David Boaz on The Libertarian Mind
2015-04-04 · Guest: David Boaz (Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute) · 52:39
Core principles and history of libertarianism
Bob Zadek interviews David Boaz, Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute, about his book The Libertarian Mind. They explore the core principles of libertarianism—individual rights, spontaneous order, and limited government—while tracing its historical roots through the abolitionist and feminist movements. The conversation applies these principles to contemporary issues, including the failures of the drug war, the unintended consequences of the welfare state, and the tension between religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws.
Topics: Libertarianism, Individual Rights, Cato Institute, Drug War, Welfare State, Feminism, Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Spontaneous Order
Speakers: Bob Zadek, David Boaz
Defining Libertarianism [00:09]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek show. Every Sunday at 9:00 AM, I am, as always, your host, Bob Zadek. Thanks so much for listening. We are the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. This is it. Thanks so much for listening. 800-345-5639 is the number to put into speed dial to join our conversation at any time. We are the show of ideas, of course, not attitude. No, sirree, Bob.
Libertarianism. This show is identified as the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. Libertarian—what does it mean to be libertarian? Does libertarian describe merely a political party affiliation? Does it describe how one registers to vote, or does it describe something far deeper than that? Of course, the answer is yes, it describes something far deeper. Libertarianism is a moral, economic, ethical philosophy. It has a rich philosophical history. There’s been discussion, and most people seem to agree, that most of the founders were probably not self-identified—the word wasn’t used then—but were libertarian-ish or libertarian in their own thinking as they drafted, negotiated, and ultimately adopted the American Constitution, which would mean that our country was founded at its core on libertarian principles.
But what are those principles? Nothing could be more important than principles to help us understand what those principles are and how they apply to the very important issues of the day. I am delighted and, I dare say, quite proud to welcome David Boaz to the show. David is most recently the author of a bestselling book, The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom. The Libertarian Mind follows David’s very successful book, The Libertarian Reader, Libertarianism: A Primer, which was published back in 1997. David is the Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute. David, welcome to the show this Easter morning.
David Boaz: Thank you very much.
Bob Zadek: So, David, libertarianism—did I describe it accurately as a philosophy, a moral philosophy, economic principles, as well as having a political component? Is that a fair summary? And if so, what are the core precepts, the sort of the first line of bullet points on libertarianism?
David Boaz: Well, I think what you said was fair, although I’d be careful about the moral philosophy point, because one of the things that I do often say about libertarianism is that it is a political philosophy. It’s not a complete philosophy of life. It’s not an ethical guide to how to live your life. Libertarianism doesn’t have much to say about how you should treat your wife or how you should treat your business partners, except to not use coercion against them.
Bob Zadek: Well, that exception, by the way, David, is a big exception. One can say that’s an important rule to live by, and if you only live by that rule, you’re not doing badly.
David Boaz: Well, I’m not sure. That’s maybe a later topic. The rule that libertarianism proposes for living together and being able to live together in peace can be summed up in kindergarten terms: Don’t hit other people, don’t take their stuff, and keep your promises. If we do those things, then we will be able to have a peaceful society, and it will have social harmony and economic growth and all those good things. Libertarianism is the philosophy of freedom. It’s about the relationship between the individual and the state. And so it says that people should be free to live their lives any way they choose, so long as they respect the equal rights of others.
Bob Zadek: So it’s a social philosophy. It describes how people ought to live in a community, not necessarily a governmental philosophy, although it does have clear implications for the political system. But at its core, it describes how people interact with one another.
David Boaz: Yes, that’s right.
Bob Zadek: And an interesting issue is libertarianism is not per se an economic system, but rather we believe, and in fact the evidence is overwhelmingly clear, that living according to a libertarian philosophy will produce wealth, economic opportunity, and personal well-being. But it’s not itself an economic system.
David Boaz: Well, yes, that’s right. Although, of course, different libertarians come to libertarianism in different ways. Some get there by believing in the philosophy of individual rights. Some do get there by studying economics and saying, “You know what I find in the study of economics is that if you set up a few simple rules, like respecting property rights and market exchange, then you will get a well-functioning and growing economy, and that’s my goal, and so that’s why I’m a libertarian.” So in that case, those people would be coming to libertarianism from an understanding of economics. But those who start out from a philosophical point of view, that’s right, they would say, “I believe it is wrong to treat human beings as merely means and not ends. I believe it is wrong to use force to require other people to make the choices that I think they should make rather than the choices they choose to make.” And if you come at it from that philosophical point of view, then you don’t necessarily have any preconceptions about economics except that you don’t want coercion or force to be a part of the economic system.
