I often bring out the worst in people, but with author Brian Doherty, I only got his best.
He was kinder to me than I was to myself.
Reason magazine associate editor Brian Doherty drives up at 12:30PM June 22, 2004, in a white Subaru. It looks like a pigsty inside. Books, magazines, newspapers, wrappers, dental floss, pillows…
Brian jumps out. He's short, grey-haired, and bookish.
We sit down for lunch and discuss his first published book.
"Why did you write it?"
"I began going to the event in 1995. There were 4,000 people there.
"We're building a temporary city in the Black Rock Desert, in the lake bed, every year, Black Rock City, in the middle of the desert, 70 miles outside of Reno. I found the people interesting. How fun and funny and lively and dangerous they were to be around. It struck me from the beginning as a writer's dream. It had an underground feel to it. It felt like it would be a betrayal of that community to talk about it to outsiders.
"Last year, there were 30,000 people there. Somewhere in the middle, I realized it was not meant to be an underground secret. That was an affectation that I picked up from other people.
"I wrote a political piece about it for the February 2000 issue of Reason, a political magazine. How is it that this danger and illegality-filled event come to a reapproachment with the federal government, who owns the land (Bureau of Land Management) on which the event is held.
"I've been working at Reason since the summer of 1994.
"My first draft of the story was 12,000 words, more than twice as long as the version that ran. I realized I was sitting on top of a book's worth of material.
"Getting a book deal took three years. It took two agents and dozens of rejections. For nine months, it was my fulltime task finishing the book."
"How does being at Burning Man make you feel, as opposed to your ordinary life?"
"I didn't make myself the star of the book. But I sit at a desk all day. I'm a writer. I'm a reader. I rarely do anything that interacts with the physical world. Burning Man makes me confront the physical world in a vivid way.
"There is no life in the Black Rock Desert. It's hot. If you don't go with an RV, it's just you and the blank world and the temperature. It wipes away everything that is habitual about my life for two weeks. Then I go back to my normal life, where I read eight to ten hours a day. Most of my work involves reading. Most of my leisure involves reading. I'm constantly listening to music. When I'm at home, there's a record playing in my house. When I'm out there, I don't get to listen to any music of my choice and I don't read anything. I never drink caffeine out there. Here, I never go half a day without caffeine.
"It's an interesting lesson in your own malleability. People are very big at adopting fake identities out there. I don't do that explicitly. I don't dress funny.
"Most important, every time I'm out there, I apprentice myself to some large art project. I get to be a part of a team, something which has always been important to me. I like groups more than one-on-one relationships. I like to be part of gangs pursuing goals of interest to me. Out there I get to weld, drill, dig. I learn skills and to interact with the physical world. That's an opportunity I never get to pursue anywhere else but there.
"The event lasts a week. I usually go a week early and leave a week late. It's exhilirating, life-affirming, fascinating for me to do these things and be surrounded by thousands of interesting people. The default assumption is that you are all buddies out there."
"What do your parents think about Burning Man?"
"I don't know. They haven't read my book. I wouldn't be surprised if my dad started reading the book. I wouldn't be surprised if my mother didn't. If they do read it, I would imagine that at the end of it they would not think that Burning Man was something that they would enjoy going to and probably not something that they would approve of.
"My wife has been to Burning Man three times. She doesn't like it. She thought she might like it. After three years, she's indulged me enough. She doesn't like the kind of person you find there. That hippy dippiness aggravates her. She has more of a punk harsh face to the world. She hates the physical environment. She's not into consuming lots of food and water.
"I ended up making the book more character driven than idea driven. When I went in, I thought it would be 50/50. It ended up 95% character driven."
Brian got into punk rock in 1984 while in 11th grade in Jacksonville, Florida. A year later, he embraced the punk club scene and started playing bass guitar in various bands from 1986-95 (Misfits Trend, Target Practice, Touch N' Go Bullethead, The Jeffersons, Turbo Satan, The Sawdust Seizures, Satellite). I ran a record label from 1993-99, The Cherry Smashers.
"I never adopted the look."
