David Boaz, an influential libertarian author and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, as well as its former executive vice president, passed away on Friday at the age of 70 following a battle with cancer.
News of the passing of David Boaz was reported on the Cato Institute’s website Friday morning. The Cato Institute has since written a heartfelt memoriam for Boaz, which is available here.
Boaz, who played a significant role in shaping the direction and influence of libertarianism, was born in Kentucky in 1953. He grew up in a political family, and his regular engagement with politics eventually led him to Vanderbilt University and then to the organization Young Americans for Freedom, where he began identifying and cultivating his modern libertarian perspectives.
He soon became involved with Ed Crane at the Libertarian Party and worked on Ed Clark’s various campaigns. Specifically, Boaz co-managed Ed Clark’s 1978 gubernatorial campaign in California and later contributed to his 1980 presidential campaign, which garnered over 920,000 votes, making it the most successful Libertarian Party presidential campaign in terms of raw votes until 2012.
Boaz joined the Cato Institute in 1981, where he would eventually become executive vice president, a position he held for over four decades. While at Cato, Boaz played a pivotal role in advancing libertarian ideas and shaping public policy, helping Cato garner the reputation it has today. Boaz was instrumental in promoting key issues such as drug legalization, school choice, and free trade, often through thoughtful and persuasive writing.
As a writer, he authored “Libertarianism: A Primer,” which served as a foundational text articulating libertarian principles for a mainstream audience. Boaz also edited “The Libertarian Reader,” which showcased the rich history and diverse voices within the libertarian movement.
Boaz eventually ascended to the title of distinguished senior fellow at Cato in 2022, a position held by only four others, three of them Nobel laureates in economics, according to the Cato Institute.
Seebeck, I agree, somewhat: condolences to his family, and the argument is stupid. I also disagree, somewhat: it’s hard to call someone a prominent member of a movement when all/seemingly all members of such an alleged movement have mutually contradictory views of who is or isn’t in it,whether they be prominent or not. I may be wrong, but I may have fairly recently seen you yourself say cato is “not libertarian” or “no longer libertarian.”
No wonder the libertarian movement isn’t getting more accomplished. They have zero agreement on who is or isn’t in the alleged movement or what they want to accomplish, much less how. It’s a movement only in the sense that there is a lot of stuff moving, albeit in every possible direction, in sum total perpetually cancelling itself out. That is, overall moving approximately or perhaps exactly as much as if there was no movement at all.
Or, perhaps: much a-move about nothing.
If you take every possible contrarian loggerheads and call it a movement, you’ll have your libertarian movement.
I hereby declare that I am not a not-a-libertarian libertarian.
Perhaps Saint Paul is right, after all:
“None is without sin, no, not one.”
You know, arguing over who is or who is not a “true libertarian” (whatever that is, YMMV), is really kinda stupid.
A prominent member of the movement has passed away, whether you agree with him on the minutiae or big things or not.
How about simply just acknowledging his passing and give respect to his family?
Is that too much to ask?
It might be a “no true Scotsman” definition, if I had previously claimed Rothbard was a libertarian in his Cato Institute days or at any time before co-founding the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Randolph Club. But I didn’t do so, so there was no retrospective altering of the definition as in “no true Scotsman”.
Regardless, check out those links I posted below, and decide for yourself if the Cato Institute can reasonably be called libertarian by any stretch of the imagination. And just to do Reality a favor, I will add that if your answer is yes, then you are not a libertarian.
Walter: Nuña and a few others have a “no true Scotsman” version of L/l libertarianism. Seen it elsewhere. Shock me.
If this is a repost, sorry. Seems like WordPress or something doesn’t like me today.
“Only Poland was able to remain independent, after they defeated an invasion by the Red Army, but Rothbard never mentioned that part of history.”
You forgot Finland.
A real libertarian is anyone who scores in the libertarian section on a ten question quiz with the questions picked and worded in such a way as to convince a large percentage of the general public they are libertarians, says something vaguely libertarian, shows up at a libertarian meeting, etc. They stop being a libertarian when they declare themselves to be libertarian, especially if they sign a vague/misunderstood/deceptive blood oath declaring themselves as one. After that point, it is revealed that they are only a real libertarian if they answer yes to an endless series of questions, and also that real libertarians don’t answer questions.
You were doing great until you started listing people whose libertarianism is allegedly unquestionable. My exposure to libertarians has conclusively convinced me that there are no such people.
I’m quite the opposite – a lot of people tell me I might be, or even am, a libertarian. In fact, up until the point that I fall for it, many libertarians seem eager for me to declare myself a libertarian. But as soon as I do, they switch immediately or as immediately as they can to telling me I’m not a real libertarian, a statist, the furthest thing possible from a libertarian, etc.
So, I’m not a libertarian, never was, and never will be. I might agree with them more often than any other political party, and sometimes vote for their candidates, but I am absolutely, positively, unquestionably not a libertarian. Anyone who says I am, or could be, should take it back and apologize. If they insist I must be, they’re a liar, a troll, and violating my freedom of non-association and mislabeling me.
I’ve never been so clear on anything in my whole entire life as that I’m absolutely, positively, immutably, unquestionably, in the strongest possible terms, NOT a libertarian.
Look at this **** from the Cato Institute and tell me again that they are libertarians.
Ilya Shapiro shilling for mandating untested and unsafe gene-therapy “because it’s not a serious infringement of your liberty”:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjo68UZv56k
Ian Vasquez celebrating untested and unsafe gene-therapy being tested on the public as “a triumph of globalism”:
https://www.cato.org/blog/nobel-prize-globalization
Julian Sanchez shilling for untested and unsafe gene-therapy “passports” “so long as the totalitarian actor doing it isn’t the government”:
https://www.cato.org/commentary/vaccine-passports-could-be-useful-only-government-gets-out-way
https://www.cato.org/blog/whats-wrong-debate-about-vaccine-passports
https://www.cato.org/blog/covid-cruises
And that’s only regarding the kung-flu plandemic, so not even touching upon Cato’s not allowing criticism
of nazi “Ukraine”:
https://x.com/dimitrilascaris/status/1670788151256686594
or of the “anthropogenic climate change” hoax:
https://www.science.org/content/article/us-think-tank-shuts-down-prominent-center-challenged-climate-science
or their hypocrisy on freedom of association, on open borders and the rights of citizens versus of illegal aliens, on election integrity and fraud,
or any of their other explicitly anti-libertarian stances (i.e. pretty much every statement they have ever put out)
No. The Cato Institute is statist and totalitarian, and somehow manages to be both fascist and globalist at the same time – no mean feat. They have never been libertarian and they probably never will.
Oh, and here’s David Boaz #ripboazo being explicitly anti-libertarian, to get back to my original comment:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/david-boaz-cato-institute-offers-anti-libertarian-perspective/
https://thefederalist.com/2015/05/08/do-libertarians-have-a-political-future-a-conversation-with-david-boaz/
@Reality
If a libertarian says they aren’t a libertarian but there is nobody around to hear them, do they make a sound?
Libertarians are like vegans who can’t stop telling everyone that they’re vegan. Or like arch linux users who can’t stop reminding people that they “use arch btw”. Or like rust programmers who can’t stop advertising “made using rust” as more important than the quality of their code. Or like transgender women who can’t stop demanding people call them “ma’am”. Except that instead of applying a statement to themselves, they apply it to each other: “you aren’t a real libertarian”. There have only ever been a handful whose libertarianism is unquestionable (e.g. Thomas Aquinas, Richard Hooker, John Locke, James Madison, Lysander Spooner, Pyotr Geyden, Dmitry Shipov, Mikhail Stakhovich, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Vaclav Benda, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Kevin Craig).
@Gene Berkman
> “Self-ownership” refers to the concept that each individual should have total control over his own life. For example, a woman owns her own body, and is entitled to make decisions concerning her own body, whether getting a vaccine, or having an abortion. That is an example of the principle of “self-ownership.”
Indeed. It is a heathen fallacy that is completely incompatible with libertarianism. Unless you have the ability to bring yourself back to life, you do not have the right to kill yourself. Murdering a child who is in your womb as a result of your own actions due to a change of mind is a violation of the NAP. (See also https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2024/06/montana-libertarian-party-rejects-chase-olivers-nomination-urges-lnc-to-suspend-candidacy/#comments ).
