Thomas Woods

Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Woods in February 2011.
Born	( 1972-08-01) August 1, 1972 Melrose, Massachusetts
School or tradition	Austrian School
Alma mater	Harvard University (B.A.) Columbia University (M.Phil., Ph.D.)
Influences	Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, Ralph Raico, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Ron Paul, Robert Nisbet, Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Website	.comtomwoods

Thomas E. "Tom" Woods, Jr. (born August 1, 1972) is an American historian, political analyst, and author.^[1] Woods is a New York Times best-selling author and has published eleven books.^[2] He has written extensively on the subjects of American history, contemporary politics, and economics. Woods identifies as a libertarian and a proponent of the Austrian school of economics. He operates LibertyClassroom.com, a pay-for-access educational website that offers audio and video content on topics in history, economics, and philosophy.^[3]

Education and affiliations

Woods holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Columbia University, both in History. He is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama and a member of the editorial board for the Institute's Libertarian Papers.^[4] Woods is also an associate scholar of the Abbeville Institute, in McClellanville, South Carolina. The Abbeville Institute promotes the cultural inheritance of the American Southern tradition as "a valuable intellectual and spiritual resource for exposing and correcting the errors of American modernity," as opposed to "colleges and universities [which] have come to be dominated by the ideologies of multiculturalism and political correctness.^[5]

Woods was an ISI Richard M. Weaver Fellow in 1995–96.^[6] He received the 2004 O.P. Alford III Prize for Libertarian Scholarship and an Olive W. Garvey Fellowship from the Independent Institute in 2003.

He has additionally been awarded two Humane Studies Fellowships and a Claude R. Lambe Fellowship from the secession and "counsels 'white Southerners' that they should not 'give control over their civilization and its institutions to another race, whether it be native blacks or Hispanic immigrants'".^[17] A winter 2006 Intelligence Report by the Southern Poverty Law Center also criticized Woods' membership in the League, which the report described as "a Southern secessionist group with white supremacist ideology".^[18] Eric L. Muller, a professor and associate dean at the University of North Carolina School of Law, wrote that Woods was "a frequent contributor to the League's journal, The Southern Patriot, and has spoken at its conventions"; Muller also wrote that Woods, in an essay for the League's journal (the Southern Patriot), had characterized nineteenth-century abolitionists as "utterly reprehensible agitators who put metaphysical abstractions ahead of prudence, charity, and rationality".^[19][20]

Woods replied on the blog ^[21]

Controversy on League of the South membership

The conservative's traditional sympathy for the American South and its people and heritage, evident in the works of such great American conservatives as Richard M. Weaver and Russell Kirk, began to disappear.... [T]he neocons are heavily influenced by Woodrow Wilson, with perhaps a hint of Theodore Roosevelt.... They believe in an aggressive U.S. presence practically everywhere, and in the spread of democracy around the world, by force if necessary.... Neoconservatives tend to want more efficient government agencies; paleoconservatives want fewer government agencies. They generally admire President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his heavily interventionist New Deal policies. Neoconservatives have not exactly been known for their budget consciousness, and you won’t hear them talking about making any serious inroads into the federal apparatus.^[16]

Of the latter he writes:

Woods makes a sharp distinction between paleoconservative thinkers with whom he sympathizes, and neoconservative thinkers. In articles, lectures and interviews Woods traces the intellectual and political distinction between the older conservative, or paleoconservative, school of thought and the neoconservative school of thought.

Tom Woods at CPAC in February 2010.

Views on conservatism

Woods' book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History was on The New York Times Best Seller list for paperbacks in 2005.^[1] His 2009 book Meltdown also made the bestseller list in 2009.^[14] His writing has been published in numerous popular and scholarly periodicals, including the American Historical Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Investor's Business Daily, Modern Age, American Studies, Journal of Markets & Morality, New Oxford Review, The Freeman, Independent Review, Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, AD2000, Crisis, Human Rights Review, Catholic Historical Review, the Catholic Social Science Review and The American Conservative.^[15]

Woods was received into the Roman Catholic Church from Lutheranism.^[9] He wrote How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. For eleven years, he was associate editor of The Latin Mass Magazine, which advocates traditional Catholicism. As a traditionalist Catholic,^[10] Woods advocates what he calls the Old Latin Mass^[11] and cultural conservatism.^[12][13]

Woods' best-selling 2004 book

Catholicism, American history, and Politically Incorrect Guide

Woods is co-editor of an eleven-volume collection of articles, Exploring American History: From Colonial Times to 1877.

^[8].Templeton Enterprise Awards won the $50,000 first prize in the 2006 The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, His 2005 book, [7]