"What do you think of the Australian punk band Air Supply?"
"I've enjoyed some performances of the Australian punk band Air Supply. I have a big tent vision of punk. It became in the '90s as a way of life. Short, aggressive, fast-paced songs with lyrics barked out by angry bald guys."
"What's your favorite Air Supply song?"
"The One That You Love. I once did karaoke to Making Love Out of Nothing At All."
"What's your favorite Barry Manilow song?"
"His version of Ships. 'We're two ships that pass in the night.'"
"What's your favorite John Denver song?"
"The first record I ever bought with my own money was John Denver's Greatest Hits. I still like Rocky Mountain High.
"One of the principles I try to live by is staying true to my life. I'm big on continuity but I must confess I have not maintained an enthusiasm for John Denver."
"Why don't you bring a Sony Walkman to Burning Man so you can listen to music?"
"I tend to be lazy in my preparations. For three weeks, I eat nothing but room-temperature prepared food of the canned vegetables, beef jerky variety. The same with music. I've gotten used to that it is a break from my habitual obsession to listening to music at all times. I know that I am listening to more music and enjoying it less. I am an obsessive record collector. I have about 5,000 records and 2,000 CDs. I began collecting in the mid '80s. I will buy any given thing depending on how I find it cheapest.
"Are you really a fan of Australian pop?"
"My favorite group is Air Supply. It takes me back to when I was 13 and my emotions were most honest and vivid."
"Go to Burning Man. Vivid is the word we use to describe what it is like."
"I hear there is video of you participating in a public orgy at Burning Man."
"I do not believe so. Public orgies, no? We are getting into territory here, Luke, where I will have to, due to the sensitivities of my wife who will probably read this, decline from speaking."
"Burning Man does not sound like a nice place for sex."
"It is not a comfortable place for sex. Once we break the surface of the Black Rock Playa, it becomes this fine omnipresent black rock power that has a grit to it. Most people there will be dirty and dusty and probably smelly. You are not showering as much as normal. But Burning Man does have a sensual atmosphere. I have never witnessed an orgy. I have witnessed one-on-one sex acts."
"What's the ratio of men to women?"
"I guess about 60/40 men to women. Medium age? I'd guess 25-40. Most people under 25 are not going to be able to afford it. It also happens the first week before Labor Day, the first week of my college's semesters.
"They sell tickets on a sliding scale from $145-250. They stop selling tickets at the door on Thursday night. Certain people in the community thought that the wrong element was coming out on the weekend. The man burns Saturday night. Half the city tends to leave on Sunday, and half on Monday. We're all leaving down one dirt road which leads to one two-lane highway which is 70 miles back to Reno.
"People find themselves behaving in a different way at Burning Man. They're nice. It's a communal feeling."
"What's the racial make-up?"
"Almost entirely Caucasian."
"Do you think that that accounts for the general feeling of niceness?"
Brian chuckles. "Well, that's a very interesting question.
"I believe that the self-selecting nature of Burning Man would and could cut through racial divides. That said, we haven't tested it yet. In an average year there, I probably see about ten black people.
"One year, one of the people on my work team was black. For a couple of days, he and I and some other people were digging a giant hole. Just for amusement, we began chaining ourselves together. I don't think we were thinking about the racialness of it."
"How do white people keep the word of it away from black people?"
"Word of it is spread through a nexis of a certain kind of community. Channels that are not intentionally white-only but are white-only. Hipsters who are in touch with these underground currents of culture. Hippies, punks and gearheads."
"Do you take any illegal drugs at Burning Man?"
"Yes."
"How many people at Burning Man do you think are active in an organized religion?"
"Very few. The religious vibe out there is gooey modern syncretistic pagan. There are Christian ministers, some who shout fire and brimstone. Some are ecumenical happy loving Christians. There are a lot of people doing energy stuff. I've never knowingly met an Orthodox Jew there."
"Do you believe in God?"
"No."
"I think of Burning Man as a secular reach for community and the transcendent."
"I think that is exactly correct. Community is one of the buzz words of the Burning Man world. I tend to be a shy and insular person. I don't interact with strangers."
