Thomas James DiLorenzo (; born August 8, 1954) is an American author and former university economics professor who is the President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He has written books denouncing President Abraham Lincoln and is well known among economists for his work chronicling the history of antitrust policy in the United States.
He is a research fellow at The Independent Institute,Thomas DiLorenzo profile at The Independent Institute website, accessed November 22, 2013. Board of Advisors member at CFACT, and an associate of the Abbeville Institute.Abbeville Institute associates list , accessed November 22, 2013. He identifies with the Austrian School of economics.Interview with Thomas DiLorenzo at Ludwig von Mises Institute website, August 16, 2010. He has spoken in favor of secession and has been described as an ally of, or part of, the neo-Confederate movement.
Life and work Thomas James DiLorenzo grew up in western Pennsylvania, descended from Italian immigrants. In an essay he attributed his individualism to playing sports. He began to study libertarianism in college.DiLorenzo, Thomas, "The Evil of Politics", LewRockwell.com, 25 December 2002.
He has a BA in economics from Westminster College in Pennsylvania., The Daily Bell, 16 May 2010, published by High Alert Capital Partners. He holds a PhD in Economics from Virginia Tech.
DiLorenzo has taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo,Thomas J. DiLorenoz, Book Review : The Public's Business: The Politics and Practices of Government Corporations, Public Finance Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1, January 1981, 117–119 George Mason University,James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo, "Poverty, Politics, and Jurisprudence: Illegalities at the Legal Services Corporation", Policy Analysis No. 49, Cato Institute, February 26, 1985. and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.Thomas J. DiLorenzo, "The subjectivist roots of James Buchanan's economics", The Review of Austrian Economics, Volume 4, Issue 1, 1990, pp. 180–195.
He is a former adjunct fellow of the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University in St. Louis.Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Suburban Legends: Why "Smart Growth" Is Not So Smart , Washington University in St. Louis Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, "Contemporary Issues", Series 97, November 1999. From 1992 to 2020, he was a professor of economics at Loyola University Maryland Sellinger School of Business. As of 2020, DiLorenzo was no longer listed as active faculty at Loyola University, and instead as a professor emeritus. He is a research fellow at the Independent Institute.
DiLorenzo is a speaker at Mises Institute events and teaches some of its online courses.Thomas DiLorenzo profile , at the Ludwig von Mises Institute website, accessed November 22, 2013. He writes for the blog LewRockwell.com.Archive of DiLorenzo commentary for LewRockwell.com. He was listed as an affiliated scholar though 2009 of the Institute for the Study of Southern Culture, which is run by the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 2004 described DiLorenzo as one of 10 key ideologues in the neo-Confederate movement.
Views DiLorenzo writes about what he calls "the myth of Lincoln" in American history and politics. He has said, "Lincoln is on record time after time rejecting the idea of racial equality. But whenever anyone brings this up, the Lincoln partisans go to the extreme to smear the bearer of bad news."Thomas DiLorenzo, "Confronting the Lincoln Cult,", Mises Daily, 3 June 2002] DiLorenzo has spoken out in favor of the secession of the Confederate States of America, defending the right of these states to secede from an abolitionist perspective.Thomas DiLorenzo, "An Abolitionist Defends the South,", LewRockwell.com, October 20, 2004]. He has described himself as a historical revisionist. He has called the American Civil War the "War for Southern Independence".
DiLorenzo is critical of Alexander Hamilton's financial views, the concept of "implied powers" in the Constitution, the existence of a federal bank, and the use of Keynesian economics to increase the national debt.
DiLorenzo is critical of neoconservatism and military interventionism.
DiLorenzo is critical of the Sherman Act, noting that "the Sherman Act was never intended to protect competition. It was a blatantly protectionist act designed to shield smaller and less efficient businesses from their larger competitors. There never was a golden age of antitrust."
DiLorenzo referred to Israel's response to Hamas for the attacks on October 7, as a genocide.
DiLorenzo is against The Pledge of Allegiance, in his essay Pledging Allegiance to the Omnipotent Lincolnian State, he argues The Pledge promotes a Post-Civil War Centralist ideology opposed to the Founding Fathers decentralized vision, and claims the ritual solely exists to foster loyalty to the federal government. DiLorenzo highlights The Pledge's writer Francis Bellamy’s socialist background, arguing the Pledge represents a step toward socialism.
DiLorenzo invokes this quote from Bellamy as an example of what he argues is a repudiation of Jeffersonian federalism and states’ rights.
Books DiLorenzo has written extensively on Abraham Lincoln. According to one historian, "Most historians are inclined to dismiss DiLorenzo as a crackpot. But... his books generally sell better than those of academic 'Lincolnologists' and... [his] views help lay the foundation for conservative political action today", historian David Blight has recently suggested that we ignore these writings at our peril."
