0:00

This is the reason interview with

0:02

Nick Gillespie. Please rate, review, and

0:04

subscribe to this podcast wherever you

0:07

find it. Today's guest is

0:09

my reason colleague Brian Doherty, who

0:11

has just published modern libertarianism, a

0:14

brief history of classical liberalism in

0:16

the United States. His previous books

0:18

include radicals for capitalism, the absolutely

0:21

indispensable history of the libertarian

0:23

movement. and other titles of his

0:25

cover the Ron Paul Revolution, Gun

0:28

Rights, Burning Man, and Underground comic

0:30

books. Modern Libertarianism

0:32

analyzes the legacies of figures

0:34

such as Ludwig von Miesz's,

0:36

F. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Milton

0:39

Friedman, and Barry Goldwater. We

0:41

talk about Ein Rand and

0:43

the other two women who

0:45

helped conceptualize the Libertarian thought

0:47

at the very beginning of

0:50

the movement. Rosewiler Lane and

0:52

Isabel Patterson. And we discuss

0:54

how libertarians have played leading

0:56

roles, if often overlooked roles,

0:58

in battles about free speech,

1:01

international trade, immigration, deregulation,

1:03

drug legalization, and

1:05

lifestyle liberation. This interview

1:07

was recorded at the Reason Speakeasy,

1:10

a live, monthly event in New

1:12

York City. Check the show notes

1:14

for more information on that. Here is

1:17

the Reason interview with Brian

1:19

Doherty. This

1:25

is the Reason

1:28

interview with Nick

1:30

Gillespie. Thank you.

1:32

Thank you so

1:35

much for coming

1:37

out. Tonight's guest

1:39

is Brian Doherty.

1:42

My longtime colleague

1:44

at Reason Magazine

1:47

and the author of

1:49

a shelfful of interesting

1:52

books. Which that streak

1:54

ended with this one,

1:57

right? But now this

1:59

is. really great, tight, brief history

2:01

of classical liberalism in the United States

2:03

called Modern Libertarianism. It's published by the

2:06

Cato Institute. Brian, first off, thanks for

2:08

coming out. Of course, that's a joy.

2:10

And let's talk a little bit about

2:12

why this book now. I mean, in

2:15

a way, this book is a prim,

2:17

it's not a primer in a textbook.

2:19

Yeah. Yeah. So I had visited the

2:21

topic of the history of libertarian ideas

2:24

in America before in a much longer

2:26

and harder to get through book and

2:28

I did feel in the these these

2:30

inflationary times or whatever you call these

2:33

times that I did want to return

2:35

to the basics of libertarian thought in

2:37

a simple way and because we're human

2:39

beings and just in the actuality of

2:41

human reality it's certain human beings promulgated

2:44

that these ideas were successful in promulgating

2:46

them it it becomes about a bunch

2:48

of people but really it ultimately is

2:50

and should be about the ideas but

2:53

the people are fun to contemplate especially

2:55

when you The book's narrative mostly starts

2:57

in the mid-40s, you know, it's a

2:59

wartime centralization, you know, fascism, fighting to

3:02

take over the globe. It seems so

3:04

different from today's. The New Deal and,

3:06

you know, wartime centralization really upset people

3:08

who believed in what were then called

3:11

19th century classical liberal values. And one

3:13

of the great fun of this book

3:15

to me is how very embattled and...

3:17

Strange these characters had to be to

3:20

believe this stuff because no one did

3:22

like it's a common theme in here

3:24

like one of the characters is a

3:26

woman named Isabel Patterson who wrote a

3:28

great foundational book called the God of

3:31

the Machine That's not read enough these

3:33

days But if you read it you'll

3:35

feel like oh this is all the

3:37

stuff libertarians have been saying for the

3:40

last six years and she actually had

3:42

a position of respectability within the New

3:44

York intellectual circles There was a paper

3:46

then called the New York Herald Tribune

3:49

not around any But she was a

3:51

prominent book critic for that. So she

3:53

knew the big fancy thinkers and Edmund

3:55

Wilson was a friend of hers, the

3:58

famous critic, and he actually told her,

4:00

to quote in the book, I might

4:02

mangle it a little, but she was

4:04

like, Isabel, you are the last person

4:07

who believes in the ideals upon which

4:09

this American Republic was founded. And it

4:11

was common that all of these people

4:13

thought that they were the only one.

4:15

And when they found each other in

4:18

the archival work, that I've done in

4:20

Liberace and Jose has been a lot

4:22

of fun because they all wrote each

4:24

other, they all hatched things over, like

4:27

it was more of a gang than

4:29

a movement, like literally through the 60s

4:31

it was like a dozen or more

4:33

people who made up the actual intellectual

4:36

content. I mean they had an audience

4:38

that got into the tens of thousands

4:40

or even hundreds of thousands, but it

4:42

was a very small group of people

4:45

and so they were eccentric. Yeah, they

4:47

found each other and then... You know,

4:49

then they started. Exactly. Well, you mentioned,

4:51

you know, kind of their characters. Isabel

4:54

Patterson is a really interesting character. And

4:56

Brian's previous kind of authoritative history of

4:58

the modern libertarian movement is called radicals

5:00

for capitalism. Highly, highly recommend it, but.

5:02

And I know you talk about Patterson

5:05

and that and in other writings, but

5:07

she only had two years of formal

5:09

education. Yeah, yeah, her and Rose Wilder

5:11

Lane, who was kind of her analog

5:14

in a lot of ways, as the

5:16

book tells it, like it's kind of

5:18

thing libertarians are. a little bit proud

5:20

of, you probably hear it from Libertarians

5:23

a lot, that 1943, kind of three

5:25

foundational texts of the movement, came out

5:27

all written by women. This is really

5:29

in many ways a woman founded movement.

5:32

One of them was a Patterson book

5:34

I just mentioned, one was a Iran's

5:36

novel, the fountainhead, and the one was

5:38

a Patterson book I just mentioned, one

5:41

was Einstein, one was Einstein, the West

5:43

America, that was unprecedentedly, rich and free,

5:45

and they tried to figure out why

5:47

and explained why, and in doing so.

5:49

they basically promulgated the values of libertarianism,

5:52

private property, maximal individual freedom. And they

5:54

both stressed that it was about ideas

5:56

that like. I mean you could argue

5:58

this and some have, but to them

6:01

America's success was ideological. Like it wasn't

6:03

about natural resources, it wasn't about the

6:05

character of the people, it was about

6:07

that the country was run by a

6:10

set of ideas that allowed for the

6:12

flourishing of freedom and wealth and they

6:14

were very afraid in World War II

6:16

times that these values were being... crushed

6:19

and so they tried to revive them

6:21

and they failed completely like both of

6:23

them were reasonably successful. Rose Wilder Lane

6:25

had been a popular novel. She was

6:28

a big writer for the Saturday evening

6:30

post when that was a big deal.

6:32

She is, this is a little controversial

6:34

in Laura Ingalls Wild Scholarship, but a

6:36

lot of people believe she more or

6:39

less ghost wrote her mother, Laura Ingalls

6:41

Wild, there's little housebooks. She was a

6:43

big figure. She clearly edited them significantly

6:45

edited them significantly and I mean. I

6:48

don't think we need to assign authorship,

6:50

but without her, those books would not

6:52

have seen print at all, probably, and

6:54

certainly not in the form, that thing.

6:57

I think that's fair, but like both

6:59

of them, Rand actually succeeded with her

7:01

fiction and launching a great career. Patterson

7:03

and Lane both kind of ended their

7:06

careers by writing these books about a

7:08

bunch of ideas that no one cared

7:10

about, and they kind of both, you

7:12

know, they both had, rural, you know,

7:14

Rose lived, her mother's books. In a

7:17

way, Isabel Patterson was also from the

7:19

West. They both married guys when they

7:21

were young and kind of like lost

7:23

track of them very quickly. Yeah, and

7:26

that's not with Patterson in part too.

7:28

I mean, she is probably the least

7:30

well known because she doesn't have the

7:32

Little House connection or Rands. But Isabel

7:35

Patterson, I mean, where was she from?

7:37

She has two years of education. She

7:39

ends up in New York with a

7:41

husband who's like. I don't know I

7:44

was putting boxes out one day and

7:46

like yeah he just never came back.

7:48

She was a classic American frontiers woman

7:50

and you know and she one of

7:53

the things she said that's quoted in

7:55

the book is that you know a

7:57

lot of people think that that that

7:59

life teaches you that you need to

8:01

be a cussed rugged complete you know

8:04

disconnected individualist and she knew and it's

8:06

very libertarian though a lot of people

8:08

don't associate libertarianism with this idea that

8:10

no the way things have to work

8:13

out on the frontiers, people had to

8:15

cooperate. But it was best she believed

8:17

when they cooperated freely. It was not

8:19

a matter of being a super rugged

8:22

individualist. And she ended up in the

8:24

big city. She was a very kind

8:26

of Dorothy Parker-like character, but she didn't

8:28

have the right ideas to be part

8:31

of that crowd. She was a witty,

8:33

singular woman who thought herself kind of

8:35

above the herd and smarter than everyone

8:37

else, and in many ways she was.