Brian burps in the middle of the last word.
"Strippers?" I ask.
"I interact a lot with strippers out there. Not so much with strangers. People form small camps out there. I don't feel comfortable with more than 150 people."
"Do you find it aesthetically pleasing for one man to place his penis in the buttocks of another man?"
"No.
"I've read a lot of your interviews. Do you make it a habit to ask uncomfortable questions of race and homosexuality at every interview?"
"Yes."
"I have little memory of the writing process of this book. I was on ephedra. I was sleeping three hours a night for seven weeks. I was listening to an oldies station constantly. It all became a blur.
"I've never desired a huge amount of give-and-take with readers. Reason.com's comment section is very disturbing to me. I don't want to read them but I find myself reading them. That level of laying yourself out there, I'm not completely comfortable with.
"I tend to go out of town every weekend.
"I don't vote. I'm not registered with any political party."
Joe Herman writes: "I'm an Orthodox Jew that attended burning man last year (and am returning there this year). I camped with a Jewish Theme Camp (look for the Black Rock JCC on the playa this year) – and helped facilitate Friday Night services and a communal Shabbat meal at Burning Man. We had over 100 people there, many of whom never experienced the Sabbath before. It was an amazing experience, and plans are underway to repeat the event this year."
On Aug. 15, 2004, I post:
My First IM With Cathy Seipp
IM is an ancient Aborigine bonding ritual. It’s the first time I’ve had it with Cathy. Now we’ve done everything a man and woman can do together. It makes us feel very close.
Luzdedos1: Hi Cathy
Luzdedos1: It’s Luke
Miss Seipp: Eew! IMing!
Luzdedos1: We’ve never done this before.
Miss Seipp: I know it is Luke!
Luzdedos1: I’ve never done this with any girl before.
Miss Seipp: Yeah…kind of weird….
Luzdedos1: Be gentle with me.
Miss Seipp: Oh right you only do it with Weisblott right?
Luzdedos1: True
Miss Seipp: Shaddap. You’re even awfuller on IM.
Luzdedos1: How did you suddenly show up on IM?
Luzdedos1: I’m composing my heartfelt inscriptions for your books.
Miss Seipp: I figured out how to enable it, as an experiment, but it might not be a good idea. Are you going to Brian Doherty’s book reading?
Luzdedos1: No. Where is it?
Miss Seipp: It is Wed Aug 18 at Book Soup.
Luzdedos1: Will Heather be there?
Miss Seipp: You could ask Heather.
Luzdedos1: nah
Luzdedos1: What have you been doing, delight of my eyes and love of my life?
Miss Seipp: I been working…
Luzdedos1: the mean streets of Silver Lake
On Sep. 18, 2004, I post:
Luke Ford’s Book Club
For those who want the communal experience of going to shul, but go out of their mind reciting the prayers:
God in All Moments: B
Jews & Gentiles: A Historical Sociology of Their Relations: F
The Divine Symphony: The Bible’s Many Voice, by Israel Knohl: B+
Rape: A Love Story, by Joyce Carol Oates: B+
Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century: F
An Introduction to Jewish Ethics by Louis E. Newman: B+
Heschel, Hasidism and Halakha by Samuel H. Dresner: A
This is Burning Man by Brian Doherty: B
The Anti-Chomsky Reader: B+
Sam Spiegel: D
Manic Power by Jeffrey Meyers: A
On May 11, 2006, I blog:
‘I’m Off My Meds!’
I charge into the LA Press Club at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, and find Matt Welch in a natty suit and tie studying silently. I jam my tape recorder into his face and bellow into his ear, “I’m off my meds!”
He turns to me and smiles. “Hi Luke.”
“What contribution to the civic discourse that makes democracy possible has Hustler magazine made?”
Matt claims he’s seen only two issues. “At the front of the magazine,” says Matt, “they have these terrible graphic jokes.”
Luke: “A lot of them are racial. Just plain racist.”
