10 Comments

1. Single Acts of Tyranny says:
   March 5, 2013 at 7:33 pm

   It’s a shame Rothbard is no longer with us, but some of the lectures available on youtube from his later years are very informative and highly entertaining.
2. John Galt says:
   March 5, 2013 at 10:08 pm

   Good man, Howard Buffett - I particularly like this comment of his from around the same time as the Letter:

   “Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by coercion and tyranny at home.”

   If they’d heard his appeal back then, maybe the tragedies of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia could have been avoided. Many Americans would be alive today instead of dying in the swamps of South East Asia.
3. Sam Duncan says:
   March 6, 2013 at 3:53 am

   I’m not saying the letter wasn’t sent, with that wording, but that facsimile looks slightly fishy. Proportional spacing in ‘62? He was a very rich man, I suppose.
4. NickM says:
   March 6, 2013 at 4:11 am

   It’s not the spacing for me. But it don’t look right. There is no obvious smoking gun but it ain’t 100%. Actually it might be the spacing. Some is very double-spaced. God knows!
5. Sam Duncan says:
   March 6, 2013 at 12:12 pm

   By proportional spacing, I mean that “m”s are wider than “l”s, for example. While we learned from Rathergate that some extremely expensive IBM typewriters were capable of that sort of thing in the early ’70s, it was really the preserve of professionals until the advent of inkjets in the ’90s. You see it in a letter purportedly from before then and the Spidey-senses definitely tingle. I’d be interested to identify the typeface. It does, actually, look about right for the period… just not for a typewriter. And the quote marks seem to be double apostrophes, which would be unusual for someone hacking out a fake on MS Word, which would automagically convert them to proper “66”s and “99”s. It would also do “31st” with superscript letters (which annoys the hell out of me, by the way).

   So again, as I say, he was very wealthy: perhaps he did get his personal correspondence professionally printed. Or had an early version of one of those IBM machines. And I’m not suggesting deliberate deceit anyway - maybe the original is too grotty for reproduction - but it does look odd.
6. Julie near Chicago says:
   March 6, 2013 at 3:13 pm

   Well, if y’all question the letters bona fides, why not click the link and leave a comment asking about provenance? I’d do it myself, but you have to sign in to one of the so-called “social networks,” to which I have an intense allergy. :>)
7. Sam Duncan says:
   March 6, 2013 at 11:17 pm

   Me too, Julie. But, yet again, I’m not saying it’s necessarily a fake in that sense.
8. NickM says:
   March 7, 2013 at 4:53 am

   It does look odd but it ain’t the spacing in the sense Sam says.

   OK… It just don’t look “right” or sound “right” and it ain’t pro-printed (the between word spacing and the “–” would suggest against. But it also don’t look typewritten. It also clearly doesn’t look scanned as such. As to the font. I can’t age it. Sorry. That also means I can’t date it.

   Ecept the spacing looks crudely justified. Now that suggests to me wither a pro-secretary (but it don’t look quality enough for that) or early WP which clearly kicks the 1962 date into touch.

   Overall, I’d call it a fake.
9. Umbongo says:
   March 7, 2013 at 5:00 am

   Sam Duncan

   Apropos of proportional spacing, the IBM Electromatic Typewriter series of the 40s and 50s had proportional spacing. Consequently, on this point anyway, the dating of the letter cannot be challenged.
10. Sam Duncan says:
    March 8, 2013 at 8:44 am

    As I said. They were expensive, but of course Buffet had the money.