8:40

And she's fun to contemplate. You know,

8:42

you know, this book is very brief

8:44

and tight, you'll learn a little bit

8:46

about her if you become fascinated with

8:48

her, you know, my radical is for

8:51

capitalism, has more. And yeah, great character

8:53

and all. Where can I ask, you

8:55

know, you said, and I mean, we'll

8:57

come back to the question of women.

9:00

in some meaningful way, kind of starting

9:02

the libertarian movement or kind of creating

9:04

the broad universe that gets filled in.

9:06

But in a second, but with Patterson

9:09

and Rosewether Lane and certainly Ran too,

9:11

you know, there's a sense that it's

9:13

ideas. Like does Patterson or Lane talk

9:15

about where did those ideas come from?

9:18

Is there any kind of sociology or

9:20

intellectual history or is it just kind

9:22

of like... They came over on the

9:24

May flower. Kind of like their books

9:27

are not books for the solid intellectual

9:29

history. And in fact, Lane's was kind

9:31

of eccentric. She was very into Islamic

9:33

civilization. She saw a lot of the

9:35

ideas of Liberty First, you know, flowering

9:38

and Islamic civilization around, you know, the,

9:40

I guess, 800s to the 1100. She

9:42

talks about that a lot. Yeah, I

9:44

wouldn't say they're the place to go

9:47

to like... learn, oh well Adam Smith,

9:49

Ledman Mill, and all that, like those

9:51

ideas underlay them, but they were not

9:53

trying to provide intellectual history. They were

9:56

just trying to say, okay, how is

9:58

it that we keep a culture and

10:00

a country that's rich and free and

10:02

they felt that was going away and

10:05

they wanted to remind people. Talk a

10:07

little. bit about you know the the

10:09

irony of you know Lane Patterson Rand

10:11

being big at the beginning of a

10:14

movement that you know this is actually

10:16

a pretty good gender-mixed you know group

10:18

but for a long time one of

10:20

the slams or maybe just acute observations

10:22

of the libertarian movement is that it

10:25

was heavily male. You know what what

10:27

can you say about? Yeah, I mean,

10:29

it had been heavily mailed, certainly when

10:31

I came up with it when I

10:34

was young. I don't want to speculate

10:36

about why that is. I mean, especially

10:38

pre-21st century, you kind of had to

10:40

be a bit of a self-conscious weirdo,

10:43

you know, to get into this stuff.

10:45

And that's the thing that I like.

10:47

And now that weirdness is for, it's

10:49

a medical diagnosis. Yeah, I mean, because

10:52

Lane and this is, I mean, why

10:54

were, why, you know, and I guess

10:56

maybe you could argue that it's true

10:58

of, you know, like, uh, hard left

11:01

culture was more dominated by men than

11:03

women too. But I mean, like, if

11:05

you had ran Patterson and Lane kind

11:07

of at the top of stuff, why

11:09

weren't there? More ladies I don't have

11:12

any answer to that I mean and

11:14

they're happy you know we the the

11:16

magazine That we both work for we

11:18

were both hired by a female editor

11:21

Virginia Pustral who took over when she

11:23

was in her 20s which I think

11:25

from from another female editor So yeah,

11:27

it's not I think it is true

11:30

that the masses such as they were

11:32

of libertarians skewed male, but like the

11:34

the makers and the doers and the

11:36

idea the idea pushers never were yeah

11:39

lame and this quote is in the

11:41

book and she points out that you

11:43

know, in the 50s context, if they

11:45

got wind, literally, that there was a

11:48

bright high school student somewhere that believed

11:50

in this stuff, like that would be

11:52

a moment of great excitement and a

11:54

moment of great work and they'd all

11:56

start writing that bright high school and

11:59

really try to reel them in and

12:01

that's how tiny it was. And you

12:03

know, the biggest funding organization for... these

12:05

ideas in the 50s, it's called the

12:08

Volker Fund, which dissolved in very colorful

12:10

circumstances in the early 60s. You know,

12:12

they couldn't work like a modern funding

12:14

organization that's like, oh, well, we'll put

12:17

out the notice that we're accepting grant

12:19

applications. Like, they had to go find

12:21

people to support and give money to,

12:23

and they hired Rose Wilder, Elena Murray

12:26

Roth, to like scour academic journals for

12:28

people who believed in any of the

12:30

stuff. And one of the program officers,

12:32

Richard Cornell, who I interviewed and this

12:34

quote is in the book, he's like,

12:37

when we would find one of these

12:39

people and approach them, like it would

12:41

often be tearful. They were just like

12:43

their heart. burst to realize, oh my

12:46

God, there's other people who believe in

12:48

the stuff like that. And they have

12:50

money. Maybe that's the real problem. And

12:52

like, you know, the whole, like six

12:55

different Nobel Prize winners in economics got

12:57

supported by the Volker Fund. Yeah, who

12:59

started the Volker Fund? A guy named

13:01

William Volker who was just kind of

13:04

a rich civic guy in Kansas City,

13:06

but it was run by a fellow

13:08

named Lou now. Yeah. And yeah, he...

13:10

kind of fell under the spell of

13:13

Christian reconstructionism and this story is a

13:15

little bit in this book in more

13:17

in detail and radicals for capitalism. He

13:19

just decided that he was surrounded by

13:21

a bunch of nutty libertarian atheists and

13:24

he just sort of stopped funding things.

13:26

It's a little more complicated than that.

13:28

Was libertarianism in the 40s and 50s

13:30

closely identified with atheism or? anti-religion or

13:33

not necessarily? Well, and it should have

13:35

been if it wasn't, because Ein Rand,

13:37

who was the leader, was militantly atheist.

13:39

And yeah, certainly, you know, there was

13:42

a lot of commingling between what would

13:44

now and even then be called the

13:46

American Right, or a conservative movement in

13:48

the 40s and 50s. and the libertarian

13:51

movement because they were united at least

13:53

in their desire like roll back the

13:55

new deal and you know and business

13:57

regulations and such like but they they

14:00

disagreed a lot on foreign policy and

14:02

the libertarian and was more likely to

14:04

be atheist Leonard Reed who founded the

14:06

first recognizably modern libertarian educational, you know,

14:08

idea pushing operation, which is still around.

14:11

He called it the Foundation for Economic

14:13

Education, which is an important idea. I'll

14:15

get back to, he was a real

14:17

religious weirdo. He was, if you read

14:20

his journals, which I got the chance

14:22

to, he, it seemed pretty, there was

14:24

a lot of acid actually flowing. I

14:26

mean, LSD, had a lot of, I

14:29

don't know, I don't think I get

14:31

into that a lot of this book,

14:33

this book, this book is, They got

14:35

to say something for the safe. Yeah,

14:38

this book is kind of aimed at,

14:40

you know, a kind of younger audience

14:42

almost. Yeah, and they don't want to

14:44

hear about acid. Because the reality we

14:47

live in is so great. There was

14:49

a lot of kind of Eastern mysticism

14:51

to read. So talk a bit about

14:53

his asset eating. I mean, he's like

14:55

a, it's not a thousand percent confirmed,

14:58

but I from reading. His friends definitely

15:00

were. You know you were on asset

15:02

when you were reading. There was a

15:04

friend if you're into like the history

15:07

of Eastern. mysticism in America, you might

15:09

have photographed a guy named Gerald Hurd.

15:11

And Gerald Hurd was part of Reed's

15:13

circle. Yeah, Gerald Hurd is one of

15:16

the great popularizers and kind of spreaders

15:18

of syllasybin and mescalate. So I know

15:20

there's some who argued that Reed did

15:22

not actually do it. I think from

15:25

what I read in the journals that

15:27

he did, even though in a certain

15:29

point he denied it, but actually, but

15:31

he knew people would be reading these

15:34

things he knew. So I think it

15:36

was so he was but he was

15:38

but he was a super mystic like

15:40

if you read his stuff I pencil

15:42

his essay is like one of the

15:45

words like thinking like how you look

15:47

at a pencil he was really false

15:49

he's like really in the whole universe

15:51

right and this really is like I'm

15:54

making light of it because it's it's

15:56

goofy in a way but it really

15:58

is one of the best essays about

16:00

how a free economy works like the

16:03

ideas he's looking at it and he

16:05

comes to the realization like no here

16:07

it is I have this I have

16:09

a drawer full of them nobody knows

16:12

how to make a pencil. No one

16:14

can make a pencil. Like only a

16:16

world straddling connected through intelligence and the

16:18

price system somehow gets together the metal

16:21

of the feral and the wood and

16:23

it really does explain the free market.

16:25

is like a miracle when you really

16:27

think about it man. When you drop,

16:29

when the acid kicks it, right? Yeah.

16:32

Yeah, it's a miracle. And it's true.

16:34

So I penciled by Leno Green. Talk

16:36

about fee a little bit because that's

16:38

another like the Volker fund. And one

16:41

of the things I find really interesting

16:43

about this book if you're, many of

16:45

you will know a lot of the

16:47

stories and why not, but this. does

16:50

a great job of sketching kind of

16:52

the, it's like an economic and intellectual

16:54

infrastructure. You mentioned the Volker Fund is

16:56

like, you know, dollar for dollar, like,

16:59

produced more Nobel Prize winners than like

17:01

anything else in the world. And fee

17:03

also had like early, I mean, like

17:05

they funded a lot of people. really

17:07

important publishing. Milton Friedman, you know, and

17:10

Rand was involved in the early days,

17:12

and she actually was true. You know,

17:14

we alluded to, but didn't really get

17:16

into how contentious this whole world was,

17:19

like, and it's still the case of

17:21

this day, every libertarian, other libertarian, other

17:23

libertarian, other libertarian, other libertarian, other libertarian,

17:25

for some reason, and, and Rand was

17:28

upset because they made these kind of

17:30

economicistic, right? So they didn't say, like,

17:32

no, it's morally wrong to tell a

17:34

person that they can't rent the property

17:37

that they own at whatever price they

17:39

want. Freedmen were economicistic. And Reid, and

17:41

here's the big division between Reid and

17:43

Rand, and I said I'd get more

17:46

into why Reid called it the Foundation

17:48

for Economic Education. There was a strand,

17:50

and I think Leonard Reid and Milton

17:52

Friedman represent this a lot, who thought

17:54

that there wasn't really a war of

17:57

values. They just maybe don't understand how

17:59

to get it or what's necessary for

18:01

it to function, but if they understood

18:03

free market economics, it would all work.

18:06

And Rand and Murray Rothbart, who we

18:08

haven't mentioned, kind of had a different

18:10

attitude, which I actually think thickened the

18:12

mix in a way that's interesting and

18:15

true. It's just not true that if

18:17

you could explain to everybody that, oh,

18:19

well, that policy is, you know, creating,

18:21

you know. distributing benefits, but like, you

18:24

know, distributing concentrated benefits, but diffuse costs,

18:26

and that's the incentive structure of that

18:28

is bad, and it's like, no one,

18:30

I mean, most people, when you break

18:33

it down, they're like, okay, yeah, let's,

18:35

yeah, let's impose a diffuse cost. You

18:37

got the concentrated benefits, because they know

18:39

some people like, oh, it's great. It's

18:41

like you're seeing this today with... with

18:44

Doe, just like everyone, you know, every

18:46

government job is a job, right? Someone

18:48

has that job. Their family depends on

18:50

it. It seems really cruel to end

18:53

it. So Rand, especially sort of thought

18:55

that, no, there's a lot of... The

18:57

evil she would call it like no

18:59

these people are within with envy and

19:02

they do not want to see others

19:04

succeed and and I think that is

19:06

an element of humanity that can be

19:08

in the Rothboarder to emphasize the class

19:11

war aspect of it not in the

19:13

Marxist sense But that there's the class

19:15

of people who benefit from government the

19:17

bureaucrats the people who work for the

19:20

government the people who get more in

19:22

benefits and they give in tax these

19:24

are ran would call them looters and

19:26

moachers exactly and and you can't just

19:28

Explain to them that that's economically inefficient

19:31

or it reduces human liberty like they

19:33

don't care. They're they're benefiting from it.

19:35

So But then how does Rand or

19:37

Rothboard? Suggest that you convince those people

19:40

because you're telling them you're you're completely

19:42

useless. Well with Rand you start with

19:44

existence exists. Yeah and you know A's

19:46

A and things like what they are

19:49

and that's when then I I reach

19:51

for the assay. more than any of

19:53

the others really did think like the

19:55

politics to her was like the third

19:58

step like she she built up this

20:00

whole philosophy she called it Objectivism that

20:02

that you can study as you wish

20:04

or garage as you wish and the

20:07

politics was a derivation of that so

20:09

Rand actually hated being called a libertarian

20:11

because she's like I'm not I'm not

20:13

I'm an objectivist and a certain set

20:15

of political ideas that Absolutely are. But

20:18

she did not work hard. I mean

20:20

Rand, you know, and you've mentioned this

20:22

more than anybody is the great kind

20:24

of popularizer of libertarian ideas or kind

20:27

of any of people who grow to

20:29

disagree with her, remain influenced by

20:31

her, and I think in profound

20:33

ways. But was she, she was

20:35

not really trying to convince people

20:37

who were necessarily on the receiving end

20:40

of freebies. It was more she

20:42

was inspiring people so they wouldn't become

20:44

that. Right, yeah, she thought and she

20:46

was very bitterly disappointed when this didn't

20:48

happen that like, because at least you're

20:50

out if you haven't read it is,

20:52

you know, the premise basically is like

20:55

a super genius convinces all the other

20:57

real supergeniuses of finance and science and

20:59

the arts that like you don't want

21:01

to contribute your gifts to this corrupt

21:03

controlling culture and she leads them all

21:05

away to a little paradise. So she

21:07

sort of dreamed that. The real world versions

21:10

of that would be her audience and

21:12

they would flock to her and that

21:14

wasn't really what happened. It was like

21:16

college students and you know alienated learners

21:19

and the weird thing about rent, especially

21:21

if you've read Atlas Rug, to me

21:23

as a libertarian when I read it,

21:26

it's like if you read this and

21:28

you're not a libertarian, it feels like

21:30

you're having your face shoved in a

21:32

pile of dog crap that you left,

21:35

you know, it's like, it's really unpleasant.

21:37

But amazingly, like she was good enough

21:39

as a popular novelist that like millions

21:41

of people just like love those. Oh,

21:44

and it's spectacular. We've talked about this

21:46

in other contexts, but people like Oliver

21:48

Stone, who calls himself a socialist, loves

21:50

Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead and Einstein.

21:53

So it's like, there's an appeal there that

21:55

is definitely beyond kind of economic thing. Yeah.

21:57

I mean, do you, do you think that

21:59

the? that kind of, you know, and

22:01

there was a split or, you know,

22:04

different kind of directions went with different

22:06

people, but do you think that the

22:08

Libertarian movement would have been better served

22:11

if we had somehow generated or paid

22:13

more attention to philosophers or cultural creators

22:15

or people who were not talking about

22:18

economics so much? Yeah, you know, you

22:20

get the movement, you know, the movement

22:22

as a result of the free people

22:24

and Leonard Reed had a funny... little

22:27

gag when whenever anyone would tell him

22:29

like I'm ceasing giving funding to fee

22:31

he would answer with like well you

22:34

know our whole purpose is to expand

22:36

the range of choices people have over

22:38

their own resources and property so I

22:41

can only applaud that you are you

22:43

know choosing what you wish to do

22:45

with your money and thank you and

22:47

that should actually work like he raised

22:50

a million about being like this sort

22:52

of humble Zendmunk, but yeah, so you

22:54

have, you have, you have, but he

22:57

was a Zendmunk who had been like

22:59

the head of the Los Angeles Chamber

23:01

of Commerce and then he bought a

23:03

mansion in a state here, yeah. When

23:06

did he die in under both circumstances?

23:08

He died in the early, early to

23:10

mid-80s and I don't think it was

23:13

anything scandalous. He left Feen kind of

23:15

a crummy condition when he left, but

23:17

it's, it's still around, it's like, yeah,

23:20

you get the movement that, the free

23:22

roiling of humanity creates. Like yeah, I

23:24

think it would have been great if

23:26

there were more cultural creators and there

23:29

were more like the science fiction world

23:31

have a lot of them. But Heinlein,

23:33

you know, but yeah, I would have,

23:36

you know, at least so when libertarians

23:38

get around and try to, oh, what

23:40

are the 10 best libertarian movies? At

23:43

least we'd have more interesting choices or

23:45

the 10 most libertarian pop songs or

23:47

whatever of that. Like, they'll be nice.

