FC: Cato Institute celebrates 25th anniversary, dinner tonight

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Today's Washington Post ran a pretty flattering article on the Cato
Institute's 25th anniversary as the top story in the Style section.

Cato deserves the accolades (and no, I have no affiliation with them,
except writing a foreward for a forthcoming book). Cato has become one
of the most influential think tanks in Washington -- and by far the
most principled among its peers. Values like limited government, free
markets, and freedom of speech and privacy are the better for it.

Hope to see Politechnicals at their black-tie gathering tonight in DC.

-Declan

---

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56445-2002May8.html

   Free Radical 
   Libertarian -- and Contrarian -- Ed Crane Has Run the Cato Institute
   for 25 Years. His Way.

   By Richard Morin
   Washington Post Staff Writer
   Thursday, May 9, 2002; Page C01
   
   Early in the spring of 1988, Ed Crane and Kristina Herbert were two
   libertarians in love. And like so many lovers, they talked about
   marriage. At least Herbert did.
   
   "Kristina was always nagging to get married, and I said you really
   think that a government ceremony would improve this relationship?"
   says Crane, co-founder of the free-market-loving,
   big-government-loathing Cato Institute. "And she said yes."
   
   " 'Okay,' I said. 'Then let's get a serious government to do it. We're
   going to China.' "
   
   As it happened, Crane was already headed to China. Against the odds,
   Cato had won permission from the communist government to lead a
   conference on free market capitalism and limited government -- the
   first American think tank allowed to raise those once-forbidden ideas
   behind the Bamboo Curtain.
   
   So on Sept. 26, 1988, after a six-month battle with bureaucracies in
   two countries, Edward Harrison Crane and Kristina Knall Herbert were
   married in People's Marriage Office No. 9 in Shanghai. That night,
   Communist Party functionaries joined with Chinese academics and Cato
   scholars to eat wedding cake, sing songs and toast the newlyweds.
   
   In love as in life, Ed Crane has taken the different path, a
   single-minded free thinker whose life has been lived largely out of
   step with his times -- or perhaps a step or two ahead of them.
   
   Today Crane, 57, is the longest-serving think tank president in town
   and probably the only one who declares that he "doesn't like
   politicians and people who like politics." Nor does he seem to
   particularly care whether Congress or President Bush embrace his ideas
   -- even as Capitol Hill and the White House have started to pay a bit
   more attention to Cato's policy prescriptions.
   
   Crane also may be the only head of a think tank who doesn't vote in
   national or local elections. He hasn't for years, not even for
   candidates of the Libertarian Party -- the party that he led in the
   1970s.
   
   Crane calls himself a "genetic libertarian" who cannot "remember a
   time that I didn't think it was wrong for some people to tell other
   people how to live their lives or to spend their money." To him, the
   core libertarian principles of personal liberty, free markets and
   limited government clearly are, in the words of the Founding Fathers,
   the "self evident" birthright of all human beings.
   
   Libertarians veer far to the left on issues of personal morality, free
   speech and individual rights but swing equally far to the right when
   the subject turns to market capitalism and the proper role of
   government. They favor slashing the size of government and federal
   spending -- including military spending. They oppose virtually all
   limits on personal freedoms, including drug and prostitution laws.
   
   "There are only a few rules: You can't hit other people and you can't
   take their stuff," says David Boaz, executive vice president of Cato.
   "After that, you have to make the important decisions for yourself."

   [...]

   Tonight, more than 2,000 libertarians and friends of Cato will gather
   at a black-tie gala at the Hilton Washington to celebrate the think
   tank's 25th anniversary.
   
   Luminaries from the ideological extremes of politics and culture pay
   their respects to Cato in a 12-minute video to be shown at the dinner.
   "Hang in there! Keep doing what you're doing," says George P. Shultz,
   who held two Cabinet posts in the Nixon administration and was Ronald
   Reagan's secretary of state. Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice and
   Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU, also appear in the filmed
   tribute praising Cato's commitment to free speech and personal
   freedom.

   [...]



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