Matt: “I haven’t seen that. It’s harder core than I’m able to enjoy in my pornography. But as those jokes intersected with politics, I found them amusing and useful by juxtaposing and occasionally disgusting sexual acts with political issues and personalities of the day, it treated politics with the seriousness and perhaps accuracy that it deserves.”
I email journalists I know, beginning with Reason magazine’s Editor Nick Gillespie, because he’s the most indulgent of my antics:
Dear Dr. Gillespie,
As one great magazine editor, do you have any thoughts on the job Allan MacDonell did with Hustler and how he informed the national conversation about our society’s pressing issues?
PS. If you purely had a physiological reaction to Hustler, it would be groovy to hear that too.
Nick replies: “Luke, interesting interview (as always). I’m afraid I haven’t read Hustler in something like 15 or 20 or more years, so I can’t comment on the job Allan MacDonell did with it. He sounded pretty sharp, though I disagree with his admiration for Lewis Lapham.”
The other indulgent Editor I know is Rob Eshman of the Jewish Journal. He responds to the same question: “Huh?”
A certain female journalist at a certain ethnic/religious weekly claims she’s never read Hustler.
I don’t know if I can trust her journalism now.
Jack Shafer of Slate.com Press Box replies: “Nope.”
My reflections: As long as Larry Flynt is publishing Hustler we can be assured that nearly all possible editorial options are being considered in America.
Why this Chinese wall of silence?
Why can’t we have an adult discussion of Hustler magazine in this greedy uptight society?
Why do we live in a country where an author of four books who was once Hustler’s Asshole of the Month can land on the cover of LA Weekly and not find comfort in the arms of a loving woman?
Welch says he has special glasses to adjust to his oddly-shaped face.
I tell Matt that he looks like Billie Jean King who grew up a block away from Matt in middle-class Long Beach.
Adam Parfrey (Feral House) wonders if Matt and Billie were extracted from the womb by the same tongs.
I’d like to get Matt fired from the Times so I won’t feel inferior to him anymore.
I use Emmanuelle Richard’s phone to call Cathy Seipp but she’s taking a bath and won’t deign to speak with me.
I’ll show her. I lean over and tell a man that Adam was Cathy Seipp’s first boyfriend. The man gives me a disgusted look and says that’s too much information.
Ben Sullivan notices and appreciates that I’ve lost 20 pounds (from not taking my lithium).
I tell a leftie that John and Ken at KFI radio have an impact on the electorate because they articulate and give direction to to what were previously unformed emotions. I often listen to the radio or read an article and say, “Yes, that’s it!” Someone has crystalized my thinking and given me impetus to do something.
Four people sit on the panel: “Censorship, Cowardice, or Good Taste? The L.A. Press Club is pleased to host a lively panel discussion debating the ongoing fallout of the infamous Danish cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. Were newspapers prudent or cowardly for refusing to reprint the images? Do smaller publications and websites who reproduced them deserve praise or scorn? Are Muslims truly offended at all depictions of all religious figures? Is it censorship when private entities like Borders Bookstores refuse to carry issues of the Free Inquiry that include the cartoons?”
Panelists include:
Eddie Tabash — Chair of Center For Inquiry-West, constitutional lawyer, and chair of the national legal committee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. www.tabash.com.
Edina Lekovic — Communications director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (www.mpac.org).
Brian Doherty — Senior editor, Reason magazine (www.reason.com), and author of the forthcoming Radicals for Capitalism: A History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.
Moderated by Matt Welch (www.mattwelch.com), assistant editorial pages editor of the Los Angeles Times.
“This set-up is so like Insider the Actor’s Studio,” says Edina who charms most of the audience.
The conversation is carried on at a high level that makes me feel comparatively dirty. How can I think impure thoughts about girls when Muslims are dying in the streets protesting blasphemous cartoons?
Luke Y. Thompson wears a t-shirt that pictures a man fornicating with a dog. I tell him I can’t set him up on dates because of his proclivity for tattoos, piercings, colored hair and obscene t-shirts.
“I didn’t realize that the crowd you hang out with had such lofty standards,” says Thompson. He notes I also color my hair.
