Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, is one of my heroes. He is a brilliant, cunning, and lucid defender of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and of the critical need to limit the powers of government in order to secure those rights. He is an effective defender of free markets and of the Capitalist system as the means to provide for a society without the use of force in most areas of our lives. He argues his case clearly and with great moral passion. He also has a passion for economics and thinking in a very rational and analytical manner. He is an acute observer of the facts of reality and he checks his evaluations of the consequences of all sorts of economic, marketplace, and government actions carefully and through many layers of consequences. Walter Williams is a very well-grounded man. He is a friend of Thomas Sowell, another economist of remarkable intellect and a fascinating historian. Walter Williams has a website here which usually has a number of interesting articles or the text of talks. His thoughts on a wide range of political, economic, and cultural issues are a pleasure to read. He will enlighten you, both through his effective teaching and as in lighting a fire under you!

Some may know that Prof. Williams sometimes substitutes for Rush Limbaugh on his talk radio show. I came to know him through his newspaper column, which is fortunately frequently published in the Washington Times. For six years he was the department head of the Economics Dept. at George Mason University which produced a couple of good Noble prize winners in economics. On his web page there is a link lower down to a TNI interview, which makes for interesting reading on his general thoughts and his background as an black individualist. TNI is The New Individualist, a magazine published by The Atlas Society, whose editor-in-chief is a friend, Robert Bidinotto. There was a movement to draft him to run for President, which he scotched, saying that his wife threatened to assassinate him if he consented to do so. He loves his wife dearly, so he has refused to be drafted. I suspect that he is only too aware that the job is an impossible one as well. But, if he were somehow to run and to escape all assassination attempts, voting for him would be the proudest vote of my life. Walter Williams is a good man.