Today's Washington Post ran a pretty flattering article on the Cato Institute's 25th anniversary as the top story in the Style section. Cato deserves the accolades (and no, I have no affiliation with them, except writing a foreward for a forthcoming book). Cato has become one of the most influential think tanks in Washington -- and by far the most principled among its peers. Values like limited government, free markets, and freedom of speech and privacy are the better for it. Hope to see Politechnicals at their black-tie gathering tonight in DC. -Declan --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56445-2002May8.html Free Radical Libertarian -- and Contrarian -- Ed Crane Has Run the Cato Institute for 25 Years. His Way. By Richard Morin Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 9, 2002; Page C01 Early in the spring of 1988, Ed Crane and Kristina Herbert were two libertarians in love. And like so many lovers, they talked about marriage. At least Herbert did. "Kristina was always nagging to get married, and I said you really think that a government ceremony would improve this relationship?" says Crane, co-founder of the free-market-loving, big-government-loathing Cato Institute. "And she said yes." " 'Okay,' I said. 'Then let's get a serious government to do it. We're going to China.' " As it happened, Crane was already headed to China. Against the odds, Cato had won permission from the communist government to lead a conference on free market capitalism and limited government -- the first American think tank allowed to raise those once-forbidden ideas behind the Bamboo Curtain. So on Sept. 26, 1988, after a six-month battle with bureaucracies in two countries, Edward Harrison Crane and Kristina Knall Herbert were married in People's Marriage Office No. 9 in Shanghai. That night, Communist Party functionaries joined with Chinese academics and Cato scholars to eat wedding cake, sing songs and toast the newlyweds. In love as in life, Ed Crane has taken the different path, a single-minded free thinker whose life has been lived largely out of step with his times -- or perhaps a step or two ahead of them. Today Crane, 57, is the longest-serving think tank president in town and probably the only one who declares that he "doesn't like politicians and people who like politics." Nor does he seem to particularly care whether Congress or President Bush embrace his ideas -- even as Capitol Hill and the White House have started to pay a bit more attention to Cato's policy prescriptions. Crane also may be the only head of a think tank who doesn't vote in national or local elections. He hasn't for years, not even for candidates of the Libertarian Party -- the party that he led in the 1970s. Crane calls himself a "genetic libertarian" who cannot "remember a time that I didn't think it was wrong for some people to tell other people how to live their lives or to spend their money." To him, the core libertarian principles of personal liberty, free markets and limited government clearly are, in the words of the Founding Fathers, the "self evident" birthright of all human beings. Libertarians veer far to the left on issues of personal morality, free speech and individual rights but swing equally far to the right when the subject turns to market capitalism and the proper role of government. They favor slashing the size of government and federal spending -- including military spending. They oppose virtually all limits on personal freedoms, including drug and prostitution laws. "There are only a few rules: You can't hit other people and you can't take their stuff," says David Boaz, executive vice president of Cato. "After that, you have to make the important decisions for yourself." [...] Tonight, more than 2,000 libertarians and friends of Cato will gather at a black-tie gala at the Hilton Washington to celebrate the think tank's 25th anniversary. Luminaries from the ideological extremes of politics and culture pay their respects to Cato in a 12-minute video to be shown at the dinner. "Hang in there! Keep doing what you're doing," says George P. Shultz, who held two Cabinet posts in the Nixon administration and was Ronald Reagan's secretary of state. Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice and Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU, also appear in the filmed tribute praising Cato's commitment to free speech and personal freedom. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sign this pro-therapeutic cloning petition: http://www.franklinsociety.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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