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Edward H. Crane joins us to talk about the early days of the Libertarian Party and the Cato Institute, which he founded almost 40 years ago in 1977.
Edward H. Crane joins us this week as we talk about the beginnings of the Libertarian Party in the early 1970s and Crane’s involvement with that organization. We also talk about the founding and early history of the Cato Institute, and we talk generally about Cato’s purpose and mission.
What was early-1970s libertarianism like, and how has libertarianism changed over the past 40 or so years in America? How did Cato get started and then grow into the organization it is today? What’s Cato’s role as a think tank?
What is a Libertarian?, written by Grant Babcock
Edward H. Crane is the founder and president emeritus of the Cato Institute. Prior to Cato’s founding, Crane was heavily involved in the leadership of the Libertarian Party; he worked on John Hospers’s 1972 Presidential bid, managed Ed Clark’s 1978 California gubernatorial campaign, and served as the Libertarian Party’s national chairman from 1974-1977.
Aaron Powell founded Libertarianism.org. He is now the host of (Re)Imagining Liberty, a podcast about the case for radical freedom.
Trevor Burrus was a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, legal history, and the interface between science and public policy.
He is the editor of A Conspiracy against Obamacare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Deep Commitments: The Past, Present, and Future of Religious Liberty (Cato, 2017). Burrus holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He also contributed a chapter to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty.