Libertarian Timeline
MichaelW on Dec 19 2007 at 8:44 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Libertarianism, MichaelW's Page, Philosophy
As told by Mother Jones … so yeah, it’s a little, umm, “slanted.” My favorite distortion:
1977: The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, is founded in San Francisco with funding from oil baron Charles G. Koch. The name comes from Cato’s Letters, newspaper articles written by two Englishmen using the pen name Cato the Younger, an allusion to the defender of republicanism in ancient Rome. With a yearly budget of nearly $20 million, Cato defends corporate empires.
Heh. OK, I guess that’s the only way a socialist rag could possibly comprehend an organization like The Cato Institute. So the list is slanted, but interesting nonetheless. C’est la vie. They did have the decency to include these gems:
1792: German philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt, in The Sphere and Duties of Government, argues that providing security is the only proper role of the state. Citizens must be granted freedom to live as they choose, he writes, because “the absolute and essential importance of human development [is] in its richest diversity.”
1819: “Every time collective power wishes to meddle with private speculations, it harasses the speculators,” complains Swiss-born thinker Benjamin Constant in France. “Every time governments pretend to do our business, they do it more incompetently and expensively than we would.”
Feel free to add what you think was left out in the comments. I’ll add the best to a post update.
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