Bob Zadek: And in libertarianism, the smallest unit, the most important unit of social life is not any kind of a group, but rather the individual. Libertarianism, on the one hand, has great faith in the inherent ability of individuals to generally cooperate with each other in a peaceful way, although libertarianism has a way for government to deal with those who don’t, who are antisocial and wish to harm others or their property. But libertarianism has this inherent faith in the goodness, the general goodness and wisdom of individuals, and the rights granted or the rights retained are the rights retained by individuals, not by groups. So individuality and individualism is a core part of libertarian belief, is it not?
David Boaz: Yes, that’s right. There’s a chapter in my book on the dignity of the individual.
The Goal of “The Libertarian Mind” [05:40]
Bob Zadek: Tell us now, what does the book hope to accomplish? When you sat down to write the book, what was your goal? What did you hope to accomplish, and who was your audience for the book?
David Boaz: Well, I’d say I had three purposes in writing the book. One was to give libertarians a deeper understanding of their own philosophy as we understand it here early in the 21st century. And I know that there are a lot of libertarians who think, “Well, it’s an introductory book, I don’t need an introductory book.” And what I would say to those people is, I learned a lot writing this book, so I think you would learn something reading this book. I understand libertarianism better than I did when I started writing the book.
The second is to write the book that I hope libertarians would want to give to their friends and family members who express some interest in understanding “What is this libertarianism you’ve been talking about?”
And the third idea is, I think that there are millions and tens of millions of Americans who are basically libertarian, or at least are more libertarian than they are consistently liberal or consistently conservative. Half of Americans tell pollsters that they consider themselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Now, that’s a very weak kind of libertarianism, but it is people saying, “I don’t quite fit into that conservative Republican box. I don’t quite fit into that liberal Democrat box. So maybe I’m a moderate libertarian.” People who believe in a dynamic, growing economy and who think gay marriage is fine. People who think the government taxes too much and also don’t see why we put people in jail for smoking marijuana. People who have views like that, which again, I believe is tens of millions of Americans, should think of themselves as part of the broad libertarian group, even if they’re not as fully libertarian as this book might argue.
Bob Zadek: And so, and I have found, you know, the very first show that I did seven and a half years ago, when I was just learning how to do radio and I discussed the concept of libertarianism—of course, it was less well known generally than it is today. This has been the year, or the several years, when libertarianism, if you search it, it appears in the media all of the time, when seven years ago it appeared almost never. So it was a very different world for libertarians even seven years ago. But I remember getting a caller who thanked me and said, “I didn’t know what I was until I heard your show.” And when I discuss libertarianism, more and more people just naturally seem to identify, as if they find they have found a philosophical home. They had the beliefs but didn’t know how to describe those beliefs and didn’t know what political bucket they fit in. And so the book will perform that very valuable service as well. It is an easy read, and it is so, so informative to people who care about the political factors that affect their life.
David Boaz: Well, I’m glad it seemed that way. It had to be an easy read because I had to understand it. But yeah, I think there are a lot of people who, if they understood what libertarian meant, would think of themselves as libertarians. And part of what I want to do with this book, and with talking about this book on radio and TV and so on, is to get those people to pick it up and take a look and consider whether they might be libertarians.
Libertarianism and Feminism [09:20]
Bob Zadek: David, one of the interesting points that I learned from you was the relationship—and I’ll ask you to explain it—between feminism and women’s rights and women in society and libertarianism. And I didn’t know until you taught me the important role that women in their political lives, the important role that they had going back a very long time in our political history in the libertarian movement, if I can call it that.
David Boaz: Well, I think that’s right. And I think that, of course, what libertarians believe in is equal freedom under law, equal freedom for every person—maybe we should say every adult, because children aren’t quite the same as adults—but equal freedom for every person under the law. And that includes women, even though most countries have not recognized that until recently. One of the first important feminist books was written by Mary Wollstonecraft back around 1800, The Vindication of the Rights of Woman. And she was making her case for women’s rights in the terms of classical liberalism and libertarianism—that is, equal rights, individual rights, natural rights, freedom from government restrictions. That was an important part of the libertarian message being developed in a feminist direction.