23:49

Yeah, that's always about you. Actually, if

23:52

we had enough creators, we wouldn't have

23:54

those conversations. Right, exactly. Which would be

23:56

the real payoff. Yeah, yeah, that. Talk

23:59

a bit of you, you know, we

24:01

you've mentioned. Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbart,

24:03

who are economists, Ludwig von Mises, floats

24:05

around early on in the book and

24:08

is interesting. But in this interest of

24:10

talking about the institutions that helped kind

24:12

of codifying crater institutionalize things, the Montpelerin

24:15

Society. How many of you have heard

24:17

of the Montpelerin Society? a fair amount,

24:19

right? But could you explain what that

24:22

is and what future that's? Yeah, that

24:24

was sort of another example of how

24:26

embattled and marginalized this was at like

24:28

a group of like just a few

24:31

dozen international economists, philosophers, legal thinkers, you

24:33

know, it was just could all get

24:35

together in one like cushy place in

24:38

Switzerland and form a former group to

24:40

push. these ideas that back then they

24:42

considered that that was what 48 47

24:45

is what he said. Yeah a lot

24:47

of this flourishing happened right after World

24:49

War II because they really all were

24:51

concerned. Hia wrote that in great book

24:54

the road to serfdom that was kind

24:56

of trying to tell the West it's

24:58

like look you you've been at war

25:01

with fascism and in alliance with communism

25:03

and you need to understand that the

25:05

the choices you're making are like leading

25:07

you down the road that's similar to

25:10

the things that you're supposed to be

25:12

opposing and it was very influential so

25:14

and what to say about Pellarin so

25:17

yeah like it was a small group

25:19

of people they they continued to meet

25:21

today and it's kind of a high-level

25:24

academic thing and I think the reason

25:26

why so many economists were central to

25:28

this, and of the five people I

25:30

consider central characters in this book, four

25:33

of them were economists, is that the

25:35

whole concept, the Adam Smithian concept, the

25:37

invisible hand, and the Hayekian concept of

25:40

spontaneous order, help answer the question that

25:42

everyone has when you talk about limiting

25:44

government, that like, how does a functioning

25:47

society work to everyone's benefit without someone

25:49

in control? And like that's, you know,

25:51

I can't give the lecture here, but

25:53

if you study the works of your

25:56

Rothbards and you think that they make

25:58

sense, they explain to you how. the

26:00

free play. of prices and private property

26:03

and if contracts are on or like

26:05

we actually create a world that's the

26:07

closest to representing how which we can

26:09

be and how much the world is

26:12

going to represent everyone's choices not just

26:14

the choices of the commissar or the

26:16

board or the you know and I

26:19

mean this is coming out of you

26:21

know the 19th century which was a

26:23

liberal century compared to what came before

26:26

it you know but I mean, it's

26:28

kind of lost, I think, on, I

26:30

remember when I started reading Reason in,

26:32

I guess, the late 70s, early 80s,

26:35

and people would harken back to a

26:37

period where people really thought like, if

26:39

the government didn't oversee everything, like, how

26:42

would products get to the supermarket shell?

26:44

How would you know how much they

26:46

cost, etc. And it seemed to me

26:49

like, I mean, we grew up in

26:51

an era where... that was that battle

26:53

had been one you know in a

26:55

in a in a in a big

26:58

way by by these people not completely

27:00

yeah but you know the idea that

27:02

well you know what markets actually don't

27:05

need somebody to control them yeah the

27:07

way they had been controlled in fact

27:09

they work better when they're looser yeah

27:11

do you feel like we're backsliding on

27:14

that in some respects I mean I

27:16

think the the current administration while it

27:18

has whether to many people kind of

27:21

attractive sort of attitude of vandalization towards

27:23

certain aspects of the state. Like certainly

27:25

it's not driven by like a deep

27:28

belief in human liberty. I mean one

27:30

of the main policies of the current

27:32

administration is like literally moving human beings

27:34

bodies around to places they do not

27:37

want to be just because of some

27:39

law regulation. So I don't think the

27:41

fight is one. I mean there's interesting

27:44

things happen like you know yesterday You

27:46

know, Bezos announces that, you know, this

27:48

major American metro paper with a big

27:51

national audience is going to have an

27:53

editorial voice that at least as he

27:55

expresses it is going to become, didn't

27:57

use the word libertarian, but he talked

28:00

about free mark is in personal freedom.

28:02

He meant libertarian. Like. It's kind of

28:04

interesting, like that was not something as

28:07

a libertarian I would have expected. And

28:09

a little bit is like obviously... And

28:11

as a libertarian you have to insist

28:13

that he doesn't really mean it and

28:16

that he's a liar, right? Yeah, well

28:18

I don't know, you know, we'll see.

28:20

If, you know, we have a long

28:23

history in losing, we're the worst winners.

28:25

In a way. We make the Trump

28:27

administration seem beneficent. Yeah. But that's an

28:30

interesting thing, but you can look at

28:32

it and say like, like, like, like,

28:34

well surely... You can just say, oh,

28:36

it's the whim of one rich guy.

28:39

And like, in a way, it is

28:41

the whim of one rich guy, but

28:43

like, that rich guy is on the

28:46

paper for a while. I think it's

28:48

more fair to go, well, that rich

28:50

guy felt unconstrained enough to act on

28:53

this whim because he thinks there has

28:55

been a cultural change. I mean, I

28:57

assume he doesn't want to drive his

28:59

paper out of business with this choice.

29:02

You never know. But also, it's a

29:04

great example of what Libertarians love about

29:06

free markets. It does allow the effusion

29:09

of all sorts of things. I give

29:11

you a posit that no one wants

29:13

that, Jeff B's. Those no one wants

29:15

a major paper editorial page to be

29:18

Libertarians. Like, well, in the free market,

29:20

we can have that. We can see

29:22

people do like it. And yeah, I

29:25

don't, that's, I'll stop talking. Let's, you

29:27

know, here's a, here's a cheap segue,

29:29

Amazon started in Seattle. Let's shift to

29:32

the west coast a little bit because

29:34

the book, you know, it's really about

29:36

the libertarian movement after World War II

29:38

for the most part, coming out of

29:41

that, and there's east coast stuff, and

29:43

there's west coast stuff. It's like the

29:45

original gangster rap. Yeah, the major west

29:48

coast figure, I'd say, was a curious

29:50

fellow named Robert LaFave, who was not

29:52

talked about much today, who I find

29:55

very amusing. He was one of the,

29:57

there was a lot of anarchismism. then

29:59

and now in the libertarian movement, but

30:01

a lot of them didn't like the

30:04

word anarchism because it was associated with

30:06

the destruction of, you know, family and

30:08

properties. It was a challenge with cartoon

30:11

bombs. Exactly. So LaFabe did not believe

30:13

government should exist, so he wasn't anarchicized.

30:15

but he didn't use the term. And

30:17

he had, he hated violence so much.

30:20

And I want to talk a little

30:22

bit about violence, actually, because I think

30:24

it's, I meant to sort of start

30:27

off with this, because I think it's

30:29

an interesting way to frame the libertarian

30:31

mission. Like, you can say, oh, we

30:34

want limited government. We want to shrink

30:36

government. What does that mean? And what

30:38

does that mean? You know, especially in

30:40

the Doj age age, a lot of

30:43

people are concentrating. Like, oh, we want

30:45

limited government. We want to shrink government.

30:47

What does that happen? And that person's

30:50

lost their job. The way I like

30:52

to frame libertarianism, which sounds hippie-dippy and

30:54

goofy, but it's absolutely true, is like

30:57

the project is about figuring out how

30:59

to structure a social order with the

31:01

least amount of violence and threats of

31:03

violence. The least amount of like we're

31:06

forcing you to do things and if

31:08

you don't do it, we're going to

31:10

mess you up. Like that's what it's

31:13

about. It's a very hippie-dippy glorious thing.

31:15

And LaFave disbelieved in violence so much

31:17

that he didn't even. a thief, you

31:19

know, ties you up, but it's his

31:22

rope. You shouldn't... free yourself from that

31:24

rope. Because if you cut the rope,

31:26

you would be destroying a property. Which

31:29

leads to an interesting thing about libertarianism.

31:31

It's surprising more people haven't heard of

31:33

him. Yeah. When you win it that

31:36

way. He was actually, you know, he

31:38

was one of the great teachers of

31:40

the Coke Brothers, you know, petrochemical billionaires

31:42

who funded a lot of libertarian causes,

31:45

including the magazine we work for. So,

31:47

but that brings up another thing about

31:49

libertarianism that obviously is obviously is... It's

31:52

a strong point to certain curious thinkers,

31:54

but I think it's a weak point

31:56

to most people is like the rigorous

31:59

application of the basic idea that, well,

32:01

you shouldn't force, you know, there should

32:03

be no non-retaliatory violence. Like it leads

32:05

to certain things, like on the simpler

32:08

level, like, oh, and that means there

32:10

should not be such a thing as

32:12

public and drug administration. to even weirder

32:15

areas. And I, you know, saying this,

32:17

I believe all this stuff myself. Rothbard's

32:19

explanation that. You know, blackmail is not

32:21

a crime. Like you can't punish anyone

32:24

for blackmail because, well, what is blackmail?