> Rothbard did not advocate as a principle that anyone strong enough or powerful enough should have the right to take your property. He did contend that a property owner had the right to use force to protect his property – a different thing altogether.
Before becoming a libertarian, Rothbard wrote to Friedman that he agreed with Max Stirner’s statement in The Ego and Its Own:
“I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. […] What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing; […]. Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property”
> If Cato promoted voluntary masking, voluntary social distancing, and voluntary vaccination, I don’t see a problem.
Do you mean voluntary untested and unsafe gene-therapy? There was never any question of “vaccination” at the time.
The Cato Institute promoted the state using social pressure and coercion under the guise of “freedom of association”. (Funny how they think that freedom only works one way and you can’t demand people who underwent unsafe and untested gene-therapies stop shedding their spike proteins around you…) They demonized people who were skeptical about following the “settled science”, prevented people from attending conferences without proof of having received untested and unsafe gene-therapy and taking high-cycle PCR tests, and attacked the Mises Institute for “endangering society” by not becoming as fascistic as the Cato Institute. They did all this very smugly and publicly on their websites, in interviews and on social media. As you would have seen had you been following them at the time. If you don’t see the problem, then you are part of it.
I never claimed Ho Chi Minh or Lenin were libertarians. Murray Rothbard claimed that Lenin’s foreign policy was the foreign policy of libertarianism. Apparently he was referring to the period right after the Bolshevik coup, during which Ukraine and several other sections of what was the Russian empire seceded; Rothbard believed that Lenin allowed the secession because if his (Lenin’s) commitment to the “self-determination of nations. Of course, within a couple years, armed Bolsheviks forced the newly independent countries back into the Soviet Union, which was the new form of the Russian Empire.
Murray Rothbard did not claim Ho Chi Minh was a libertarian, but he, Leonard Liggio, Walter Grinder, Walter Block and others in the Rothbard group were in solidarity with the National Liberation Front fighting the government of South Vietnam and fighting the US Troops. Strange as this may sound to people who think Rothbard was a rightwinger – it was not as divorced from reality as his claims that Lenin had a libertarian foreign policy.
Only Poland was able to remain independent, after they defeated an invasion by the Red Army, but Rothbard never mentioned that part of history.
“Self-ownership” refers to the concept that each individual should have total control over his own life. For example, a woman owns her own body, and is entitled to make decisions concerning her own body, whether getting a vaccine, or having an abortion. That is an example of the principle of “self-ownership.”
Rothbard did not advocate as a principle that anyone strong enough or powerful enough should have the right to take your property. He did contend that a property owner had the right to use force to protect his property – a different thing altogether. He did right an essay in Libertarian Forum – his own newsletter – advocating “homesteading” of factories owned by companies that totally depended on state contracts and state subsidies. It was a suggestion of how to deal with Mixed-Economy parasites, and Ayn Rand called them. Few libertarians took seriously his idea of homesteading factories, although some east coast libertarians did try to approach anarcho-syndicalists using the ideas from Rothbard’s essay.
If Cato promoted voluntary masking, voluntary social distancing, and voluntary vaccination, I don’t see a problem. If they promoted compulsory actions to deal with the pandemic, where did they publish some ideas?
The favorite hobby of people who claim to be libertarian seems to be claiming that other people who claim to be libertarian are either not real libertarians or not libertarian at all.
It’s possible that there are people who claim to be libertarians who don’t have such a hobby, but who’s to say whether they are libertarians, much less real?
Could it be that they’re all correct about each other, and there’s no such thing as a real libertarian?
Whenever I’m tempted to think I might be a libertarian, they helpfully remind me that I’m not. I take their word for it, since after all they are the foremost experts on who is or isn’t a libertarian.
“Apparently some people have accepted or made up an alternative history of The Libertarian Movement”
Yes, apparently you have, since you are completely inverting the facts – quite a sad attempt at historical revisionism, since the historical records are readily available to all. (Also, you don’t need to capitalize the libertarian movement, as if it is a formal entity rather than an organic movement.)
The Cato Institute is clearly not libertarian, and clearly has never promoted libertarianism. But please tell us more about how Ho Chi Minh and Lenin were libertarians.