And then I think what you had during the abolitionist movement was a lot of women who got involved in the abolitionist movement, and it made them start thinking, “Wait a minute, if black men have the same rights as white men, why would not women also have those same rights?” And so, in some ways, a part of the feminist movement grew out of the abolitionist movement.
And then the one thing that sort of connects these things is if you ask, “When did the modern libertarian movement start?” Well, there are many times that you could say. You could say it was the American Revolution. You could say it was people who objected to the New Deal creating this much larger federal government. But one way to look at it is to say in 1943, three remarkable women wrote books that really gelled and presented the libertarian philosophy. Rose Wilder Lane wrote The Discovery of Freedom, Isabel Paterson wrote The God of the Machine, and Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead. She wrote it over about 10 years, but she published it in 1943. And those three books together started getting an audience that really started producing an ideological and intellectual movement of libertarianism. They were followed the next year by Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and a couple of years later by the creation of the first libertarian think tank. So in a way, you can say three women in 1943 started the modern libertarian movement.
Bob Zadek: So feminism has almost a parallel lineage with libertarianism in America. Indeed, the feminists, whether they would self-identify as libertarians, they were joined philosophically by core libertarian concepts. It was the same issue. They were partners philosophically in believing the same thing.
The Role of Government [12:30]
Bob Zadek: Now, David, there is a lot of misunderstanding about how libertarians see the importance of, indeed, the role of government. There’s a lot of uninformed, pretty dumb statements that libertarians don’t want government, they hate government. Now, in fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. So help us understand the relationship between, or how libertarians see the role of government in our, their lives.
David Boaz: Well, again, different libertarians have different views. But what I would say is the role of government is to protect life, liberty, and property. And that is a very important function in society. In order to have liberty, we have to have some sort of protection law, we could call it. We have to have law that protects our rights to life, liberty, and property. And so government should do those important tasks. And the logical thing that you would say it manifests itself as is you need police to punish criminals, the people who hit other people and take their stuff, and also hopefully to prevent people from doing those things. You need courts to punish and perhaps incarcerate the people who do those things, and also to settle disputes between reasonable people. And you need a national defense to protect us against overseas threats.
But beyond that, libertarians generally believe that people operating individually and in cooperation with others through businesses, churches, charities, nonprofit groups, all sorts of associations, can pretty well supply all the other things that we need in life, from food and clothing and housing to computer networks to roads to all sorts of necessary economic factors. We want government to protect our rights. We don’t want government to intrude on our rights.
Progressives, Eugenics, and the Welfare State [14:30]
Bob Zadek: Now, progressives—their argument isn’t directly focused on libertarianism as an opposing philosophy, but progressives tend to operate as if they own the heart, in the sense that they care for, or their belief system and the policies they support are to help those people who are in need of help, the less fortunate is sometimes the phrase, although I abhor it. Fortune has nothing or very little to do with it. But they want to help the less fortunate, and therefore part of their philosophy is, of course, the entitlement system, which involves basically taking wealth from the more fortunate, their phrase, segment of society and giving it to those who are less fortunate. And libertarians are incorrectly described as not supportive of that, and their philosophy opposes it, and therefore they are somewhat heartless in the sense that they don’t care about those people who have considerably less, the so-called issue of income inequality. Now, that statement, my introduction, is laden with misperceptions by many in society and certainly by progressives. Help us understand how libertarians would approach, A, the need for some kind of help for those who are less fortunate, and B, the whole system of entitlements as it exists in America today.
David Boaz: Well, it’s interesting that you say progressives and not just liberals, which is what I grew up understanding that advocates of big government from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton were called. Because the original people who called themselves progressives in the early 20th century, they wanted to help the poor, but one of the ways they wanted to help them was by producing fewer of them. So they were in favor of eugenics. They wanted to discourage poor people from reproducing. That’s why they passed laws that would, for instance, forcibly sterilize women who were judged to be mentally incompetent.
Bob Zadek: There was a famous Oliver Wendell Holmes quote when he sat on the Supreme Court, and the issue was the sterilization of some woman who had mental problems. He used the word then in use, not in use anymore, called “imbecile.” And as sitting justice in the Supreme Court, when he voted in favor of her reproductive ability being removed, he said, and I think I’m quoting, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
David Boaz: That’s right. And he was a leading progressive, and that was a progressive view back then. Now, I don’t think there are any progressives today who would hold such views, but it does indicate that, yes, progressives care about the poor, they care about the less fortunate, they also care about sort of the national—the people as a national resource. “Let’s improve the quality of the American people so they’ll be a better national resource.”