DiLorenzo's book The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War is a critical biography published in 2002.Thomas DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, Random House LLC, 2002, . Writing for The Daily Beast, Rich Lowry described DiLorenzo's technique in this book as the following: "His scholarship, such as it is, consists of rummaging through the record for anything he can find to damn Lincoln, stripping it of any nuance or context, and piling on pejorative adjectives. In DiLorenzo, the Lincoln-haters have found a champion with the judiciousness and the temperament they deserve."
In a review published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, David Gordon described DiLorenzo's thesis: Lincoln was a "white supremacist" with no principled interest in abolishing slavery, and believed in a strong central government that imposed high tariffs and a nationalized banking system. He attributes the South's secession to Lincoln's economic policies rather than a desire to preserve slavery. Gordon quotes DiLorenzo: "slavery was already in sharp decline in the border states and the upper South generally, mostly for economic reasons".David Gordon review of Thomas J. DiLorenzo, "The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War" , The Mises Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, February 2002.
Reviewing for The Independent Review, the magazine of The Independent Institute, a think tank associated with DiLorenzo, Richard M. Gamble of Palm Beach Atlantic University said that the book "manages to raise fresh and morally probing questions" and that DiLorenzo "writes primarily not as a defender of the Old South and its institutions, culture, and traditions, but as a libertarian enemy of the Leviathan state" but bemoans that DiLorenzo was "careless" in his handling of sources and despite his "evident courage and ability", his execution was lacking. Gamble concludes that the book is a "travesty of historical method and documentation". He said the book was plagued by a "labyrinth of [historical and grammatical] errors", and that DiLorenzo has "earned the... ridicule of his critics."Gamble, Richard M. "The Real Lincoln: Book review" The Independent Review .
In a review for the Claremont Institute, historian Ken Masugi writes that "DiLorenzo adopts as his own the fundamental mistake of leftist multi-culturalist historians: confusing the issue of race with the much more fundamental one, which was slavery." He noted that in Illinois "the anti-slavery forces actually joined with racists to keep their state free of slavery, and also free of blacks." Masugi called DiLorenzo's work "shabby" and stated that DiLorenzo's treatment of Lincoln was "feckless" and that the book is "truly awful".Ken Masugi is an academic in the fields of American history and multiculturalism at Johns Hopkins University and the Claremont Institute. See: In 2002, DiLorenzo debated Claremont Institute fellow professor Harry V. Jaffa on the merits of Abraham Lincoln's statesmanship before and during the Civil War.
DiLorenzo's book, Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe (2007), continues his explorations begun in The Real Lincoln.Thomas DiLorenzo, Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe, Random House LLC, 2007, Reviews in The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly both stated that the book seemed directed at unnamed scholars who had praised Lincoln's contributions. Justin Ewers criticized DiLorenzo, saying this book "is more of a diatribe against a mostly unnamed group of Lincoln scholars than a real historical analysis. His wild assertions – for example, that Lincoln held 'lifelong white supremacist views' – don't help his argument." Publishers Weekly described this as a "laughable screed," in which DiLorenzo "charges that most scholars of the Civil War are part of a 'Lincoln cult';" he particularly attacks scholar Eric Foner, characterizing him and others as "cover-up artists" and "propagandists". Ethan S. Rafuse wrote that Lincoln Unmasked "was characterized by one reviewer as 'like a monkey throwing feces in a zoo.' Review by John Deppen in Civil War News (January 2009)".Rafuse, Ethan S. Review of Michael Burlingame. Lincoln and the Civil War. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, vol. 33, issue 2, Summer 2012, pp. 53-55, n.6.
Writing for the Mises Institute that DiLorenzo leads, David Gordon summarises DiLorenzo's thesis: that Lincoln opposed the extension of slavery to new states because black labor would compete with white labor; that Lincoln hoped that all blacks would eventually be deported to Africa in order that white laborers could have more work. According to Gordon, DiLorenzo states that Lincoln supported emancipation of slaves only as a wartime expedient to help defeat the South.David Gordon review of Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe, Mises Review, Vol. 13, No. 2, February 2007.
In a 2009 review of three newly published books on Lincoln, historian Brian Dirck linked the earlier work of Thomas DiLorenzo with that of Lerone Bennett, another critic of Lincoln. He wrote that "Few Civil War scholars take Bennett and DiLorenzo seriously, pointing to their narrow political agenda and faulty research."Dirck, Brian. Review: "Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery, and: Act of Justice: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War, and: Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment (review)", Civil War History, September 2009, Vol. 55, No. 3; pp. 382–385
DiLorenzo's 2008 book Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution--and What It Means for Americans Today expands on DiLorenzo's libertarian, small government views and details ideological differences between "Hamiltonians" and "Jeffersonians" in the role of the central government.
League of the South involvement