Oftentimes, when a policy issue surfaced that required action from the Cato Institute, America’s premier libertarian think tank (and, full disclosure, my employer), the lion’s share of the emails passed around the office said the same thing: “Ask David Boaz what he thinks.”
After a yearlong battle with cancer, Boaz passed away today. Yet even until his last breath, he was fighting for the foundational principles of the libertarian philosophy, from individual liberty to free markets. He knew the history of both big “L” and small “l” libertarianism better than anyone — he had lived it. And even as his time on earth dwindled, he kept adding to the enormous depth and breadth of his knowledge.
Boaz was a titan in the freedom movement, having served Cato for more than 43 years. At the time of his death, he held the title of distinguished senior fellow at Cato, a position held by only three other people, all of them Nobel laureates in economics.
But even as his life came to a close, Boaz was as clear and erudite as ever. In an unpublished piece he wrote just two weeks ago defending libertarianism from the creeping forces of populism, he returned to the fundamentals of what “freedom” means:
Libertarianism is the modern manifestation of classical liberalism, the transformative movement that challenged monarchs, autocrats, mercantilism, caste society, and religious persecution beginning in the 18th century. As heirs to that tradition, libertarians believe in individual freedom, equality under the law, pluralism, toleration, free speech, freedom of religion, government by consent of the governed, the rule of law, private property, free markets, and limited constitutional government.
Libertarianism is part of the broader liberal tradition and also deeply embedded in American history, taking the principles of the Declaration of Independence — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — to their most consistently radical conclusions. . . .
Some political philosophies emphasize material equality, or conserving tradition. Others take as their first principles a kind of collective populism, claiming to speak for the will of the people, or claim a divine mandate to enforce god’s laws. Some are dedicated to ethnonationalist “blood and soil.” But for libertarianism, that highest principle is freedom, the priority from which all else flows.
Boaz naturally warned that this liberal philosophy was incompatible with the recent injection of populism it has seen in the political realm:
We all understand that the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” is no such thing. Or as Voltaire famously quipped about the fractured polity that ruled Germany in his day, it was “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.” To this list of nominative malapropisms we can now sadly add “Libertarian Party.”
Over the past half century, few people in America had as much experience and authority to defend liberty, and Boaz dedicated his life to doing so. His book The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom is one of the philosophy’s foundational texts, a must-read for anyone seeking entry into the world of thought on liberty and self-governance. On social media, he was salty and informative in equal measure; his Twitter (X) account should stand as an example of how to be cheerful and yet combative.
Boaz got his start in the world of practical politics, co‐managing Ed Clark’s 1978 campaign to become governor of California. He later also worked as research director on Clark’s 1980 presidential campaign as the Libertarian Party nominee.
But it was ideas that Boaz valued most, which led him to the intellectual world. He joined the newly formed Cato Institute in 1981, promoting what he called “reasonable radical libertarianism” — standing firm in principle yet making personal and economic liberty palatable to the public. He served as vice president for public policy and then as executive vice president until 2022.
When he wasn’t proselytizing in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, Boaz frequently made arguments in the pages of National Review (see: “Libertarianism Is Not a Four-Letter Word,” from 2010).
For decades, people have wondered whether libertarianism was the “next big thing.” But David Boaz was always a big thing, and carried that mantle happily through his life.
David Boaz died today at the age of 70. May he rest in peace.