If we isolate just the argument that we should help the poor because we do feel charitable toward them, we feel a sense of community, a sense of charity, then what libertarians would say is your systems haven’t worked very well. Your welfare system has trapped generations of Americans into dependency on government. We would be better off with a system where we had a more robustly growing economy, which is hurt by all the taxes and spending and regulations that progressives and liberals put on it, and had a robust charitable system, which we do, but it would be more so if we weren’t giving 40% of our money to the government.
So libertarians would tend to say that when the government gives people money, they can get hooked on that money, they can have their will to go out and get a job sapped, and they can end up literally, not three generations of imbeciles, but three generations of welfare dependency. And that’s what a lot of people now recognize as a problem, but very few people have been willing to actually do something about it, which logically would be stop creating this welfare state, which is more than just welfare, remember. It’s welfare plus government-guaranteed healthcare plus housing plus food stamps.
Wealth Transfers and Charity [18:40]
Bob Zadek: David, you were explaining to us the libertarian approach and opposition to the system of wealth transfers whereby government in its Robin Hood mode takes from the rich to give to the poor. Now, that has, I guess, some very, very surface appeal. Why not taking from the haves to give to the have-nots? Isn’t that a very good system? Of course, the whole system of taking one’s property simply because government decides somebody else deserves that property more is pretty abhorrent to many of us. But you were speaking about the system of wealth transfers, which of course is a subset of the entitlement program in general.
David Boaz: Right. Well, there is a moral problem with taking money from people by force and giving it to other people. But there’s also a social problem created when you get people on these government programs and they’re able to stay for years and decades. I don’t think that’s a very satisfying life. And so what we should be thinking about is not how do we get people welfare, but how do we get people better lives. And that’s where I think having a robust, stronger market economy would be better for everybody, especially those who have not been able to find jobs or have not been able to find good jobs, and a system of charity, which we do have, but which would be bigger if people had more money in their pockets to give.
And the difference between charity and government is that people who are engaged in charity are usually more local, more decentralized, more focused on the individual families they’re dealing with, and they’re more focused on helping people get their lives together rather than simply giving them money. You know, it’s like when you think about foreign aid. You see terrible pictures of people starving in Africa, and the immediate instinct is let’s send some money and some food over there. And that is a noble, charitable, Judeo-Christian, but not exclusively Judeo-Christian, instinct. Let’s help people in need. But wouldn’t it be even better if the people of Africa didn’t need baskets of food being sent from the United States? So if we really want to help Africa, we should think about what Africa needs so that it wouldn’t have so many starving people. And there I would say what it needs is free markets, private property, the rule of law, systems that allow people to work and produce and trade and either grow or trade for their own food and their own medicine and their own clothes. And that’s what we ought to work on, and it’s what we ought to work on here in the United States: a social system that would allow people to take care of themselves and have the life satisfaction that comes from knowing that you take care of yourself and your family, you’re not dependent on the government for that.
Bob Zadek: And what’s so important, David, in what you just said is that liberals, progressives, do not own the issue of caring for others. The issue is how you fix whatever everybody concedes to be an issue that we owe to others to fix. Whether you fix somebody, whether to take the example of Africa, whether you fix the hungry African by giving him a fish or giving him a fishing rod so he can catch his own fish.
David Boaz: Yes, that’s right. Well, there is that old folk wisdom: Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime. And the point is, it’s probably not that the people of Africa don’t know how to fish, it’s that their social system does not encourage people to take responsibility for themselves. For instance, if the government is rapacious and takes most of what you produce, then what’s the point of fishing? They’re going to take all your fish anyway.
The Decline of Libertarian Philosophy [21:50]
Bob Zadek: David, going back to our nation’s founding, we were—free markets, of course, doesn’t exist that concept per se in the Constitution, but it comes about by implication, and we can discuss that perhaps. But when the country was founded and started to operate under its new Constitution in 1789 and 1790 and of course thereafter, we were quite a libertarian country. And from all studies of history, we liked it that way, which means Americans naturally adopted and thrived under a libertarian system, both in terms of political rights and economic rights. And so one would observe that’s the natural state of being. We were phenomenally successful. America grew economically, we were the freest country on earth for over a hundred years. And the question I have is, since we adopted so naturally to it, and since we were obviously so successful, how does one explain the decline in that philosophy? If we were doing so well under it, and if so many Americans understood that our success and our freedom was the result of these core beliefs—don’t harm me and don’t take my stuff—how did it change?