32:26

Like, it's okay, it's like you're talking,

32:28

you choose to say something, you can

32:31

say whatever you want, you can say

32:33

true things, you can say false things,

32:35

and you come to someone and you

32:38

give them an offer, like you offer

32:40

to a deal with them. Like if

32:42

you do something for me, I won't

32:44

say this thing about you. And it's

32:47

like, well, that seems despicable, and no

32:49

one likes that, and everyone thinks it

32:51

should be illegal. And Rothbart, again, in

32:54

this mission of figuring out how do

32:56

we minimize violence, one of the conclusions

32:58

he came to, which you can accept

33:01

or not, is that if it's not

33:03

a direct physical assault on your person

33:05

or property, Like then it's okay. It's

33:07

it's groovy and and and you're like

33:10

well blackmail. You're destroying my reputation and

33:12

Roth was like well. What's a reputation?

33:14

What to say about it, but if

33:17

you're lying about somebody Yeah, no, that's

33:19

it. That's a thing you can lie.

33:21

You can tell the truth. So you

33:23

could say, you know, this is I'm

33:26

selling this as diet code, but it's

33:28

actually Scrantium 95 or something if it

33:30

came to yeah Buckmell is a different

33:33

thing. That's just a fraud. Fraud is.

33:35

Buckmell, lying about someone is not. is

33:37

not okay. He had a contract, gets

33:40

a little complicated, like there had to

33:42

be a contract or exchange, if you

33:44

are exchanging your property for what you

33:46

believe is that, like it should be

33:49

that, because you're cheated if you're not

33:51

getting that. But just telling a lie

33:53

about something, it's just telling a lie

33:56

about something. But anyway, yeah, my point

33:58

is that like it leads to certain

34:00

areas that striding many people is like

34:02

very strange or almost demented. happened to

34:05

the Freedom School that Robert Lefev created.

34:07

There was a flood. And this was

34:09

in the late 50s, early 60s. Maybe

34:12

the early 60s. I don't remember. And

34:14

one of. One of his students besides

34:16

the Koch brothers, and he really kind

34:19

of helped give them a kind of

34:21

a narco-capitalist libertarian understanding of the world,

34:23

which had deep influences on them. Another

34:25

one of their star students was Kerry

34:28

Thornley, right? Could you explain who Kerry

34:30

Thornley is? Yeah, Kerry Thornley. This actually

34:32

ties into how I became a libertarian.

34:35

I'm like, what. you could call a

34:37

Robert Anton Wilson libertarian if you know

34:39

who he is. He co-wrote a novel

34:42

called Luminatus that I read at the

34:44

young age and that like before I

34:46

knew about Randa Rothbard that book turned

34:48

me into a libertarian and this kind

34:51

of fun. Thornley was a principal in

34:53

one of the earliest libertarian zines called

34:55

the innovator. He was one of the

34:58

the innovators of the idea of which

35:00

is still being pursued today of like

35:02

libertarian communities in the ocean. He was

35:04

thinking of a submarine. Now we're talking

35:07

about land. So he was a very

35:09

early libertarian thinker and coincidentally he had

35:11

been a marine along with a guy

35:14

named Lee Harvey Oswald. And Thornley wrote

35:16

a novel before November. 22nd, 1863. Before

35:18

that, you're talking about when the, generally

35:21

agreed upon live, that when Kennedy was

35:23

assassinated. Yes, when Kennedy was. I'm not

35:25

even sure. He was in Dallas for,

35:27

yes, November 26. The day John Kennedy

35:30

set foot on the moon. So, yeah.

35:32

Thornley, like, knew, he had written a

35:34

novel called The Idol Warriors, whose star

35:37

was like, oh, Romana Clef, or Romana

35:39

Clef, if you saw his really. movie

35:41

JFK. You might remember Jim Garrison who

35:44

was a New Orleans New Orleans DA

35:46

who for some reason despite the fact

35:48

that the crime did not happen in

35:50

his district began investigating and he kind

35:53

of came to the belief and Thornley

35:55

who kind of went insane in my

35:57

estimation began believing this that he was

36:00

like a second Oswald or he was

36:02

a Mancharian candidate from birth who somehow

36:04

had a role in the Kennedy assassination.

36:06

They had served in the Marines together

36:09

during the Cold War. Yeah, the Thornley

36:11

actually came to believe that I did

36:13

have something to do with the Kennedy

36:16

assassination. Yeah. And he decided that Robert

36:18

Anton Wilson was a CIA handler. It

36:20

was all very interesting. So another great

36:23

alum of the freedoms. Yeah, I don't

36:25

know what conclusion. Which then... went out

36:27

of business after there was a big

36:29

mudslide. Yeah, there was a mudslide and

36:32

they didn't have insurance because that was

36:34

violence and property insurance. No, it's probably

36:36

just a business decision. I honestly don't

36:39

remember the answer to that question. And

36:41

he became, he also was an influence

36:43

on a guy who started as like

36:46

a hippie libertarian folks in her out

36:48

of the Lafay movement and later became

36:50

the congressman from Orange County, Dana Rorabacher.

36:52

So Dana Rorabacher started as a complete

36:55

hippie-dippy anarchistic libertarian troubadour. And when I

36:57

interviewed him... About all that you know

36:59

you have to ask him like do

37:02

you still believe that stuff? This is

37:04

when he was still in office He's

37:06

like a real politician would never tell

37:08

you but I think he didn't anymore

37:11

And Dana Rorabacher became he was the

37:13

model for Bob Roberts, right the Tim

37:15

Robbins I'm not I mean he should

37:18

have been that was I mean Robin

37:20

said that and oh really yeah, so

37:22

it's so that's an interesting little school

37:25

Yeah, go a little bit further west

37:27

to Orange County and talk about RC

37:29

Hoyle's. He's another figure that comes up

37:31

in the book and is a fascinating

37:34

kind of early libertarian person who created

37:36

a. Kind of set of newspapers that

37:38

also kind of channel these ideas into

37:41

the yeah, he um Arcy Hoyle's he

37:43

was just again one of these random

37:45

dissociated weirdos who somehow fell into believing

37:48

this stuff and Corresponded with each other.

37:50

He was very obsessed with how public

37:52

how terrible public schools were and he

37:54

got very mad You know, we were

37:57

saying all the representatives get mad at

37:59

Leonard Reed or Mises if they didn't

38:01

make you know abolishing public education is

38:04

our main priority. That's if you are.

38:06

The great line about the difference between

38:08

public schools and whorehouses is that people

38:10

want to be in. Right, exactly. It's

38:13

like a whorehouse. And he was like

38:15

a, you know, a Midwestern businessman. Yeah,

38:17

but he said, yeah, whorehouse. And then

38:20

he created what became the Orange County

38:22

Register and a freedom news. And a

38:24

chain of papers that he didn't name

38:27

after himself or his family named the

38:29

freedom newspapers. that like Jeff Mazzo says

38:31

now you know promulgated a very libertarian

38:33

well and during World War two he

38:36

was the only major newspaper publisher on

38:38

the West Coast who spoke out against

38:40

the German of the Japanese yeah yeah

38:43

yeah he's what could you talk a

38:45

little bit about that and why why

38:47

I mean that must have been a

38:50

very difficult position to hold because you

38:52

know what the war was going on

38:54

and yeah I mean if you were

38:56

a libertarian then you were very used

38:59

to having nothing but yeah positions that

39:01

were socially difficult to hold so yeah

39:03

I think it was probably easy for

39:06

him just go no you can't round

39:08

up human beings just because of their

39:10

ancestry like yeah insane that's criminal you

39:12

can't do that and you know his

39:15

his libertarian beliefs and his you know

39:17

he was a a cussid old goat

39:19

kind of character you know he's And

39:22

so yeah, it's like, of course I'm

39:24

going to say that it's crazy, it's

39:26

criminal. Barry Goldwater is on the cover

39:29

of the book and he's mentioned in

39:31

the book, explain, you know, how does

39:33

he intersect with... with the modern libertarian.

39:35

Yeah, he was, you know, in the

39:38

40s and 50s, these thinkers didn't have

39:40

the slightest notion of intersecting their ideas

39:42

with actual politics as it was practiced.

39:45

Nick mentioned the concept of the remnant

39:47

that floated around the movement. It's just

39:49

like, we just need to keep these

39:52

ideas alive. We have no idea when

39:54

or if they will ever be actuated.

39:56

We don't really have a great social,

39:58

like their social theory of how to

40:01

make all this work was like, like,

40:03

And God, what was the question? Goldwater.

