When I first came to Washington to work for the Heritage Foundation, there were a few think tanks that made the nerd in me stand a little bit in awe. First, of course, was Heritage, but the second was the Cato Institute.
Heritage was conservative and Cato libertarian, but both seem roughly on the same side. They differed as to how far things should go, but they were both always in opposition to the left. Conservatives wanted constitutionally limited government; libertarians wanted as close to no government as possible.
That’s an overly simplistic way of putting it, but it illustrates what libertarians used to be.
And then, somewhere along the line, they morphed from libertarians to liberal-tarians. It’s amazing what money can do.
I remember vividly attending an election night party in 2008 with my good friend Mike Flynn, who was then the editor-in-chief of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website, a couple of years before they relaunched as Breitbart News. It was a libertarian organization’s party — no one had high hopes for that night. What stuck with Mike and me was that, when each state was called for Obama, the crowd cheered.
Mike, who has since passed away, was livid. He has worked in libertarian think tanks and organizations, knowing all of the people there, and he could not believe what we were witnessing.
Republican nominee........