Libertarians: Dr Larry Sechrest

Politically, being a Libertarian throws you in neither the conservative or liberal camp. For Dr Larry Sechrest, Professor of Economics at Sul Ross State University and libertarian, this means yes on legalized drugs, prostitution, gay marriage and gambling and no on Food Stamps, income tax, government bail-outs and the Patriot Act.

“Libertarians,” Sechrest said, “say to liberals and conservatives alike, ‘a pox on both your houses’.”

He sat behind his monitor in his office wearing black, peering through thick glasses, his white beard and modified Prince Valiant haircut, distinctive. Ceiling high shelves cover the walls, stuffed with volumes authored from Al Gore to Shakespeare, Marx to Ayn Rand. Drawings of sailing ships speck the few un-booked areas and a cleared spot on one shelf harbors a framed photograph of his wife, Molly.

“Most Americans don’t understand that the spirit of our Founding Fathers was significantly Libertarian,” Sechrest said.

Libertarians believe that the fundamental threshold condition for a peaceful life is the absolute respect for a person’s rights including the right of private property. What you do in your own house is your business, provided you don’t harm anybody. The biggest components of a libertarian government are a police force, armed forces and a legal system. Sechrest believes that our federal government could function adequately with a 500 billion dollar budget under a Libertarian regime rather than the 3 trillion dollar budget we now have.

According to Sechrest, three watershed characters in America’s history were the fundamental philosophical forces that pushed the US away from its founding principles into the present “intrusive economy.”

“Abe Lincoln was a huge nationalist, a virtual dictator. He wanted to exploit one part of the country for the benefit of the other. He introduced the draft and the income tax. He arrested the entire Maryland legislature. He suspended Habeas Corpus,” Sechrest said. “Like George Bush and his Patriot Act –it was to hell with civil liberties.”

“There’s a mythos in our country about Abe Lincoln. He was not a poor man. He was in fact a highly paid attorney for the railroads and he proved his color with the Land Grants of 1862 (benefiting the railroad companies),” Sechrest said.

“John McCain’s hero, Teddy Roosevelt, wanted to rule the world. He was a die hard imperialist and loved war,” Sechrest said. “He believed that we were the right hand of the Messiah, instruments of God, like the Neo-Cons believe today. He was a good shot, educated, and a good writer but a dangerous man. His ideas were like the Monroe Doctrine on steroids.”

“The other Roosevelt, FDR, was a monstrous president, not a savior, as most people think, but a destroyer. Many of our traditions of welfare were inspired by his administration. Two big myths: that he got us out of the depression and that WWII was good for the economy – both false,” Sechrest said. “He admired Stalin and Mussolini. He created the Cold War by giving Eastern Europe to Stalin. By his actions he subjected 100,000,000 people to communism.”

Sechrest believes that the best US president in the last half-century was Ronald Reagan, though Calvin Coolidge was even better in the 1920s.

“Reagan was remarkably bright and a better intellectual than Al Gore. Based on his speeches he was a good president, but his policy was not consistent,” Sechrest said. “He spent too much and opposed true free trade.”

Sechrest is warm to the enlightened self interest philosophy of Ayn Rand. He believes that we should have a right to control our own destiny. But he agrees that many people cannot seem to get past the title of one of her famous books The Virtue of Selfishness because words like greed and selfishness have an anti-biblical connotation. “It’s not Jesus,” Sechrest explains.

“Greed is good as long as nobody has political privilege. But when you have somebody benefiting at the expense of others, it trumps the voluntary choices of others. And every dollar in a politician’s hand is a dollar wasted,” Sechrest said.

But who takes care of the poor, the disenfranchised, the have-nots under the libertarian system?

“There are zero social services enumerated in the constitution,” Sechrest points out. “Before government welfare, people, churches, fraternal organization took care of their own. This is true benevolence not forced benevolence through taxes, at the point of a gun.”

“There is also no enumeration in the constitution for income taxes. When you have more disposable income you can give more,” Sechrest said. “Furthermore, in a libertarian world of little regulation, no subsidies, no effective labor unions, and low taxes, there would be many more opportunities for people to advance economically.”

Critics of Libertarianism, such as Norm Chomsky, suggest that such a system based on pure competition inevitable leads to war. Sechrest disagrees.

“Chomsky like so many leftists have misunderstood competition. It is the life blood of a free society and is the opposite of war because it requires cooperation, because all people’s rights are respected. People voluntarily buy or sell their goods and services. It is the one and only real peaceful system,” Sechrest said.

Peace is something Sechrest did not experience after writing an article called “A Strange Little Town in Texas,” for Liberty Magazine in 2004. In the article he suggested a masters degree at local Sul Ross State University “is equivalent of a diploma from a high school 30 years ago.” Students there, understand “ artificial insemination of a goat but don’t know why the ninth amendment is in the constitution.” Or working with Dan Rather’s quote, “SRSU is possible the most overlooked little university west of the Mississippi,” Sechrest suggested, rather “one of the best high schools in west Texas.” There were other remarks: inbreeding amongst the local populace, the concentration of over-the-hill hippies in Alpine and a few other non-politically correct features in the article. It all led to an uproar, instigating threatening phone calls, including broken windows at his house, at least two death threats, and a general ostracizing.

Today Sechrest looks backs and is amazed that people largely ignored the principle goal of the article and that was “to bring attention to the very poor quality of education in this area.” He also regrets that many people in the area “discredited themselves by acting like thugs and barbarians” and that “the media which reported on the events never knew that dozens of area residents (not to mention hundreds from other parts of the country) have told me that they agreed with what I said.”

Sechrest has over 50 essays published in academic journals, reference works and other periodicals. He is the author of Free Banking: Theory, History, and a Laissez-Faire Model, now in its second edition. He has recently finished a 1300 page manuscript on merchant sailing vessels and includes some of his own sketches and drawings. It is presently being reviewed by publishers in London with the working title: Encyclopedia of Speed under Sail. He’s listed in Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, and Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. He is also on the editorial boards of three scholarly journals and as this writer can attest; one of the students’ more popular teachers in the SRSU Business School.


Sechrest was asked about the proposed US-Mexico border wall.

“It’s absurd, ridiculous. It expresses the hubris of all politicians. They think everything they do will work. Politicians are ever creating barriers to prevent people from cooperating with other people. They think if we build a wall, people suddenly won’t be able to come across the border. Nonsense. More people drank per capita during Prohibition than they did before it. Tell people they can’t do it and they’ll do it even more,” Sechrest said.

On La Entrada al Pacifico, the proposed truck route linking the United States with the Mexican seaport Topolambapo:

“If it’s such a good idea then let the Mexican truckers pay for it. Why should the American people pay for more traffic on their highways?”

He also addressed the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“It is not free trade. Real free trade can be summed up in one sentence: We’ll trade our stuff for you stuff and there’ll be no tariffs. The NAFTA agreement is something like 1269 pages long.”

What is his view on bureaucrats and economists?

“What I’d like to see is that these government people go out and find a real job.”
He laughs. “Or at least consult economists before they open their mouths.” A twinkle of mischief forms behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “But only good economists, free-market economists, like me.”