40:05

Goldwater, right. So Goldwater, sorry. Goldwater comes

40:08

along in the early 60s, and he

40:10

sounds very libertarian in many respects, at

40:12

least, you know, about kind of anti-New

40:14

Deal stuff. He was terrible on foreign

40:17

policy, and Rothbar hated him for that,

40:19

and thought any libertarian supported him was

40:21

crazy. But is an actual fact of

40:24

intellectual history. Like nearly everyone was like

40:26

a teenager in the early 60s, Goldwater

40:28

era era era. who went on to

40:31

have a career in libertarianism, like was

40:33

a Goldwater fan at the beginning. He

40:35

really, he was a spark that may

40:37

seem, wow, these ideas, or at least

40:40

part of them, can have some hold

40:42

on culture. And in fact, there was

40:44

arguments between Reed and one of his

40:47

colleagues Benjamin Rogi, and I honestly, I

40:49

think it's in the book, I forget

40:51

which one took which side, but one

40:54

of them actually worried a little bit,

40:56

because like their mission was educating the.

40:58

the country is not actually ready for

41:00

this. Like we have we have not

41:03

succeeded in convincing enough of the American

41:05

population that these ideas are true for

41:07

it to really work to have a

41:10

politician push it. In fact, as everyone

41:12

has laughed at Goldwater ever since, you

41:14

know, obviously he was indeed trount in

41:16

the country with not and anyway ready

41:19

for his ideas. I mean, he ran

41:21

for president in 64 and got smoked

41:23

by it up to that point, the

41:26

largest, the largest defeat any major party

41:28

candidate had. What's Goldwater talking about? Because,

41:30

you know, that electrified people. Was it

41:33

mostly his anti-New Deal type thing? Or?

41:35

Yeah, all these bureaucrats are, you know,

41:37

managing us and taxing. And I guess

41:39

he seemed like a different, I mean,

41:42

he was kind of a cowboy character.

41:44

Yeah. politics was kind of an East

41:46

Coast game, right? Exactly. He represented the

41:49

spirit of the West. There's a great,

41:51

there's a great book called The Yankee

41:53

Cowboy War that I recommend that sort

41:56

of does a conspiracy theory take on

41:58

the shift. of American power between Eastern

42:00

interests and Western interests. And the Western

42:02

interests become like oil, petrochemicals, and then

42:05

later, you know, aerospace and computers, and

42:07

like we, we definitely live in a

42:09

West Coast world now. Like it were.

42:12

Yeah, and that book, which was written

42:14

by Carl Oglesby, who was the former

42:16

head of Students for Democrat Society, is

42:18

interesting, because then you, when you look

42:21

at things from what, you know, cowboy

42:23

Yankees, suddenly L.B.J. obviously killed Kennedy because

42:25

Kennedy is on the is part of

42:28

the Easternist he's a Yankee and Elbe

42:30

Jay is yeah and Oglesby is actually

42:32

a great example of a libertarian convert

42:34

he was obviously a total comedy because

42:37

he was a big SDS guy and

42:39

by the turn of the 70s he

42:41

was pretty libertarian leaning there's a lot

42:43

of success with character named Karl Hass

42:46

was especially mix like he was a

42:48

totally groovy radical 60s dude but then

42:50

he was an anarcho-capitalist and he debuted

42:52

his ideas in an article in Playboy

42:54

which was a big deal in 1969

42:57

like Playboy ran like this giant essay

42:59

on anarcho-capitalism because of Karl Hess. He

43:01

was a field marshal of the

43:03

revolution in sort of Castroesque figure.

43:05

Who has been Barry Goldwater's chief

43:07

speechra? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, he was

43:09

a Goldwater boy and they remained

43:11

friends even after Hess became a...

43:13

a total raging hippie and anarcho-closed.

43:15

Where did Goldwater's foreign policy come

43:17

from? And how did that fit?

43:19

Like, you were saying that like- Yeah,

43:22

you just hate communism. Like, obviously,

43:24

like, well, if you're a libertarian,

43:26

you hate communism, of course. And so

43:28

somebody might go, well, we've got to

43:30

fight this Cold War, even a hot

43:33

war, against Soviets. But, and that

43:35

was one of the big dividing lines

43:37

between the kind of Buckley Goldwater conservative

43:39

movement and the libertarian movement. style

43:41

understood that like well fighting a

43:44

war against communism like a involves

43:46

the mass murder of innocence like

43:48

inherently like they're talking a nuclear

43:50

war and b involves like a

43:52

domestic apparatus of taxation and oppression

43:55

that we don't want and the

43:57

conservatives like no we've got to

43:59

fight communism and you know read

44:01

has a great quote I think it

44:03

might be in this book about he's

44:06

like his job is not to fight

44:08

communists but to fight the ideas that

44:10

are behind communism and many of those

44:13

ideas are in the heads of you

44:15

know very respectable Americans who do not

44:17

think of themselves as communists so you

44:20

know they were cognizant that war met

44:22

mass murder and that's you know one

44:24

of the through lines. So they were

44:27

they would have been better dead or

44:29

better read than dead. Sure, well Rothwar's

44:31

joke is like the Buckley's thing is

44:34

like, you know, better you dead than

44:36

me read, you know. It was making

44:38

decisions that were going to annihilate the

44:40

lives of millions of people just because

44:43

of what you felt and that was,

44:45

you can't do that. You know, like

44:47

you can't, you can't fight a just,

44:50

a libertarianly just war in the modern

44:52

world. Let me, and then I want

44:54

to jump to a couple of more

44:57

modern moments, but just to go back

44:59

to Leonard Reed for a second. You

45:01

described this moment where he was hauled

45:04

up in front of a congressional committee.

45:06

Yeah, the Buchanan commission. I had never

45:08

heard of it. Yeah, it was a

45:11

little, you know, it was a McCarthy

45:13

or a thing, but it was kind

45:15

of like, you know, McCarthyism of the

45:17

left, I guess you could put it.

45:20

Think of the Buchanan commission, where the

45:22

funders of fee and various other. pre-market

45:24

organizations were like called in, you know,

45:27

essentially to name names. They were, everyone

45:29

was asked, you need to report everything

45:31

you've given to support these causes. And

45:34

there was a good character named, W.C.

45:36

Mullendor, who was an executive with SoCal

45:38

Edison and a big early fund or

45:41

a fee. And he wrote some great

45:43

rage-filled letters, some of which I think

45:45

are quoted in the book about, you

45:48

know, you, the government, the government, managed

45:50

my company, to such a degree. of

45:52

my mission as a you know corporate

45:54

board guy or whatever to to attempt

45:57

to influence political ideas and if I

45:59

can't do that freely without you guys

46:01

inquiring and publicizing and you know nozing

46:04

into the choices I make like that's

46:06

that's not what you know it's un-American

46:08

and so on except But yeah, it

46:11

was kind of a explain to us,

46:13

you know, who was supporting these ideas

46:15

that were considered very sinister. I get

46:18

back to that. Like these ideas were

46:20

not respectable. They were. So by the

46:22

end of the 60s they became pretty

46:25

respectable though, right? Or they were more

46:27

respectable than they had ever been. Yeah,

46:29

you had, and again it was so

46:31

limited that you can like pick out

46:34

the moments like that big Playboy article

46:36

by Hesse mentioned and then like Morrie

46:38

Rothbard started getting on the New York

46:41

Times out bad page around 70-71 and

46:43

then. And you mentioned the New York

46:45

Times magazine, sorry about the future wired

46:48

editor or founder Lewis Rizzeto. Yeah, the

46:50

New York Times Sunday magazine in 70

46:52

I think had a big cover story.

46:55

the new right credo libertarianism and one

46:57

of the authors of Eddus Nick to

46:59

said was Louis Rosetta who later founded

47:02

Wired magazine a big Silicon Valley thought

47:04

leader so these little things were happening

47:06

and like major publishers published anarchist text

47:08

by Murray Rothbard for New Liberty in

47:11

the early 70s by David Friedman, Milton

47:13

Sun, was an anarchist called the machinery

47:15

of freedom. And then Robert Nose. Robert

47:18

Nosek. Yeah, like this philosopher arises from

47:20

Harvard, wins a national book award for

47:22

a book called Anarchy State and Utopia.

47:25

That was ultimately decided that you could

47:27

have a morally justified state. But the

47:29

whole magic of the book, what made

47:32

it weird, was that he actually was

47:34

like, you do have to answer this

47:36

question. Like if you're a political philosopher

47:39

who believes in the state, you need

47:41

to be able to justify it. And

47:43

it's hard to do. And he did

47:45

it in an extremely complicated, modern, philosophical

47:48

way. And I think he failed. I

47:50

don't think he did justify the state.

47:52

And there's great essays floating around by

47:55

Rothbarden, Rochald, explaining why he was wrong.

