David Boaz

File:David Boaz by Gage Skidmore.jpg

David Boaz (2018)

David Boaz (/ˈboʊ.æz/; August 29, 1953 – June 7, 2024) was Distinguished Senior Fellow and the former executive vice president of the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank.

He was the author of Libertarianism: A Primer, published in 1997 by the Free Press and described in the Los Angeles Times as "a well-researched manifesto of libertarian ideas." He was also the editor of The Libertarian Reader and co-editor of the Cato Handbook for Congress (2003) and the Cato Handbook on Policy (2005). He frequently discussed such topics as education choice, the growth of government, the ownership society, his support of drug legalization as a consequence of the individual right to self-determination, a non-interventionist foreign policy, and the rise of libertarianism on national television and radio shows.

Boaz's 1988 op-ed in The New York Times on the high cost of the drug war fueled public debate over the decriminalization of drugs. His articles were also published in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, and Slate. He appeared on ABC's Politically Incorrect, CNN's Crossfire, NPR's Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered, Fox News Channel, BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other media. Boaz, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, was once the editor of The New Guard magazine and was executive director of the Council for a Competitive Economy prior to joining Cato in 1981.

Books

• Market Liberalism: A Paradigm for the 21st Century, Editor with Edward H. Crane, 1993. ISBN 9780932790972. OCLC 27267709
• Libertarianism: A Primer, Free Press 1997. ISBN 9780684831985. OCLC 35658010
• The Libertarian Reader, Editor, Free Press 1997. ISBN 9780684832005. OCLC 35808396
• The Politics of Freedom: Taking on The Left, The Right and Threats to Our Liberties, 2008. ISBN 9781933995144. OCLC 254175718
• The Libertarian Vote: Swing Voters, Tea Parties, and the Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal Center, with David Kirby and Emily Ekins, 2012. ISBN 9781938048746
• The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom, Simon & Schuster, 2015. ISBN 9781476752846

External links

• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Booknotes interview with Boaz on Libertarianism: A Primer, January 26, 1997.
• David Boaz at the Internet Movie Database
• Archive at The Huffington Post
• Biography of David Boaz at Cato Institute
• David Boaz discusses the ownership society with Robert Siegel on NPR's All Things Considered
• David Boaz's entry "libertarianism" at the Encyclopædia Britannica
• "Deregulating Education" by David Boaz, in The Politic