Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS BY MURRAY N. ROTHBARD 101
And finally, on the menace of inventions, here is how
Strauss, in his concluding paragraph, describes the views of
his obvious heroes, the “classical” philosophers:
The classics were for almost all practical purposes
what now are called conservatives. In contradistinction
to many present day conservatives however,
they knew that one cannot be distrustful of
political or social change without being distrustful
of technological change. Therefore they did not
favor the encouragement of inventions. . . . They
demanded the strict moral-political supervision of
inventions; the good and wise city will determine
which inventions are to be made use of and which
are to be suppressed. 51
(Lest you think he is referring to inventions for war, the
fact is just the opposite; his heroes were forced by external
conditions to encourage only inventions for war!)
All in all, then, I think it fair to say that Strauss’s
Thoughts on Machiavelli is bad in content or ideological position;
it is certainly an execrable piece of scholarship. It
deserves a very strong recommendation against use in the
National Book Foundation program.
Cordially,
Murray
51 Ibid., p. 298.