47:57

believes in a limited state and takes

47:59

anarchism seriously enough to realize I have

48:02

to refute it rigorously. So yeah. And

48:04

the state that he was calling for

48:06

was so radically smaller than what the.

48:09

of baseline. Absolutely minimal, yeah, just like

48:11

protect people's, you know, life and property

48:13

from force and fraud and, you know,

48:16

run the courts and defense. And, yeah,

48:18

and then in the mid-70s, like, Hayek

48:20

wins a Nobel in economics, freedom is

48:22

a Nobel in economics. Yeah, the 70s

48:25

were certainly the beginning of the cementing

48:27

of something like respectability. Well, and how

48:29

much of that was that people were

48:32

looking for alternatives, because... By that point,

48:34

there have been kind of recognizably conservative

48:36

ideas, which were mostly reactionary. And when,

48:39

early on in the book, you talk

48:41

about how libertarianism is rooted in the

48:43

founding of the Republic, but it's not

48:46

reactionary. So that's different, because conservatives, you

48:48

know, Buckley, when he started the National

48:50

Review or National Review, he famously said,

48:53

it stands a thwart history, yelling stop.

48:55

Right. That was not what libertarians were

48:57

talking about. So how much of the

48:59

kind of move towards libertarian ideas was

49:02

just that conservatives had failed and liberals,

49:04

like nobody wanted to live in that

49:06

world, right? This is a world of,

49:09

you know, high unemployment and high inflation

49:11

and wars and, you know, horrible crimes

49:13

committed by governments coming to life. Yeah,

49:16

I hate saying sentences like this because

49:18

like if you read a lot of...

49:20

20th century American history, you come across

49:23

a sentence like this a million times,

49:25

you just start to sigh, but yeah,

49:27

you know, it was an era of

49:30

the failure of the Vietnam War and

49:32

Watergate and all this cliche stuff, but

49:34

it's true, like there was just plenty

49:36

of things that showed aware people that

49:39

this system is rotten and doesn't work

49:41

in like the 60s counterculture was a

49:43

reaction to that, and you know, communes

49:46

in the back to land movement was

49:48

a reaction to that, Reagan in his

49:50

own ways. a reaction to that. So

49:53

yeah, it was. Yeah, so, well, Reagan,

49:55

you throw in the quote, Reason Magazine,

49:57

which was founded in 68, interviewed Reagan

50:00

in 1975, right, right after he had,

50:02

he'd been a two-term governor of California

50:04

and then had left off. and he

50:07

called libertarianism is the heart and soul

50:09

of the conservative movement. Yeah, and then

50:11

I mean it is interesting that the

50:13

rest of the interview he explained you

50:16

know and then the editors of Reason

50:18

were like okay well how about legalizing

50:20

gambling now you can't do that how

50:23

about you know prostitution now about like

50:25

loosening up you know cigarettes now now

50:27

like everything but it's the heart and

50:30

soul but yeah but talk about Reason

50:32

magazine which was founded in 68 and

50:34

this is one of the institutions that

50:37

helped kind of distribute the ideas as

50:39

well as sharpen the arguments. What's the

50:41

role of reason in the modern libertarian

50:44

movement? Besides being the best God-dam place

50:46

to work and... Right, right. Yeah, I

50:48

deliberately don't really talk about that because

50:50

I have worked for the magazine mostly

50:53

since 1994, but yeah, I mean to

50:55

Tacrola, like it's the place where libertarians

50:57

of... met or you know sharpen their

51:00

ideas and apply them to the current

51:02

scene as it goes by you know

51:04

it never like foundation for economic education

51:07

this kind of had the same sort

51:09

of homiletics about you know trade and

51:11

you know business regulation such you know

51:14

we try to apply libertarian thought to

51:16

the scene as it passes by We

51:18

try to be ecumenical within a libertarian

51:21

world. It's a place for libertarians to

51:23

fight things out. Like, and in the

51:25

internet age, it's all online. You can

51:27

basically see the record of how, you

51:30

know, libertarians have sharpened their arguments about

51:32

modernity. And, you know, I still think

51:34

it's an important thing to do. I

51:37

mean, this is a little bit grumpy

51:39

old man, you know, dissociative complaining, I

51:41

guess, like I don't love... the degree

51:44

to which the modern communication world kind

51:46

of seems to be divided between like,

51:48

you know, you know, one sentence, a

51:51

six-second video clip or like a four-hour

51:53

podcast. Like I'm like, I'm like nowhere,

51:55

like I can't, I like a good

51:58

little 3,000 word magazine article, right? The

52:00

people have spoken. You can't. right I

52:02

mean whatever is perfect yeah so and

52:04

I do think that being able to

52:07

write things that are like 800 to

52:09

4,000 words to hash things out and

52:11

then the internet age link to support

52:14

and back up right things are saying

52:16

like that's great and you know I

52:18

think the internet world just kind of

52:21

reacts to headlines or their attitude about

52:23

what you know they decided they like

52:25

the other the other two institutions I

52:28

just want to touch on real quickly

52:30

is the Libertarian Party. That got founded

52:32

in 71? Yeah, yeah, first convention in

52:35

72. The meeting to found it was

52:37

in this guy named David Nolan's living

52:39

room in 71, the first national convention.

52:41

And David Nolan lives on, he died

52:44

a few years ago, but in the

52:46

Nolan chart, which, you know, you've probably

52:48

have taken the world's smallest political quiz.

52:51

It's basically that and can we say

52:53

with any certainty that it's rigged that

52:55

everybody ends up being kind of libertarian?

52:58

Well yeah, I mean, because that's the

53:00

thing about libertarianism is the more abstract.

53:02

you make the principles of wider agreements.

53:05

Like, well, people should be able to

53:07

do what they want. As long as

53:09

they hurt other people, right? Like, yeah,

53:12

yeah. So we should not have a

53:14

food and drug administration. Like, how'd you

53:16

get there? But like, you can get

53:19

there. Like, there is a logic to

53:21

that. But it's not, can't be convinced

53:23

across the table at the county fair,

53:25

probably. Or maybe you can. So the

53:28

Libertarian Party and it I mean it

53:30

first ran a candidate in 1972 and

53:32

it got an electoral vote the first

53:35

electoral vote libertarians ever got because as

53:37

another way of saying it the only

53:39

no yeah of course yeah of course

53:42

and also like his running mate was

53:44

a woman and so she was the

53:46

first woman to get and she was

53:49

Jewish yes Jewish woman yeah I'm not

53:51

entirely sure she was the first Jewish

53:53

person to go in the last World

53:56

War of War, but it's possible. Okay.

53:58

She was. And anyway, because there were

54:00

rumors about James Buchanan. the electoral college

54:02

if you're an elector you can actually

54:05

do whatever you want and there was

54:07

a guy named Roger McBride who was

54:09

the He was Rose Wilderlane's heir despite

54:12

not being any relation to Rose Wilderlane

54:14

Rose did not have any children, but

54:16

Roger was one of these eager young

54:19

libertarians So I mentioned she used to

54:21

get it to be excited to find

54:23

and she sort of took him in

54:26

and he became in and she sort

54:28

of took him in and he became

54:30

her heir and he became her heir

54:33

and so he was that kind of

54:35

guy He was a Republican elector from

54:37

Virginia and he hated Nixon for like

54:39

the same reasons the libertarian and again

54:42

they've never gotten electoral but since and

54:44

they were only on the ballot in

54:46

two states and and the candidate was

54:49

a professional philosopher named John Hospers he

54:51

was a taught at the USC at

54:53

that time yeah and was gay actually

54:56

though he wasn't like super public about

54:58

it so although looking back it's kind

55:00

of obvious yeah No, I don't mean

55:03

that in a bad way. I mean,

55:05

he was unapologetic. He just wasn't necessarily

55:07

public. And then the other institution, which

55:10

published this book, so, you know, we'll

55:12

take whatever you say with grain of

55:14

salt about that, but it's the Cato

55:16

Institute, which was founded in San Francisco.

55:19

Yeah. Yeah, that was the first, you

55:21

know, as I alluded to, like libertarian,

55:23

through the 40s, 50s, 60s, did not,

55:26

until Goldwater, did not imagine they could

55:28

actually interact with the wheels of the

55:30

wheels of the wheels of policy. little

55:33

happy things we're just talking about like

55:35

this guy named Crane who was a

55:37

stockbroker dude in California and really believed

55:40

in the stuff, managed to talk the

55:42

very wealthy petrochemical billionaires, Koch brothers, into

55:44

financing an institute that actually would attempt

55:47

to do libertarian policy work, not just

55:49

homiletics about free trade and the fee

55:51

variety. And Kata was founded to do

55:53

that and has been doing it ever

55:56

since and has grown. It's always difficult

55:58

to assess influence, per se, and I

56:00

think in the Trump era there probably.

