Walter E. Williams, R.I.P!

on . Posted in Announcements

By Thomas DiLorenzo

December 3, 2020 - I was deeply saddened and depressed to learn that my old friend Professor Walter E. Williams passed away yesterday morning at the age of 84. For the past forty years Walter was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University; one of the greatest libertarian columnists in the world; a fabulously inspiring teacher; one of the best public speakers you would ever encounter on the subjects of economics and libertarianism; and the most popular guest host of the Rush Limbaugh radio show.

Walter was already at George Mason University when I arrived there as a young assistant professor of economics in 1981, preceding me by a year. He and I were the two faculty members who taught the large 300+ student sections of principles of economics. I quickly realized that it would be many years before I could approach Walter’s masterful classroom performances. (You do need to be a bit of a performer before such a large audience that can easily be bored to death with such a large crowd and so many distractions).

Walter never pulled his punches, in the classroom or anywhere else. When he got to the section of the course on labor economics and the economics of discrimination, he shocked his audiences of mostly freshman econ 101 students by reminding them that “discrimination” is not always a bad or negative thing. For example, he would say, when he was looking for a wife he discriminated against fat women, ugly women, and white women. That was long before Amerika’s youth were conditioned since kindergarten to swoon over such language, instigate riots, or set fire to campus buildings.

In the early ‘80s the George Mason administration announced that every academic department was to have an “affirmative action officer.” Naturally, we chose Walter. His job was to report to the administration once a year on how good a job the department had done in recruiting women and minority faculty. In his first year with that assignment Walter informed the administration that (paraphrasing) “We tried to hire a tall, statuesque blond from UCLA [true story] but the administration was too cheap to give us enough salary money to compete for her services.” Boy, did the sanctimonious campus Leftists hate Walter for such talk - a huge badge of honor on his chest.

Back in those days Walter’s office was adorned with a framed picture of his daughter, over whom he doted, and a Confederate flag. When a visitor asked why a black man like himself had a Confederate flag in his office, he said it was to give him the opportunity to explain the virtues of secession to whoever asked about it.

Walter was not only a fabulous classroom teacher, public speaker and columnist; he produced a lot of great scholarship as well. He was a product of the old UCLA School of Economics, a sort of offshoot of the old Milton Friedman/George Stigler/Gary Becker Chicago School at that time. Armed with a great UCLA economic education (after being drafted and then kicked out of the U.S. Army - not dishonorably discharged - for being too much of a smartass and independent thinker, another badge of honor!), Walter authored many important journal articles on labor economics and other topics as well as such books as The State Against Blacks; South Africa’s War against Capitalism [aka Apartheid]; More Liberty Means Less Government; Race and Economics; Liberty versus the Tyranny of Socialism; and American Contempt for Liberty.  His autobiography is entitled Up from the Projects.

Walter’s two favorite hobbies were cigarette smoking and long-distance biking, one of which probably shortened his life. He also liked to boast about his basketball prowess. He never left his beloved family home in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, commuting to Fairfax, Virginia all those years. He would battle suburban Philadelphia traffic at daybreak on his bike rides, even in the colder Pennsylvania weather.

The last time I saw Walter was when I sponsored a lecture by him at Loyola University Maryland on “The Legitimate Role of Government in a Free Society.” It was vintage Walter Williams, a combination of deep learning about the Amerikan founding, political philosophy and economics, and the philosophy of freedom, all explained in a way that anyone could understand and appreciate. Students were stopping me on campus days later to thank me for bringing him to campus. Most of them told me that, after 13-15 years of “education,” his lecture was the first time they had ever encountered the philosophical arguments for limited constitutional government. Like most Amerikan college students today, they had been taught since pre-school that the more unlimited the government, the better.

After picking Walter up at his hotel and driving to the campus I pointed out buildings housing Maryland death row. In typical Walter Williams fashion, he gazed out the window at the buildings and said, “they’re not big enough.”

One of the things that got me interested in economics in the first place as a college freshman was that in my first economics class the professor used a standard textbook and a reader entitled An Economist’s Protest by Milton Friedman. It was a collection of Friedman’s Newsweek magazine articles. Back in the late ‘60s and ‘70s Friedman and Paul Samuelson authored popular economic articles in the magazine on alternative weeks. I’d like to think that Walter’s thousands of syndicated columns have had a similar effect on many young people, a giant “multiplier effect” for the cause of a free society. In that sense Walter was the Frederic Bastiat of our day. Rest in peace my friend.

Eulogies

Eulogy for an Angel
1992-Dec. 20, 2005

Freedom
2003-2018

Freedom sm

My Father
1918-2010

brents dad

Dr. Stan Dale
1929-2007

stan dale

MICHAEL BADNARIK
1954-2022

L Neil Smith

A. Solzhenitsyn
1918-2008

solzhenitsyn

Patrick McGoohan
1928-2009

mcgoohan

Joseph A. Stack
1956-2010

Bill Walsh
1931-2007

Walter Cronkite
1916-2009

Eustace Mullins
1923-2010

Paul Harvey
1918-2009

Don Harkins
1963-2009

Joan Veon
1949-2010

David Nolan
1943-2010

Derry Brownfield
1932-2011

Leroy Schweitzer
1938-2011

Vaclav Havel
1936-2011

Andrew Breitbart
1969-2012

Dick Clark
1929-2012

Bob Chapman
1935-2012

Ray Bradbury
1920-2012

Tommy Cryer
1949-2012

Andy Griffith
1926-2012

Phyllis Diller
1917-2012

Larry Dever
1926-2012

Brian J. Chapman
1975-2012

Annette Funnicello
1942-2012

Margaret Thatcher
1925-2012

Richie Havens
1941-2013

Jack McLamb
1944-2014

James Traficant
1941-2014

jim traficant

Dr. Stan Monteith
1929-2014

stan montieth

Leonard Nimoy
1931-2015

Leonard Nimoy

Stan Solomon
1944-2015

Stan Solomon

B. B. King
1926-2015

BB King

Irwin Schiff
1928-2015

Irwin Schiff

DAVID BOWIE
1947-2016

David Bowie

Muhammad Ali
1942-2016

Muhammed Ali

GENE WILDER
1933-2016

gene wilder

phyllis schlafly
1924-2016

phylis schafly

John Glenn
1921-2016

John Glenn

Charles Weisman
1954-2016

Charles Weisman

Carrie Fisher
1956-2016

Carrie Fisher

Debbie Reynolds
1932-2016

Debbie Reynolds

Roger Moore
1917-2017

Roger Moore

Adam West
1928-2017

Adam West

JERRY LEWIS
1926-2017

jerry lewis

HUGH HEFNER
1926-2017

Hugh Hefner

PROF. STEPHEN HAWKING
1942-2018

Hugh Hefner 

ART BELL
1945-2018

Art Bell

DWIGHT CLARK
1947-2018

dwight clark

CARL MILLER
1952-2017

Carl Miller

HARLAN ELLISON
1934-2018

Harlan Ellison

STAN LEE
1922-2018

stan lee

CARL REINER
1922-2020

Carl Reiner

SEAN CONNERY
1930-2020

dwight clark

L. NEIL SMITH
1946-2021

L Neil Smith

JOHN STADTMILLER
1946-2021

L Neil Smith