Yeah, but I’m more subtle. My hair looks natural, thick and alive, pulsating with my manliness.
Nathan Nance writes me: “Luke Y. Thompson is my personal hero and fave movie critic. I’m glad to see he garnered a mention from the L.A. Press Club event.”
Brian Doherty exceeds my expectations. He takes the least time and makes the best points. Why doesn’t Europe get rid of its blasphemy laws, hate laws, etc?
Eddie Tarbash, the whore’s best friend, says his mother survived Auschwitz yet he wants to rescue Holocaust-denier David Irving from an Austrian jail where he’s incarcerated for the crime of denying that six million European Jews were murdered during WWII.
Tarbash looks like the quintessential Jewish nerd — he’s short with bad eyesight and a paunch. His eyes blink rapidly and his face twitches constantly while on stage. He’s hyper-intellectual and hyper-verbal.
Sartorial Splendor award goes to Eddie. Matt gets an honorable mention. Edina’s OK. Brian’s as rumpled and ratty as you’d expect from someone at that pot-smoking dog-f—ing filthy rag Reason.
A man who runs an organization to turn Iranians secular gives a long disjointed speech at the end (I clap and yell my approval at its conclusion), “which is a marvellous note to end on,” says Matt Welch.
“Let such people blog!” I scream when asked my opinion of that last speaker. “When people are that socially inept, that inconsiderate of their audience, that unable to get to the point, let them blog!”
“But would you read their blog?”
“Never!”
I tell Diana of the LA Press Club that they can auction me off for dinner (but not to a cannibal or a homosexual predator).
I badger the COO of the Center For Inquiry-West about his lack of a sex life. What kind of star power does his COO title carry at bars? He says he doesn’t go to bars but we suspect we know the answer to my question.
So what’s the point of doing something if you don’t get Heaven or chicks?
I demand to know why he’s not screwing around on his wife (she lives in Illinois). He’s an atheist, he has the whole building to himself, he can offer to show girls a bust of Steve Allen, enlargements of his publication’s covers, or his etchings of David Hume, yet he’s as chaste as a monk.
Back To The Role of Hustler Magazine in our Civic Discourse:
I email:
Dear Mr. [Tim] Rutten,
Do you have any thoughts on the job Allan MacDonell did with Hustler and how he informed the national conversation about our society’s pressing issues?
PS If you purely had a physiological reaction to Hustler, it would be groovy to hear that too.
Tim Rutten (from The Los Angeles Times) replies:
I’ve never been a Hustler reader, so I’m afraid I don’t have any thoughts on Allan MacDonell or his contribution. However, I always have admired the willingness of Huster, Playboy and similar publications to pay serious writers serious money to do serious journalism and to defend the First Amendment freedoms on which we all rely. I’m aware, of course, that they have economic and status reasons for doing so. . .but, at the end of the day, who cares? The fact remains that they did these things when others wouldn’t. As far as my “physiological reaction to Hustler” goes, suffice to say that my response is about the same as that of most men when presented with pictures of attractive women unclothed.
I email Reason magazine senior editor Brian Doherty: “What is its cultural significance and does it play a significant role in your history of libertarian thought in America?”
He replies:
In the current draft, no role at all, though I am aware that writings of a libertarian nature have appeared in HUSTLER’s pages. The researching of such magazines, saved and archived in few libraries, is difficult, and time is a scarce resource for any book one actually wants to finish. I focused in my forthcoming RADICALS FOR CAPITALISM: A FREEWHEELING HISTORY OF THE MODERN AMERICAN LIBERTARIAN MOVEMENT not so much on every eruption of libertarian thought or action in our culture, of which Hustler has certainly represented some (its very existence and certain legal actions and suits it has been involved in represented a valued expansion of freedom of the press, which I do firmly believe should and ought to apply to the impossibly offensive, and Flynt had a least a brief flirtation with support for the LP, if I recall correctly–was this before or after his brief turn to born-again Christianity?), as on those thinkers, institutions, and publications that a self-conscious movement libertarian recognizes as “part of our story.”
