Libertarianism

Nick Gillespie | From the May 2024 issue

Few individuals have had a bigger impact on the libertarian movement than David Boaz, the longtime executive vice president of the Cato Institute, D.C.'s most prominent think tank. For decades, virtually every idea and policy utterance that Cato published crossed his desk at some point, where it was scanned not just for grammar and punctuation but for coherence, persuasiveness, and ideological seriousness.

He also put his own thoughts out into the world, in innumerable columns, articles, and policy papers. In 1997, he published Libertarianism: A Primer, an encyclopedic yet succinct account of libertarian thought rich with real-world examples of how free speech, free trade, and the free movement of people created a richer and more interesting world. In 2015, he published an updated and revised version called The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom, which covered issues such as post-9/11 surveillance, "forever wars," the financial crisis, and Obamacare, along with libertarian successes in trade, drug policy, lifestyle issues, and other areas. If libertarians believed in required reading, these two volumes would be on that list.

Boaz recently turned 70 and gave a keynote address in February in Washington, D.C., at LibertyCon, the annual gathering of Students for Liberty. Nick Gillespie caught up with him at Reason's Washington office to discuss disarray in the libertarian movement, why he thinks the nonaggression principle and cosmopolitanism form the core of the movement, why libertarians can never seem to take wins, and whether there's anything to look forward to in a rematch of Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Reason: Having been in the libertarian movement for nearly half a century, how do you assess the current state of libertarian ideas and the broader libertarian movement?

Boaz: I think there are a lot more libertarian ideas. When I was in college and thought of myself as a libertarian—but also thought of libertarians as part of the conservative movement—who did we have as intellectuals? [Friedrich] Hayek and [Milton] Friedman and [Ludwig von] Mises.

It was kind of a good set of years there, because Hayek won the Nobel Prize in '74—which was stunning to us, because even as naive college students we knew nobody like that had won a Nobel Prize before. Then in 1975, [Robert] Nozick won the National Book Award, which really helped to put libertarianism on the map of political philosophers. Then in 1976, Friedman won the Nobel Prize. I was out of college then, but that period really boosted libertarian academic credentials.

These days, just like everybody says, we have nobody like [Ronald] Reagan and [Margaret] Thatcher. But in the time of Reagan and Thatcher, they said, "Where are the people like [Winston] Churchill and [Franklin] Roosevelt?" I look back and say, "Wow, weren't those great? And who is that today?" But at least one answer is there's a lot more libertarian intellectuals today. Maybe nobody is a Hayek these days, but there's definitely a lot more libertarianism in the academy, more libertarian intellectuals, more people reading those people. Some of them even get published by major publishers. There's more of that, and I think that means there's more people who think of themselves as libertarians.

What's the essence of libertarianism for you?

To me, the essence of libertarianism is the nonaggression principle. You have no right to initiate force against people who have not initiated force against you. From that comes freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of property and markets, ideally within an ethos of cosmopolitanism and pluralism and tolerance. At that point, we're kind of talking about liberalism, and these days I'm worried not just about libertarianism, but about liberalism.

Cosmopolitanism, tolerance, pluralism—where do those come from and why should those be interconnected? If we compare the nonaggression principle to the core of a nuclear reactor, why should the surrounding framework be akin to cosmopolitanism?

I think libertarianism is set within classical liberalism, and I think of libertarianism as the intellectual core of liberalism, the intellectual vanguard. I often say I'd like to be part of a libertarian intellectual vanguard leading a broader liberal movement. And for my whole career, we haven't had that. We've had liberals divided into people who emphasize free markets and people who emphasize civil liberties and tolerance and equality under the law for all. Libertarians have not had a great record on equality under the law for all, although I think it's clearly inherent in what we believe. But you didn't see many libertarians involved in the Civil Rights Movement, critical of Jim Crow, and they should have been, and they should have been out there.

The Cato Institute, where you've spent most of your career, was founded in 1977 in San Francisco. How did it come into being?

Ed Crane was in Washington running the MacBride for President campaign in 1976, and he observed that [the American Enterprise Institute] and Brookings had a significant influence on limited budgets. And he said, "There ought to be a libertarian think tank, one representing the values of the American Revolution." So he talked to Charles Koch, who had money to help. And Charles said, "OK, I'll put some money up if you'll run it." And he said, "Well, you don't want me to run it because it needs to be in Washington, and I'm going back to San Francisco." And, as he used to tell........

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