Toward Liberty -- Freedom Book of the Month from Free-Market.Net: The Freedom Network

Toward Liberty

Freedom Book of the Month for April, 2002:

Toward Liberty: The Idea That is Changing the World
edited by David Boaz, Cato Institute 2002, cloth or paper, 460 pp.

The world was a very different place when the Cato Institute was founded back in 1977. Carter was president, but inflation was king. Smart money was on Soviet Communism as the world political wave of the future, carried on another wave -- a military one. I was ten years old. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, and Cato is entitled to a large measure of credit for reversing the direction of the river's flow.

Toward Liberty is an anthology of articles from Cato's first 25 years. If its table of contents reads like a virtual Who's Who in libertarian thought, that's no accident. The book's list of contributors includes economist Milton Friedman, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, humorist P.J. O'Rourke, ifeminist Joan Kennedy Taylor, ACLU president Nadine Strossen, U.S. Representative Dick Armey and 36 others.

Like the Institute behind it, Toward Liberty addresses itself to multiple areas of interest ranging from foreign policy to regulation, trade, welfare and law. And it points not only to where we -- and Cato -- have been, but to where we -- and Cato -- are going.

As David Boaz points out in his introduction, the last 25 years have seen a complete reversal of the common wisdom. Market liberalism, while not yet triumphant, is now the odds-on favorite in the continuing clash of political paradigms. Economic regulation, while not completely disposed of, is thoroughly discredited. Globalization and trade, while not fully implemented, are rapidly replacing polarization and war as the instruments of foreign policy. And while there are frequent reactions and backlashes, they're just that: the momentum and the initiative are with the forces of freedom.

Toward Liberty is a thrilling retrospective on an era and an appropriate celebration of some of the people and ideas that brought that era to a close and ushered in a new dawn.

Happy birthday, Cato.

Order Toward Liberty from the Cato Institute ($19.95 cloth, $10.95 paperback).

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edited by Thomas L. Knapp

Past Winners:

March 2002: Liberty for Women edited by Wendy McElroy.

February 2002: The State vs. the People by Aaron Zelman and Claire Wolfe.

Freedom Book of the Year, 2001: Hope by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith.

January 2002: Death by Gun Control by Aaron Zelman and Richard W. Stevens.

December 2001: The American Zone by L. Neil Smith.

November 2001: Ayn Rand and Business by Donna Greiner and Theodore Kinni.