David Boaz: Well, let’s be careful about saying it was the freest country in the world in 1789 or thereabouts. It was a country that had chattel slavery. Before the Civil War, we held four million Americans in chains. So that’s a huge exception to saying this was the freest country in the world. We also didn’t treat women as fully responsible adult citizens. I was in Pittsburgh recently and I saw a plaque on the side of a building about a woman in the 19th century who had fought to get women the right to own a business in Pennsylvania. So there were ways in which we were definitely not practicing the freedom that you would think the Declaration of Independence seems to promise and the Constitution seems to guarantee.
So one of the reasons things changed is that there were people who recognized that we were not living up to our principles of freedom. Now, you would have hoped that the answer to that then would have been, as it eventually was, to abolish slavery and eventually to lift the burdens that kept women from being full social and economic and political citizens. And we have done some of that. But that probably caused some people to have some doubts about this American philosophy that nevertheless seemed to allow for freedom.
Another thing that I think happened was, despite these limitations, we did have a hugely productive 19th century. And you can think about it in terms of standard of living, you can think about it in terms of invention. What was invented during the 19th century? The cotton gin, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone at the very end of the 19th century, the automobile, not too long after that, the airplane. All of this between historians sometimes say from 1815, the fall of Napoleon, to 1914, the outbreak of World War I, a century of peace and prosperity in the United States and most of Europe, and these incredible advances. I mean, you talk about a telecommunications revolution, the internet is interesting, but the telegraph is the first thing that allowed you to get news from far away almost instantly. That to me is the real telecommunications revolution.
But what that meant was through the 19th century, people were getting so much richer that they came to forget how hard it is to get rich. And they started saying, “Why is there poverty in the midst of plenty?” Now, I think that’s the wrong question. The question is always, “Why is there plenty in the midst of poverty?” Poverty is the natural condition of mankind. We come into this world with nothing, and for millennia, even though we had parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, we were still coming into the world with virtually nothing. In the 19th century, for the first time, people started to have something. They had comfortable lives, they had electrical lights, they had heated homes. And they started to worry about the existence of poverty, and I think they focused on the wrong solution: “Now that we have all this money, why don’t we start dividing it up better?” And the problem with that is when you start saying the money just exists, let’s now decide how to divide it up, you forget the system that causes the money to be created.
Bob Zadek: And so the emphasis should not have been income inequality, or the approach spoken by many in public life about to fix the inevitable—there will always be people who have more than other people. That’s inevitable, that you can’t negotiate or legislate that away. The question is what is to be done about it. And the approach of many is the way to do it is not to find a way to enable those who have less to acquire more, but simply to take away those who have a lot. As if if you make a rich person poorer, the person who is at the bottom end of the spectrum is somehow better off. People at the bottom end of the economic ladder do not care all that much about people who are at the top end. They care about what’s going to make their lives better. And that’s what a system of free enterprise and free markets will do. It will enable people at the bottom to help themselves to move up the economic ladder.
And of course, we have to always remember, I think Don Boudreaux points this out quite a bit, that somebody living below the poverty line today lives better than—and I think you may have pointed it out, David, when you made reference to the Vanderbilts—somebody living in poverty today has a higher standard of living than the Vanderbilts had at the pinnacle of their economic power.
David Boaz: Well, a higher standard of living in some ways. They lived in big fancy houses and they were waited on by servants, and you know, that sounds pretty good to most of us. But in terms of a home that is warm in the winter and cool in the summer, today’s poor people may very well have better homes than that. And in terms of medical care, George Vanderbilt, who had built the biggest house in America, died when he was about 50 of a health problem that would be easy to fix today. So in that sense—and of course, he didn’t have a very comfortable car to ride in. The cheapest car you can buy in America today is fabulously better than the car George Vanderbilt had.
