Lew Rockwell Festschrift in the Works

by Stephan Kinsella on June 12, 2026

Tom, re “LewRockwell.com Publishes a Communistic Screed about “The Need to End Capitalism” and your comment: “I have no idea who is editing LewRockwell.com these days.” Case in point, despite the obvious bad blood between Rockwell/Mises and Jeffrey Tucker, for some reason on Wednesday this week LRC ran a Tucker article. It is apparent the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing and Rockwell is not running LRC. I suppose the left hand did not realize Tucker’s LRC archives had been disappeared and memory-holed Orwell-style after he was ousted from MI in November 2011.¹

The Mises Institute is also planning a Festschrift for Rockwell. See this email from Ryan McMaken from about a month ago:

From: Ryan McMaken <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2026
To:
Subject: Invitation to contribute to new book of essays in honor of Lew Rockwell

Dear X,

This should have happened many years ago, but I’m putting together a festschrift for Lew Rockwell featuring a wide array of authors who have been influenced by Lew over the years.

Often, these books can feature some very long and academic essays, but as Lew has always called himself a “layman” I think that these essays in his honor should be a bit more for the “educated layman” while still being erudite. In other words, they should be a little like an essay Lew Rockwell would write—more journalistic in the tradition of Hazlitt, perhaps.

Nonetheless, I think the format calls for essays that are a bit longer than the usual op-ed, so we’re shooting for essays that are in the 2,000-3,000 word range. Moreover, they should not be written in academic-journal style with “works cited” or parenthetic page numbers, etc. Footnotes can still work, though.

As to topics, there is wide flexibility here. The Rothbard festschrift, for example, (Man, Economy, and Liberty) contains a multitude of topics that are inspired by Rothbard in some way or contribute to his areas of interest. But, there are some essays that are personally about Rothbard. So, I think these essays could go either way, and some of the essays in this new volume could be about how Lew personally inspired or influenced the writer.

I’m hoping you can contribute to this collection, and I’m hoping to get submissions in by June 18.

Are you interested? Would this be possible for you?

Let me know what you think!

Thank you!

Ryan

As the editor of three festchrifts now,² and a contributor to others, some already published,³ some in the works,⁴ I know that this is not an easy task. But I’m afraid Rockwell’s is doomed from the start.

The archives at LewRockwell.com show literally thousands of articles and blog posts written by: Doug French (permalink), Jeff Deist (permalink), Tom DiLorenzo (permalink), Hans-Hermann Hoppe (permalink), Stephan Kinsella (permalink) (permalinked in case they, too, get disappeared). Three of them are former Presidents of the Mises Institute. Hans was its only ever Distinguished Senior Fellow. I was a Senior Fellow. In normal times they would have contacted most if not all of us about this project, if they had not so royally botched all these relationships. Actions have consequences. What a shame.

But all three MI presidents—hand picked by Lew himself—were lost. Tucker with his open publishing, Mises.org, and other projects was a threat to various competing interests and factions at MI,⁵ so he had to go. And then there is the treatment of the three ex-presidents, Hoppe, me, and others such as Joe Stromberg, Joe Becker, former Board members and donors, and on and on. Rockwell was either behind all these or allowed others such as Salerno, Klein, Holmes and Barnett to do what they did to Doug French, Jeff Deist, Tom DiLorenzo, the others, and now Hans Hoppe. Although given Lew’s apparently extremely poor state of health and the way his emails and other information flows to him are apparently being controlled and intercepted,⁶ the chaotic state of his site, the fact that “Lew” continues to write daily columns and emails and make fundraising pitches even though it is obviously not “Lew” writing any of this, he may not even be aware of the Hans purge at all.