56:03

less influential than otherwise would be because

56:05

of the Trumpian attitudes about immigration and

56:07

trade. Yeah, they've continued to grow and

56:10

if you want to go find the

56:12

policy study that defends any libertarian idea,

56:14

you know, they probably produced it and

56:17

they have a nice building and they

56:19

publish nice little books like this and

56:21

I worked for a few years and

56:24

yeah. So I guess before we go

56:26

to audience Q&A, let me ask, you

56:28

know, what taking the longer view? What

56:30

are the big libertarian wins because it's...

56:33

You know, Libertines, we sometimes talk about

56:35

it as, you know, it's like shreddingers'

56:37

cat. You know, we're either running everything

56:40

or we're completely irrelevant. You know, it's

56:42

too... mutually exclusive ideas. But what are

56:44

the big wins, do you think, for

56:47

the libertarian? The things that have happened

56:49

in the last 30 years that are

56:51

clearly libertarian derived, and I think are

56:54

good, and are spreading, include school vouchers,

56:56

gradual legalization of marijuana, and we're moving

56:58

into psychedelic thing. That's all very libertarian.

57:01

Milton Friedman's ideas about monetary policy, while

57:03

they did not dominate Fed thinking, had

57:05

a great deal to do with how

57:07

the Fed has managed to manage to.

57:10

at least managed for about 30 years

57:12

there to not become the inflationary monster

57:14

that libertarian fear it, you know, inherently

57:17

is and eventually will be, you know,

57:19

Friedman was very important in getting rid

57:21

of the military draft, he was leading

57:24

ideologues behind that, international floating exchange rates,

57:26

yeah, general like. The deregulation of the

57:28

Carter era, you know, I mean you

57:31

still find some people who still complain

57:33

about it But I think we you

57:35

know trucking and air travel or a

57:38

lot more accessible To people that used

57:40

to be and these are all libertarian

57:42

ideas. They weren't necessarily actuated And you

57:44

know, they probably never will be like

57:47

it's not like we need a politician.

57:49

It's a hundred percent libertarian. It's great

57:51

to have that you have scattered ones,

57:54

but like you don't get victories that

57:56

way like you need to get people

57:58

who don't believe the entire body of

58:01

ideas to at least agree. uncertain things

58:03

and that's probably the only way. What

58:05

about in the in the cultural arena

58:08

and by that I'm thinking of you

58:10

know to go back to the west

58:12

coast kind of end of things and

58:15

you have you wrote a book about

58:17

burning man I was one of the

58:19

first book length analyses of that movement

58:21

but you know burning man seems to

58:24

be very libertarian in not in its

58:26

explicit messaging, but in its presence. Right.

58:28

There's a great phrase that I actually,

58:31

I think at a certain point, I

58:33

wanted the book to be called this.

58:35

It's a Leonard Reed little thing. And

58:38

he's just said, well, what are you

58:40

for? What are you Liberians for? He

58:42

says, anything that's peaceful. So that attitude

58:45

against like conservatives, like conservatives just had

58:47

a certain set of cultural attitudes that

58:49

they held to that. restricted peaceful things

58:52

and you know think the gay marriage

58:54

transgender acceptance things like Bernie Man just

58:56

like the idea that yeah just do

58:58

if you want to live a certain

59:01

way have a certain lifestyle if you

59:03

are not if it's peaceful if you're

59:05

not damaging other people's personal property that

59:08

is to be celebrated that is to

59:10

be supported and in that sense American

59:12

culture you know from the 60s on

59:15

has been immensely more libertarian than it

59:17

used to be and and it's it

59:19

upsets off the people and you know

59:22

there's there's certainly changes in more ways

59:24

and I think you know with a

59:26

Thomas Zaz thing Thomas Zaz was a

59:29

controversial psychiatrist in the libertarian movement who

59:31

we can't really get into him but

59:33

look him up and you know he

59:35

liked to stress it like you know

59:38

human human human life a good healthy

59:40

happy human life is hard. It's not

59:42

given to you, it's hard. And so

59:45

when, when, well, certainly I think in

59:47

a movement where like, oh, there's a

59:49

pendulum swift of morays, like, oh, well,

59:52

there is a certain set of morays

59:54

in the 50s and 60s that made

59:56

many people feel restricted and they wanted

59:59

to escape them and a lot of

1:00:01

them did. And then a generation of

1:00:03

that happens and a lot of people

1:00:06

like, oh, well, that change in morays

1:00:08

didn't actually work out very well for

1:00:10

a lot of people either. and we're

1:00:12

going to go back and to me

1:00:15

it's I this is wishy-washy but I

1:00:17

think like there's not an answer that

1:00:19

ought to be imposed in human life

1:00:22

is difficult and following whatever set of

1:00:24

mores may or may not satisfy you

1:00:26

but like that you have the cultural

1:00:29

liberty in the sense that like you're

1:00:31

gonna get away with it, and you're

1:00:33

not only not going to get arrested,

1:00:36

but you're not going to be like

1:00:38

driven from society for living this way

1:00:40

or having this belief. I think that

1:00:43

makes for a better world. I mean,

1:00:45

a lot of people, I think it

1:00:47

doesn't, because they just see a lot

1:00:49

of stuff they don't like, but that's

1:00:52

freedom, baby. You know, I have inadvertently,

1:00:54

I'm always saying, okay, this is the

1:00:56

final question, and then I have one

1:00:59

more. This is the final question I

1:01:01

have for you before you before you

1:01:03

before we. do some audience Q&A. One

1:01:06

of the great libertarian dreams has always

1:01:08

been, well, you know, there's the right,

1:01:10

there's conservatives and liberals or progressives, and

1:01:13

you know, reactionaries or whatever, and like,

1:01:15

you know, at some point they're going

1:01:17

to realize like they're losing and they're

1:01:20

going to team up with the libertarians

1:01:22

and do a proper fusion where they're

1:01:24

the junior partner in a coalition with

1:01:26

libertarians. And we went through. a phase

1:01:29

where libertarians were clearly in the national

1:01:31

review model, where the little brother, who

1:01:33

was really there just to take the

1:01:36

first bullet, you know, in that coalition,

1:01:38

and then you could get rid of

1:01:40

them. And then Murray Rothbard certainly tried

1:01:43

to make inroads with the left. We're

1:01:45

at a moment now where, you know,

1:01:47

both major parties and, you know, more

1:01:50

broadly the groups they represent conservatives and

1:01:52

liberals. seem to be fading in their

1:01:54

traditional sense. Do you see any great

1:01:57

future for the libertarians, either getting a

1:01:59

lot of refugees from these other places

1:02:01

or forming a working coalition with them?

1:02:03

I see why you might, and the

1:02:06

answer is really temperamental, and you know,

1:02:08

it probably has to do with my

1:02:10

age, and you know, how tired I

1:02:13

am or whatever. But I'm not feeling,

1:02:15

despite the fact that there's a lot

1:02:17

of energy that feels super libertarian in

1:02:20

a kind of like tear down the

1:02:22

state way, especially from the musk end

1:02:24

of what's going on now. I, you

1:02:27

know, this is like, what you're saying,

1:02:29

libertarian, a bad winter, or whatever, like,

1:02:31

I don't feel that the general cultural

1:02:34

and governmental energy is accepting of the

1:02:36

full range of libertarian freedom, but on

1:02:38

a strictly like political coalition level you

1:02:40

can tell a story and we'll find

1:02:43

out if it's true pretty quickly that

1:02:45

maybe Trumpism is going to make a

1:02:47

lot of people with a more full

1:02:50

bore libertarian vision realize I can't hang

1:02:52

with the Republican Party because I don't

1:02:54

like the tariff stuff or the immigration

1:02:57

stuff or the amassing of dictatorial executive

1:02:59

power stuff or the imperialistic. you know

1:03:01

advances stuff and that maybe that does

1:03:04

leave a room for it should right

1:03:06

it seems like it should and on

1:03:08

the left you have people are like

1:03:11

oh you know what I kind of

1:03:13

miss free speech yeah and markets really

1:03:15

aren't that bad yeah maybe I hope

1:03:17

they come to that like yeah so

1:03:20

There's every reason to be hopeful, even

1:03:22

if I, again, for eccentric personal reasons,

1:03:24

maybe I'm as hopeful as I should

1:03:27

be. You are like a libertarian, Sisyphus,

1:03:29

but you keep getting, the rock keeps

1:03:31

rolling back over you every day. You

1:03:34

know, it's like, you get to the

1:03:36

top, and that's when you know you're

1:03:38

really on the bottom. Okay, we're gonna

1:03:41

thank you, Brian Doherty, the new book

1:03:43

is Modern Libertarianist.