“Self-ownership” is the bane of all libertarian tendencies. During his egoist zombie days in the 70’s, Rothbard absolutely claimed that anyone has the right to take property if they have the strength to do so.
The John Randolph Club is explicitly libertarian. It is the libertarian arm of the join paleoconservative and paleolibertarian Rockford Institute.
The Property and Freedom Society, founded by Hans-Hermann Hoppe promotes various forms of capitalist anarchism, minarchism, classical liberalism and paleolibertarianism, including the concept of voluntary contract settlements. Hoppe is a libertarian, but statists who want to pass themselves off as libertarians, such as Quinn Slobodian and apparently Gene Berkman, keep trying to deny it and libel him.
The PFS’ status as the most libertarian learned-society is contested by such other radical libertarian bodies as the Institute for CryptoAnarchy aka the Prague Parallel Polis aka Chapter 77 in Czechia and Katechon in Russia. And Hoppe’s double-standards when it comes to Israel (libertarianism for everyone except the Jews) have certainly contributed to this.
Murray Rothbard’s involvement with the John Randolph Club came as was just fully embracing libertarianism. And reading the Rothbard-Rockwell Report shows how far closer to libertarianism he moved.
The claims made about the Cato Institute by Gene Berkman are clearly fantasy imagined by someone who has not paid attention to the work of the Cato Institute, or apparently the message of libertarianism. His denial that Cato promoted lock downs, masking, social distancing and unsafe and untested gene-therapy deliberately mislabeled as “vaccines” during covid, prove that he either not been following Cato’s website or social media accounts or that he has a very convenient selective memory, as do his denial of Cato banning any skepticism toward the “antropogenic climate change”-myth and the myriad genders and sexes baloney.
Apparently some people have accepted or made up an alternative history of The Libertarian Movement. But I was there. I became a libertarian in the mid 1960s, I met Rothbard several times, Ed Crane several times and many others. I helped put on conferences featuring Ludwig von Mises in 1969, Kar Hess in early 1970, Murray Rothbard in late 1970 and other conferences up through 1975.
Cato Institute is clearly libertarian, and clearly promotes libertarianism. Murray Rothbard sounded like a libertarian when he talked ethics or economics, but quite different from all other libertarians when he tried to develop a strategy to promote liberty. Solidarity with Vietnam when it was attacked by America is one thing; claiming Lenin had a libertarian foreign policy is quite deviant in libertarian circles.
“Self-ownership” is central to all libertarian tendencies. Rothbard never claimed that anyone has the right to take property if they have the strength to do so. He advocated a Lockean idea that unowned property becomes owned when you mix your labor with it. This was in contrast to the position of Robert LeFevre, who said property belongs to the first claimant, whether he has mixed his labor with it , or even intends to, or not. Rothbard’s ways of expressing ideas in economics is not as clear as the writings of Mises, but he was not, other than on foreign policy, different from other libertarians, until the 1990s when he decided Pat Buchanan and the Paleo-Conservatives were the best vehicle for the freedom movement to attach itself to.
The John Randolph Club was not libertarian, either explicitly or implicitly. He was intended as a forum to bring libertarians together with paleo-conservatives, to lay the groundwork for a united front. It did not happen because Paleocons were nationalists and social conservatives, and few libertarians were interested in associating with them.
The Property and Freedom Society, founded by Hans Hermann Hoppe promotes a neo-feudal, neo-monarchist vision, historically at odds with capitalism. But Hoppe claims to be a libertarian, and people who don’t understand libertarianism, or who have a particular axe to grind, accept him as such.
Murray Rothbard’s involvement with the John Randolph Club came as he was abandoning libertarianism. The abandonment was not transparent, since his older books written when he was a libertarian are kept in print. But reading the Rothbard-Rockwell Report shows how far from libertarianism he moved.
The claims made about the Cato Institute by its critic are clearly fantasy imagined by someone who has not paid attention to the work of the Cato Institute, or apparently the message of libertarianism. The ideas attributed to Cato are ideas I have never seen in a Cato Institute pubication or at http://www.cato.org or any of the other Cato website.
