Doherty: Thank you.

FP: What inspired you to write this book?

Doherty: Most specifically, a conversation I had at the Cato Institute back in the early 1990s with Chris Whitten, who was an intern there. We were talking, as young libertarians did and do, about movement history and gossip, something that those of us who read all the small-circulation mags and talked to our libertarian elders knew bits and pieces of, but no one had really tried to get it all down in any thorough form.

Chris declared that a book that tried to do that would be very interesting indeed, and that I seemed to have a decent head start on knowing a bit about it. With Chris's help, I found some foundation support for the project from the Roy Childs Memorial Scholars Fund; then, a decade and more later, over 100 long interviews and hundreds of hours in archives and with old magazines behind me, here it is.

A more general answer is, I believe that libertarian ideas and the people who advocated them in the 20th century deserve attention and credit; they really are pushing the political ideas at the heart of the American founding, and did so in the 20th century against great odds and great hostility, especially after FDR and the New Deal; when I saw how many books chronicled every twist and turn of communist movement and parties even in the American context, I knew a book like mine had to exist; I hope it becomes the first of many.

FP: What is a libertarian? Who were some of the people who advocated libertarian ideas in the 20^th century and why did they do so?

Doherty: To quote my own book, libertarians are people who believe that "Government, if it has any purpose at all (and many libertarians doubt it does), should be restricted to the protection of its citizens' persons and property against direct violence and theft."

Some of the major libertarian figures whose stories my book tells includes the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek (who won the Nobel in economics in 1974); the American economist and hero to both libertarians and conservatives, for his tireless advocacy of the efficacy and propriety of free markets, Milton Friedman; former Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce chief Leonard Read, who founded the first modern institution dedicated to spreading libertarian ideas, the Foundation for Economic Education; novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand; the 1970s Harvard philosophy wunderkind Robert Nozick; and, for a figure still active among us, ABC Newsman John Stossel. And, I might add, though they were not 100 percent libertarian, such important political figures as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were at their most attractive and persuasive when talking of the choking power of Big Government and the wonders of a free people and free markets--key libertarian ideas.

Reagan once told the magazine I work for, Reason, that "the very heart and soul of conservativism is libertarianism." Most libertarians advocate libertarianism for a complicated mixture of believing, first, that things tend to work out best--that is, we will have the most wealthy and varied economy and a world that allows people to flourish to the best of their abilities, with the best set of incentives to guarantee responsibility as well as liberty --if we shrink government to those basic libertarian functions, and also that it is right to, to the greatest extent possible, leave people free as individuals, families, and sometimes communities, to make their own choices.

FP: But many Conservatives would oppose libertarianism right? What kind of Conservatives are they?

Doherty: Yes, many conservatives value certain other elements of the larger right-wing coalition, of which libertarianism has always been a key part from Buckley to Reagan, more than the libertarian/small-government part, whether it be traditional values or a nationalism that makes them want to project American military might overseas for reasons other than direct defense of American citizen's lives or property. Or, in many cases, they agree somewhat that free markets and freedom are a good thing, but think they see practical reasons to restrict them more than most libertarians do.

FP: Who were some of the people who opposed libertarianism in the U.S.? Why did they oppose it?

Doherty: Pretty much everybody. Especially after the New Deal, nearly all intellectuals and politicians believed that centralized planning was best---that a world without government management of nearly everything would be chaotic and unworkable, and that huge complicated government programs to give money to the poor and the aged were necessary and proper.

It was widely believed that the Soviet Union represented a serious competitor, both in terms of efficiency and even, to some, in terms of justice, to freedom and free markets. Libertarians argued against this consensus and against great odds that communism was bound to fail, that only free markets allowed the transmission of knowledge and incentives that allowed us to be succeed economically, that most of the big government programs of the 20th century were ill-conceived and bound to fail in the long term--and won many victories along the way. Certainly, recognition of the benefits of free markets is far more advanced now than it was when my book's main storyline begins, in the mid-1940s.

FP: What impact has libertarianism had on our country? What impact is it having today?

Doherty: Very directly, libertarian Milton Friedman is responsible, though his efforts in the Nixon-era Gates Commission, with the fact that we have a volunteer military now; his ideas about inflation, though not every specific detail of his recommendations, have influenced federal reserve policy so that we no longer see yearly double digit inflation; such interesting and important popular political and cultural movements from home-schooling and school choice to medical marijuana to municipal privatization and outsourcing of government services to efforts at life extension have roots in libertarian ideas or characters; more recently, 1990s welfare reform was largely influenced by the ideas and data in libertarian social scientist Charles Murray's 1984 book LOSING GROUND; and Bush's (so far failed) efforts at Social Security privatization have roots in ideas pushed by libertarian think tanks since the early 1980s.

FP: Are you a libertarian?

Doherty: Yes, I am. I believe this internal understanding of what libertarians have believed, who their heroes were, made my book one whose insights could not be matched by any journalist or historian, however diligent, who came to this story completely from the outside, without a direct understanding of what makes libertarians tick.

FP: Tell us the ways in which radical Islam is incompatible with libertarianism.

Doherty: An ideology that believes in violent enforcement of a complicated set of religious commands on the faithful, and a different but still onerous set of restrictions on those outside the faith (to the extent they want to allow the unfaithful to live)--presuming we are talking about radical Islam, as popularly understood?

That's about as unlibertarian as you can get, of course--incompatible with it in every way. That does not mean, though, that libertarians would necessarily see it as a duty of the American government to rid the world of this unlibertarian ideology, though that has become another great point of contention between conservatives and libertarians in the current context--and even among some libertarians, who do see certain aspects of radical Islam as such a clear and present danger to American lives and property that it is a proper duty of this government to fight it.

But most libertarians don't believe that, and have never believed it is a proper duty, or really within the ability of, for the U.S. government to try to destroy evil across the globe through military means.

FP: Brian Doherty, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Doherty: Thank you for being interested in my book. I might add, you don't have to be  libertarian (though I am) to find the characters fascinating and the ideas, and how they've spread through American culture, worth contemplating.