In truth, I’m sure I don’t know as much about HUSTLER as I ought. Nothing like writing a book to give you that nagging feeling about all sorts of things. I do intend to read that new book about it Adam P is publishing. I might have avoiding learning about it ever since finding a copy of it in the woods as a 9 year old with pictures of women smoking through their anus. (Perhaps that was in Penthouse? I’ll never know, I suppose.) I did hope to interview Playboy’s Hugh Hefner for my book regarding certain libertarian-important figures who worked for him (such as Robert Anton Wilson) and libertarian-important articles he ran (such as Karl Hess’s “The Death of Politics”) and whether he saw any explicitly libertarian implications in his “Playboy philosophy” and how he can make that philosophy jibe with any of the standard political party and ideological choices in our culture, but got no response from his p.r. flaks and had no direct means to contact him.
Brian Doherty's Latest – Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
I interview Brian by phone Friday, Jan. 19, 2007.
Brian: "I've been a libertarian since I was 16. What turned me libertarian was reading the science fiction novel THE ILLUMINATUS! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. At the University of Florida, I discovered there was a political party and intellectual movement pushing these ideas. As I wanted to learn more, I looked for a book like the one I've written and there just wasn't one.
"My first conscious reading and note-taking for this book began in the Spring of 1994.
"The intent of the book is not to turn people into libertarians. It's a book of history and journalism.
"As a libertarian activist, I believe that this book is important in helping people take libertarian ideas seriously.
"There are dozens of books on communism in the United States… To the extent that libertarianism has been dealt with in intellectual histories of the United States, it has been considered this little pimple on conservatism's left shoulder. That's why I wanted 'Radicals' in the title of the book. I wanted people to understand that libertarianism is not a right-wing philosophy.
"The only book that tries to do what this book does is Bringing the Market Back In: The Political Revitalization of Market Liberalism: The Political Revitalization of Market Liberalism by political science professor John E. Kelley. It tries to tell in one hundred pages what this book tells in 700 pages."
Luke: "Is Stephen Levitt, author of Freakonomics, a libertarian?"
Brian: "I don't know, but there's so much economics at the heart of libertarianism. Four of the five main characters in my book were professionally economists (Milton Friedman, Ludvig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Murray Rothbard). Economics is the central science in helping you understand that so much of what the state does is unhelpful. It's the intellectual discipline in which libertarianism is most respectable. Anyone who understands economics is going to have a strong libertarian streak. Government can't do anything without taking things. It's not a wealth-creating institution.
"Milton Friedman's son David is an anarchist. He explains how things like courts, police and national defense could be met in a free market."
Luke: "I didn't realize that libertarianism was like a religion for some people. That there's so much heretic-hunting, just as much as in Orthodox Judaism."
Brian: "Any intellectual movement that works in the shadows… Until the 1980s, most libertarians were thought of as freaks. This schisming provides much of the drama and comedy in the book. If you were going to be a libertarian up until the 1980s, you had to be a cussed and individualistic character… Freud talks about the narcissism of small differences. The heretic drives you crazy because they are so much like you, but they are missing that one thing. Ayn Rand was the queen of this. She ended up kicking out of her life pretty much everybody."
Luke: "It was nuts for libertarianism, as small as it was, to be so eager to kick people out."
"One of the first things people think about libertarianism is sexual freedom. Libertarians believe that prostitution should be legal. Yet you do not discuss this in your book."
Brian: "Because I tried to make it a character-centered story… There hasn't been a big name libertarian who has made that sexual freedom stuff their main focus. We've won most of the battles on the sex thing."
"You're not offending the average person's mores by arguing for getting out of the U.N. or cutting taxes or decreasing business regulation… Sexual stuff is psychologically fraught with danger. Sexual morality affects people on a deeper level than questions of regulatory policy. A lot of libertarian thinkers might think that there's no point in shoving people's face in this aspect…"
Luke: "How is pornography John Stagliano regarded in Cato circles? I know they take his money, but…"
Brian: "I don't know anyone who has a problem with how he makes his living. I know John. He's a generous funder of libertarian causes. At Reason magazine, he's a valued contributor. It's an honor to have his support and to have him around."
