompanying him, when 
     he visited San Diego, to the Adams Avenue (used) Bookstore 
     (where else would you entertain Ronald Hamowy?). While 
     browsing the stacks, I heard a voice muttering curses, 
     somewhere else in the establishment. I found Ronald in a side 
     room, seated amid stacks of books he was examining, and 
     holding a copy of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August in his 
     hand. Tuchman justified British intervention in World War I. 
     ``Damned British crap,'' Ronald exclaimed, putting the book 
     down as if he were giving long-overdue punishment to a whole 
     school of thought. Which he was.
       His life demonstrated that we libertarians are right: the 
     individual, complex and whole, is the mysterious and unending 
     source of all that is vital in our world.
       Ronald's works include The Scottish Enlightenment and the 
     Theory of Spontaneous Order (University of Southern Illinois 
     Press, 1987), Canadian Medicine: A Study in Restricted Entry 
     (Fraser Institute, 1984), Dealing with Drugs: Consequences of 
     Government Control (edited, Lexington Books, 1987), 
     Government and Public Health in America (Edward Elgar, 2007), 
     The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (edited, Sage 
     Publications, 2008), and many articles, including one that 
     was especially valuable for Liberty, on the intellectual 
     argument about the American Revolution (Liberty, July 2008, 
     pp. 37-42).
       After his retirement, Ronald and his companion Clement Ho 
     moved into a pretty, three-story house in the Washington 
     suburb of Rockville, MD. There Ronald completed his 
     magisterial edition of Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty 
     (University of Chicago Press, 2011), which straightens out a 
     great deal that Hayek left, shall we say, unstraightened. 
     Ronald was already in poor health, requiring the use of a 
     cane and, eventually, one of those personal elevators that 
     take you from the first floor of your house to another floor. 
     He had countless near-death experiences--frequently being 
     rushed to the hospital, with only a half hour available to 
     save his life. Yet he bravely undertook a long journey to 
     Greece and Italy, which he enjoyed, and he lived with 
     equivalent bravery from day to day. To see Ronald sitting at 
     his desk, surrounded with computer wires, like a snake-
     charmer among his clients, watching his computer with one eye 
     and Cary Grant (Turner Classics, again) with the other, was 
     to imagine a cultural world that was, for once, under 
     intelligent control.
       Ronald was a combination of supposed opposites. He was a 
     fiery combatant, yet a generous and lenient friend. He was 
     sensitive and nostalgic, often to the point of tears, yet an 
     unflinching judge of the written word. He struggled, year 
     after year, against the uncountable illnesses that racked his 
     body; yet he was always as valiant as a soldier undertaking 
     his first combat mission. But there was no contradiction. His 
     life demonstrated that we libertarians are right: the 
     individual, complex and whole, is the mysterious and unending 
     source of all that is vital in our world.
       Ronald is survived by his friend Clement Ho, who was with 
     him every step of the way. Anyone wishing to contact him is 
     invited to do so, at [email protected].

                          ____________________