Long-time readers of the Tory Anarchist will remember this post from two years back in which I called attention to a colorful anecdote involving Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand in William F. Buckley Jr.’s memoir of the Goldwater era, Flying High. It sounded almost too scripted to be true, and a reader wondered whether anyone else had ever corroborated the story. Since Christopher Buckley made a passing reference in his Losing Mum and Pup to his father embellishing history in some of his memoirs, I figured the whole thing might have been made up. After all, WFB wasn’t even at the dinner where Rand and Mises came to their supposed contretemps.

But Henry Hazlitt was there, and it turns out he was Buckley’s source, as a letter now online at the Foundation for Economic Education’s website shows. Buckley didn’t quite get the specifics down as Hazlitt remembered them, but the gist was right. Here’s Hazlitt’s account:

The incident did not occur at the dinner table, but later. As host, I had taken orders for drinks and was bringing them to the living room. As I entered, Ayn was saying to Lu: “You treat me like an ignorant little Jewish girl.” I had not hear what Lu had said, but I bravely started to patch things up: “Oh, I’m sure, Ayn, that Lu didn’t mean it that way.” Lu promptly jumped up and said: “I did mean it that way.”

Lu’s hearing was not good. I suspected at the the time, and have been convinced since, that he had misunderstood one of Ayn’s remarks.

One indication is that in ten minutes or so everything had quieted down. Another is that on no other occasion did I know Lu to be personally rude to anyone. (Argumentative, yes.)

Long afterwards, Ayn Rand and Lu Mises showed that they admired each other. Ayn continued to preach “selfishness”; but now in deference to Mises she added insistence on the need for “human cooperation.” She did this with no sense of inconsistency.

A few years after that dinner party — which must have been close to forty years ago [Hazlitt's letter is dated March 13, 1982] — meeting Ayn, I said: “Lu Mises and I were talking about you the other day. He called you, ‘the most courageous man in America.’” “Did he say ‘man’?” Ayn asked eagerly. “Yes,” I assured her. She was delighted.

So there you have the source of the other another legendary Mises-Rand anecdote as well. And good for Rand for taking Mises’s quip as a compliment.

Filed under: Books, Liberty