Frank Chodorov: Individualist
Murray N. Rothbard
[Reprinted from Fragments, Vol.V, No.1]
At the end of 1966, two coincidental but symbolically intertwined "deaths"
struck a blow to every lover of liberty: the far more grievous actual
death of Frank Chodorov, and the transformation of the Intercollegiate
Society of Individualists, which he inspired and founded, into the
carefully (neutrally) named Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Both
events mark the end of an era to be mourned by every individualist, by
every one of us whose lives were illumined and brightened by the
radiance of Frank's noble individualism of mind and spirit. For in his
person and in his ideas, Frank was the inspiration for a whole
generation of libertarians. And in his dream of bringing to the
open-minded and eager youths in college the individualist vision,
Frank was highlighting the strategy as well as the goals that
libertarians must needs follow. Can Frank's splendid legacy be
properly served by turning away in shame from that very beloved word,
"Individualism," that guided and infused his entire life?
But Frank, I am sure, would never despair at this kind of misfortune
for the cause that he held dear. For he was always conscious of the
fact that he wrote and spoke to a Remnant, to a small band of
individualists who would eagerly imbibe the articulation of their own
deepest yearnings. Frank was firmly convinced, though it was obviously
a sentiment that he could not prove, that people were either born
individualists or they were not, and hence it would be impossible to
generate a mass movement of libertarians by any sort of short-cut
demagoguery. But he was also as firmly convinced that that Remnant is
always there: that always, in every generation, there are young men
who, if they but learn of its existence, will pick up the torch of
individualism and carry it all their lives. The remarkable growth of
libertarians among the youth in the last few years is living proof of
Frank's faith, and constitutes our best hope for the future.
Frank, indeed, was always scornful of short-cuts, especially
political ones. So perceptive was he of the nature of the political
animal that he never fell for the preferred hooch of political
pitch-men; when I first met him, twenty years ago, he had not voted at
all for decades, and he continued to cleave to this conviction. He
would be swayed neither by arguments from expediency nor by assurances
that the new political Messiah had arrived and need only be followed
to assure social Salvation. Not for Frank was any of the hogwash,
accepted by Right and Left alike, about the joyous civic obligation of
voting for the "candidate of one's choice" or of communing
with one's fellow-voters at the ballot box.
Frank's convictions on voting is but one example of the reason that
he was sui generis, of the reason that he stood out, among the crowd
of would-be libertarians and free-marketeers, like a blaze of radiant
light in a dismal swamp. That reason was, above all, Frank's
remarkable integrity, his courage in being his own man, in pursuing
the logic and the necessities of his own convictions, and in the
simplicity and goodness which accounted for Frank's not realizing that
other men, alas!, were not as he. Frank moved in a world of bland and
phony opportunists, of men who never gave him anything like his due,
and yet he moved among them as one who, considering personal integrity
the birthright of man, expected no less from those around him. Frank
was a great and lovable man, and the world is a far poorer place
without him. We shall not see his like again. But at the very least,
we can treasure the memory of having known him as a man, and hold high
and aloft the banner of his convictions, and of his books and essays.
Perhaps then we shall he worthy of having called him friend.
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