Should you search his monument, go searching.
I discovered yesterday that Manny Klausner died just lately at age 85.
I keep in mind Murray Rothbard referring to H.L. Mencken because the “joyous libertarian.” For me, Manny was the joyous libertarian.
My late buddy Harry Watson and I got here down from Canada in September 1972 to start out within the Ph.D. economics program at UCLA. We had been studying Purpose journal usually and following the libertarian motion that manner and thru different publications. We had been charmed by a lot of what we learn. So we arrived considerably aware of the American libertarian panorama. We knew sufficient to know that Los Angeles was one of many hotbeds of libertarianism.
Naturally, we began trying round for libertarian occasions and we came upon in regards to the Libertarian Supper Membership that met as soon as every week (or was it as soon as a month?) to debate points and developments. It met at a restaurant referred to as the Eaters’ Digest. There was a really constructive vibe on the time and so individuals would arise and briefly share one thing that that they had learn or heard within the mainstream press or on discuss radio that was someplace between vaguely libertarian and truly libertarian. I believe it was there that I first met Manny.
I keep in mind that he handed out a pamphlet he had produced as a result of he was operating as a write-in candidate for Congress within the 1972 election. That makes him the primary candidate for Congress I ever met. I don’t keep in mind all of the coverage positions in his pamphlet, however I do keep in mind that they weren’t hard-core libertarian however, reasonably, one thing I discovered extra wise: laying out insurance policies that might take us nearer to freedom.
I received a kick out of 1 explicit place he took and I believed it made sense. He proposed ending the federal civil service system and returning to a 19th century-style spoils system. I believe he instructed me, or perhaps it was within the pamphlet, that the benefit of such a system is that it could be cheaper: as an alternative of funding new applications to repay supporters, profitable politicians may hearth the present staff and exchange them with their supporters. I’m not constructive any extra that it’s a good suggestion however I believe it’s.
I used to be speaking to my buddy Eric Garris this morning about Manny. Eric labored within the Purpose workplace in 1974-75 and received to know Manny that manner. Manny was a part of a bunch that had purchased Purpose from its founder, Lanny Friedlander, in 1970. It was a really small publication on the time. However Eric tells me that Manny was vastly essential in rising Purpose as a enterprise.
British architect Sir Christopher Wren’s well-known epitaph was “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice.” Translation: Reader, should you search his monument, go searching. It’s inscribed on his tomb in St. Paul’s Cathedral, one in all 56 church buildings he was instrumental in constructing, together with St. Paul’s Cathedral itself, after London’s huge hearth of 1666.
Equally, should you search Manny’s monument, take a look at Purpose and the Purpose Basis.
Word: Each Brian Doherty and Bob Poole have carried out wonderful remembrances of Manny.
P.S. Later at this time, I’ll submit a extra private remembrance of Manny on my Substack. I’ll replace right here when that’s carried out.
