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    VP of Marketing & Communications for Rackup, but nothing here reflects what my employer or colleagues think. In fact, they probably think it's all cray-cray.

    Jackie Danicki

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Brian Doherty, by Luke Ford

Posted on January 29th, 2007 by Jackie Danicki

My mate Luke Ford FINALLY has permalinks, so I can link directly to this interview he did with Brian Doherty (including streaming mp3s of their chat, if you’re into that kind of thing). I have always resisted wearing the label of libertarian, for various reasons I’m too tired to get into, but I’ve always been interested in various strains of libertarianism and the (sometimes wildly) differing views held by those who call themselves libertarians. I love it when Luke asks Brian to name some “famous libertarian apostates” and Brian replies:

There’s no market for a book by a libertarian turncoat. If you change your mind about libertarianism, nobody cares.

Filed under: Life

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8 Responses to “Brian Doherty, by Luke Ford”

  1. Peter, on January 29th, 2007 at 7:24 pm Said:

    Why does he think that is? It’s can’t merely be that there are few libertarians, because the fact that many neocons were once Marxists is very often seen as noteworthy and interesting.

  2. Jackie Danicki, on January 29th, 2007 at 7:31 pm Said:

    Gosh, don’t ask me. I’m just a somewhat interested observer. I will talk to Antoine about it, since this is one of his areas of knowledge, and ask him to post a comment here (he usually comments to my face, which is really no use to anyone but me).

    I mean, thinking about it, I’d love to know how many libertarian turncoats there actually are. You’d have to be pretty sick and twisted to wake up one day and decide that freedom is bad and the state is a force for good.

  3. Alice Bachini-Smith, on January 29th, 2007 at 10:57 pm Said:

    I called myself a libertarian for a while (?) before deciding it was a decidedly different thing from being a freedom-loving person (if that’s the sort of thing you meant).

  4. Peter, on January 29th, 2007 at 11:56 pm Said:

    Sorry, I didn’t read the post properly. I didn’t realise you were just linking to an interview transcript.

  5. Jackie Danicki, on January 30th, 2007 at 3:49 am Said:

    Antoine says: “I think it’s very common for individual libertarians to decide that they don’t want to engage in collective action, but their values don’t change.” They give up on the movement but still have the same values.

    So, basically, I was right. Yay!

    Antoine adds that there are two issues which cause some people to shift their values away from libertarianism: the environment and the “War on Terror” (TM). Jackie says that those people are lame.

  6. Jackie Danicki, on January 30th, 2007 at 3:52 am Said:

    Alice: You hit the nail on the head. To mangle the John Lennon quote, I don’t believe in isms, I just believe in individual freedom as the most sacred of values.

  7. Jim Treacher, on January 30th, 2007 at 7:57 am Said:

    I used to call myself a libertarian, until I realized it didn’t mean an old lady who stacks books in alphabetical order.

  8. tarylcabot, on February 17th, 2007 at 10:15 pm Said:

    Hmmm. Sometimes Glenn Reynolds is viewed as an ex-libertarian and even Reason’s Hit & Run has included him when asking a spectrum of libertarians their feelings about the Iraq War about a year ago. Perhaps because he never presents himself as an ex-libertarian that it’s not presented as a prominent feature for the instapundit.

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