Mason Gaffney wrote:  
> After following this dialogue a long time, I suggest there are several  
> images of von Mises, so you are talking past each other.  
>  
> 1. Von Mises the starchy central European autocrat. I went to a von Mises  
> lecture in 1952 or so, in San Mateo County, sponsored by Herbert Cornuelle  
> for the Erhard Fdtn. It was by invitation only. There was one entrance only;  
> you passed between two huge guards. Von Mises announced he would take no  
> questions. He lectured ex cathedra for too long a time, and disappeared. You  
> can understand how that leaves a fascistic impression, even though his  
> record shows him opposing Nazism. (The enemy of my enemy need not be my  
> friend, and all that.)  
>     
  
  
I'm afraid I'm going to have to not respond to anything else in this   
post because I simply cannot take seriously someone who suggests that an   
Austrian Jew who fled the Nazis (the Gestapo came to his apartment   
looking specifically for him in 1938), having to leave behind his   
library only to have it confiscated by them, is an "autocrat" and leaves a   
"fascist impression."  To further imply that we need to look at his   
"record" to actually believe he opposed Nazism is simply unacceptable in   
serious academic discourse.  Of what other serious economist would   
someone have the chutzpah to say that we even need to look at "the   
record" to be sure they weren't a Nazi/fascist sympathizer?   
  
If you want to raise serious arguments about Mises's economics, please   
do. This, however, is another matter.  
  
I guess those of us trying seriously to articulate Mises's economics   
should just declare this thread over, given that his critics have once   
again proved the empirical validity of Godwin's Law.  
  
Steve Horwitz