The Drug War [28:30]
Bob Zadek: Now, some of the issues that are very much in the news today, libertarianism has a very clear and, I dare say, an approach that ought to appeal to most Americans. For example, the issue of drugs in America, an issue that we’re still struggling with, mass incarceration and all of the drug law infrastructure, which involves the criminal justice system, the police force, the using, in fact, using the military to enforce drug laws, which of course they do at the borders with the Air Force and the Coast Guard operating spy planes looking to interdict drugs, which of course one would wonder about the military performing the functions of a police force. But the issue of drug use and the criminalization of drug use in America, there is a clear libertarian approach to analysis of that problem, is there not?
David Boaz: Yes, there is. And the first point is simply the libertarian point: People have a right to live their lives the way they choose so long as they don’t interfere with the equal rights of others. So it simply shouldn’t be the role of government to tell adults what they can smoke or even what they can snort or shoot up. We tried alcohol prohibition, turned out that didn’t work very well. There are a lot of problems caused by alcohol use, but there are even more problems caused by alcohol prohibition. And that’s what we ought to recognize about drug prohibition: that while there are problems caused by the use and abuse of drugs, there are more problems caused by prohibition.
So the first point is simply the moral point: It is wrong to put people in jail because of what they smoke. The second point is what does it do to society? It puts a whole lot of young black men in the criminal justice system. It puts a lot of people in jail. That costs a lot of money. They come out more associated with criminals than they were before. It causes corruption of law enforcement officers. We see stories every day all over the world about law enforcement and even judges who are taking bribes from drug gangs. It destroys inner-city communities. Why are there such high crime rates in inner-city communities? A lot of it is a result of the drug war and the turf warfare between drug gangs.
You know, when a Chevrolet dealer wants to have the corner lot that a Ford dealer has, he goes and offers the landlord more money, or he offers to buy it from the Ford dealer. And if he can’t do any of those things, then he has to build his dealership somewhere else. But if you’re in the drug business and somebody starts horning in on your corner, you can’t go to the police or the courts and say, “Hey, this is my property, get this guy off my property.” The only thing you can do is shoot him. And so when people don’t pay their debts to a drug dealer, he can’t go to court and arrest that person; he starts shooting. And that’s why there are such high crime rates in areas where drugs are being sold. Those are the kind of social effects that we have brought about with the drug war. And you have to say to people, “You support the drug war because you saw your nephew messed up with drugs. But if you support the drug war, then you have to take responsibility for the corruption of law enforcement, the high level of crime and even murder in many parts of our cities, all the social effects that are created by drug prohibition.”
Bob Zadek: And of course, you said in the beginning of your remarks on the drug war that the core is, or the question is, should government be in the business of criminalizing behavior that may or may not be self-destructive but does not of necessity harm others? Do we want government in the business of telling you how to make your decisions about your own life? Not only telling you how to make them, but what I know my audience understands is that government is special in that government is the only societal organization that is permitted to use force and coercion. They are allowed to point a gun at you if you do not do what they want you to do. Businesses can’t—Walmart can never point a gun at you and coerce you to shop in Walmart. Walmart has no power whatever over you. The government does. So do you want the government to be dictating—and remember, the government dictates because a group of elected officials decided it might be a good idea or it is a good idea. Should government be in the business of coercing you to behave in a certain way, or don’t you own your own life and shouldn’t you be allowed to make that decision for better or for worse? And that’s the core libertarian issue: People are allowed to make decisions, even wrong decisions. They can’t be coerced into making right decisions.
David Boaz: Yes, I would agree with that. It is wrong for the government to use force to tell us how to live our lives, whether that is smoking marijuana or who we can marry or what books we can read or what tweets we can send out, or whether we can drink a large Coke in New York City, whether we can smoke cigarettes. Now, when we talk about public places, it’s one thing to say, “Well, we’re not going to allow people to smoke in government buildings because everybody’s forced to come there to get their driver’s license, so to make it comfortable for everybody, we’re going to ban smoking there.” I think it’s a very different thing to say we’re going to ban smoking in every restaurant and bar in San Francisco. Why not let the individual restaurants and bars make their own decisions? Would you rather have the non-smoking customers or the smoking customers? Why can’t different bars have different arrangements? Maybe one room is for smoking and one room is not for smoking. Let the market work those things out, let customers go where they like the atmosphere better, instead of having one rule that applies to everybody in San Francisco or everybody in California or everybody in the United States.
