(XLV) Frank Chodorov
The government says to the citizen: “Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim to them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide.”
- The Income Tax: Root of All Evil, page 8.
Frank Chodorov (1887 - 1966) was an “Old Right” individualist who had a profound affect on the thinking of Murray Rothbard. He was a man of the Old Republic, a radical libertarian, and a brilliant writer.
Rothbard wrote about the gentleman here.
His books included: One is a Crowd (1952); The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1952); The Rise & Fall of Society (1959); and Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962).
Besides reading The Income Tax, you might want to read his essay “Taxation is Robbery” that appears in Out of Step on page 216.
His Rise & Fall of Society can be considered a better version of Albert Jay Nock’s Our Enemy, the State.