Walter, I mean that the Cato Institute is not now and was never a libertarian institute. Libertine, definitely. Liberal, in the modern American sense, but not in the classical sense.
The Cato Institute was co-founded by Rothbard back when he was still a mindless drone of Stirner’s egoism (e.g. the fallacy of “self-ownership”, “free love”, property belongs to whoever can exercise the force to take and to keep it, and all that anti-libertarian rot). But when Rothbard first started becoming interested in libertarian ideas in the early ’80s, the Cato Institute tried to suppress that line of thinking and eventually forced him out because he wouldn’t abandon it. That resulted in him co-founding the Ludwig von Mises Institute instead, which is libertarian unlike Cato.
Without the Cato Institute’s cryptofascism telling him what and how to think, Rothbard eventually became a libertarian and joined the Rockford Institute’s John Randolf Club, another bona fide libertarian organization. And his protege Hoppe went on to found what is arguably the most libertarian institution to date, the Property and Freedom Society.
Meanwhile, the Cato Institute has only continued it’s long anti-libertarian march, as exemplified by their support “following the science” by which they apparently mean: do what the WHO, CDC, FDA, NIH, Fauci, etc. tell you to do without question; reject all scientific evidence in favor of a non-existent “scientific consensus” about the “anthropogenic climate change”-myth; claiming there are only two sexes is hate-speech; never ever think critically for yourself; etcetera ad nauseam. I.e. flagrant anti-libertarian totalitarianism.
Libertarianism refers to the philosophy or concepts of individual liberty, and how to protect individual liberty in a social context. Libertarianism is promoted by a number of organizations, including, pre-eminently, The Cato Institute.
The Cato Institute stands for personal freedom, free market economy, and international peace – the three major social principles of libertarianism. Cato has promoted Libertarianism since its founding in the late 1970s. It continues to do promote libertarianism, along with Reason Magazine, the Institute for Humane Studies and other institutes, booksellers. Thanks to Cato and other organizations, there is still hope for a libertarian movement even as The “Mises” Caucus wallows in the Paleo mud.
We were called the two youngsters of the LP, though he didn’t make a real leap until the late ’70’s. Now he is gone. Cancer. https://www.votechaseoliver.com/blog/oliver-calls-cato-s-boaz-a-giant-of-liberty-movement
Nuña is correct. CATO is designed along with Atlas Network to focus on new liberalism/libertarian-orientation (nations conformant and making progress on UDHR and ideally adopting the Bill of Rights), not full-fledged Libertarian tools–though it informs the public on various items and discussions. It’s all a model for people who want to start 5 followers living-room think-tanks and see how far it can go. It’s doing OK.
Libertarianism, strictly speaking, refers to the networks of the Libertarian International Organization/Liberal League and informal libertarian fans, and only secondarily to related disciplines and proposals. CATO is in Libertarianism but not a consistent advocate of LIO socio-political models. It has LIO Libertarians at work there, though. CATO is doing what my father, Nolan, and Rothbard designed it to do, with a little twist I put in the original name. We had a lot of fun putting those acronyms everywhere and little riddles to guide the aware. Libertarian is all about to-do lists with snappy acronyms. Once you get the basic ideas in, like B.O.A.Z. for voluntary eco-projects, a lot happens automatically.
Boaz did a great job on what little he was asked to do. He did a bit more. He was a good LIO advisor.
CATs Organized.
A really great person. He will be sorely missed.
“Libertarian and the Cato Institute are mutually exclusive.”
What do you mean?
Libertarian and the Cato Institute are mutually exclusive.
I am sorry to hear of David Boaz’s passing. He was a major contributor to the Libertarian movement. I recall first hearing of him around 1979 when I first joined the party. We are grateful for his interest and activism.
This is very sad. I have know David Boaz since the mid 1970s and he was committed to libertarianism and had an educated understanding of libertarian ethical concepts and free market economics.
In his last writings he expressed his concerns about the anti-liberal direction of American and world politics. After spending years promting The Libertarian Party in its early years, he was unhappy with the direction The Libertarian Party since the 2022 convention.
I continue to sell his book on Libertarianism, an excellent and readable introduction to the concepts of individual liberty and free market economy.