Walter In Denver

Brian Doherty at Cato Unbound

An interesting read. Brian Doherty's essay,, based on his book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, examines Libertarianism's history and prospects. Here's the first bit:

I always thought the libertarian movement’s story was fascinating and important, filled with vivid, peculiar, and heroic characters with many little-understood influences on American culture. It is also a story sadly undertold, especially when you consider how books about every twist and turn in domestic communist movements, parties, and organizations fill library shelves (though rarely consumers' shelves).

To the extent that libertarianism’s history has been told, it has mostly been treated as a weird, overenthusiastic little cousin to right-wing conservatism. Rescuing libertarianism from that sad fate was one of my purposes, and one of the reasons I put the word “radical” in its title—as part of a phrase invented by novelist and libertarian inspiration Ayn Rand to identify her own ideological mission.

It gets more interesting from there. Cato Unbound's policy is to start with a lead essay (Doherty's in this case) and then post essays by other writers in response. Here's the first response, by Brink Lindsey. Yet to come are essays by Tyler Cowen, Tom G. Palmer and Virginia Postrel.

Posted by Walter at March 9, 2007 12:07 PM