Religious Freedom and the Indiana RFRA [33:10]
Bob Zadek: An issue very much in the news every day has been what has happened in Indiana with RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, specifically should businesses be required—in this case, there was a pizzeria very much in the news—required to sell their goods and services if the sale of those goods and services violate their good-faith religious beliefs? And there’s been quite a flap in many, many states around the country about the interaction between the right to practice one’s religious beliefs on the one hand and the rights of gays not to be discriminated against and to be able to demand that one sell pizza at their wedding. So speak to that issue, which has been so much in the news, and because it’s in the news, many of our listeners can relate to that issue and can understand how a libertarian might approach the problem.
David Boaz: Well, the first thing I would say is I believe the government should treat everybody equally, and that includes marriage. So I’m a supporter of gay marriage. There are some libertarians who would say let’s privatize marriage entirely—why does the government need to give you a marriage license? Just get a contract.
Bob Zadek: That would include me. That would include me.
David Boaz: Okay. So that’s fine. But if the government is going to provide the license or the service, then it has to do it on an equal basis, and therefore states should allow gay people to get married just as it allows straight people to get married. Now, the question in Indiana—and remember, no business in Indiana is known to have ever refused to cater or serve a gay wedding. A journalist went around a small town asking every business there, “Would you have any problem catering a gay wedding?” And they found one that said, “Oh yeah, we wouldn’t like that. We’re Christians and we don’t believe in gay marriage.” Okay, so they never actually were asked to supply pizzas to a gay wedding; they just said to a hypothetical question, “Oh yeah, we wouldn’t want to do that.”
But there are some specific people. There’s a 70-year-old florist in the state of Washington who had gay customers, she knew they were a gay couple. When they asked her to do flowers for their wedding, she said, “That goes against my religious beliefs and I can’t do that.” So she wasn’t refusing to serve gay people or even gay couples; she was only refusing to participate in a ceremony that she found offensive. And to me, it’s like conscription to force people to participate in ceremonies, programs, rituals that they find morally offensive. I would not say that a Muslim baker should be required to bake cakes for Christmas if he doesn’t feel comfortable with that; he should just say, “Go to a different baker.” I don’t think a Muslim restaurant should be required to serve pork. Me, I grew up in Kentucky, I like pork, I want pork barbecue. If I go to a restaurant that doesn’t have pork, well then I’m annoyed. But I think if a Muslim restaurant owner doesn’t want to serve pork, he shouldn’t have to.
So I would like to protect people’s rights to act on their conscience. Indiana seemed to pass this law in the wake of gay marriage court rulings, and therefore it was taken directly as a poke in the eye to gay people and gay marriage, and that’s what created this huge backlash. These laws exist in 20 states, including liberal states like Connecticut. Nobody ever noticed them. In fact, the original federal law was almost unanimously passed in Congress and signed by President Clinton. It’s just the timing of this law that caused people to associate it with, “Oh, you’re going to protect people’s rights not to participate in gay weddings.” And that’s where I think you do have to draw a line on the power of government and say it is not appropriate to conscript people into participating in ceremonies that they morally disapprove of.
The Cato Institute [38:40]
Bob Zadek: David, we have a minute and a half left. Tell us about Cato. Of course, you don’t have to tell me, I am as committed to Cato as one can possibly be. But tell our listeners what the mission of Cato is and how you accomplish it. We have about a minute and a half.
David Boaz: The Cato Institute is a non-partisan, independent libertarian think tank. That means we think and study and write and we publish books and studies about all sorts of public policy issues, from education to taxes to foreign and defense policy. We are supported by 15,000 individual contributors, and we appreciate every one of them. And we have a staff of about 40 scholars, arguably including myself, writing books and studies. We have a blog at Cato.org where we comment on issues every day. And our goal is to increase public understanding of the ideas of freedom and limited government.
Bob Zadek: David is the author of The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom. David, I think you sold out the first day Amazon had it listed for sale, did you not, at Amazon?
David Boaz: Yes, I think they probably didn’t buy enough copies, but it’s available everywhere now.
Bob Zadek: It is a must-read. I invite all of you to read the book, have it available when you have your political discussions. And David, thank you so much for joining us on this Easter Sunday. We appreciate giving us an hour of your time and your wisdom.
David Boaz: Thank you.
Bob Zadek: Thanks a lot, David. And thanks again for listening to my audience. I’ll be back again next week with another hour of libertarian thought and opinion. Thanks so much for listening and have a nice Easter Sunday.