"Many libertarians are libertine but many are not. I do approve of the existence of pornography."
"For various sociological reasons, if you are going to be an active libertarian, you have to share the standard [commitment to decriminalizing prostitution and the like]… I don't meet many people who have old fashioned problems with other people's sexual behavior."
Luke: Who are the most famous libertarian apostates?
Brian: I don't know of any. "Libertarianism propagates well to the next generation."
"There's no market for a book by a libertarian turncoat. If you change your mind about libertarianism, nobody cares."
Luke: "Who were you the most excited to meet in the course of your research?"
Brian: "Barbara Branden. She was Ayn Rand's right-hand woman. She was a lot more warm and welcoming a figure than her ex-husband Nathaniel. Rand is such a goddess on the hill to libertarians. To get close to people who were close to her was exciting…"
"Most of my friends are libertarian… I long ago stopped enjoying arguing about politics."
"The kind of stuff that somebody is going to come up with verbally in a social situation is going to be stupid, and that includes me. I am not at my best verbally. When we hang up, I'm going to think of a million ways I could've better expressed things."
Luke: Have there been flourishing libertarian communities?
Brian: "There have been various attempts… Most libertarians want to be fully engaged in the larger market, so segregating yourself based on ideology is going to impoverish you. On a libertarian standard, L.A. is nightmarish with its taxes and regulations, but it's Los Angeles. It's worth it."
Luke: A lot of critics would say that libertarianism does not work because it has never been shown to work for a community. I remember Marxists arguing that marxism had never been tried.
Brian: "It is true that libertarianism has never been tried."
Luke: "A problem with libertarianism is the difficulty of assessing the externalities to a transaction. The costs to a wife and kids of a husband using prostitutes. The damage to the family structure from legalized prostitution."
Brian: "On the whole, the world will be a better place if people are free. The externalities created by government are far worse than the occasional externality produced by the free market."
Luke: "Is there a compelling psychological portrait of the libertarian?"
Brian: "A pre-existing work of literature or art that in my mind provides a full and true account of the libertarian mindset? In some ways, I hope my book provides one, without me trying to judge—I hope the stories of the lives, actions, and ideas I tell about the major libertarian figures of the 20th century–and I hope I show more than tell–provides such a portrait. In literature, I cannot recommend ILLUMINATUS! by Robert anton Wilson and Robert Shea highly enough—it presents compelling libertarian characters, libertarian ideas, and is inherently libertarian in its wild style and refusal to lock the reader into one interpretation of events or ideas imposed by the author."
Luke: "Does your book break new ground?"
Brian: "Most of the material in the book is from original research."
Luke: "What things in your book will surprise an educated libertarian?"
Brian: "My favorite story in the book that almost no libertarians know about is the connection between early libertarian financiers and early psychadelic drug culture."
Luke: "Is there a libertarian view of human nature? Do libs view us as basically good or basically bad? Does one's view of human nature affect one's commitment to libertarianism? For instance, if one views humans as tending towards moral entropy, does that necessarily mean one wants less human freedom (at least in some things)?"
Brian: "The libertarian mistrust of government—which is mistrust of what people will do when given unrestricted power over people–is rooted in understanding of a side of human nature that inclines people to benefit themselves at other's expense. Most significantly, libertarians understand that people react to incentives (that's one of the reasons why economics is such a key part of the libt intellectual tradition–economics is the soical science most mindful of incentives) and that free markets do the best job in funneling people's desire to benefit themselves into ways that benefit others, whereas the state gives people a weapon to benefit themselves at others expense. See discussion in the book on diff between "economic" and "political" means to survival…"
On Jan. 20, 2007, I posted: “I Want A Book Party For Brian Doherty‘s Latest – Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. This is an important book and it deserves a soiree with lots of hot women. I’m thinking the L.A. Press Club. Or Stephen S. Wise.”
Feb. 13, 2007, I email Brian Doherty: “Do you ever think about Taiwan? Without US support, it would fall to the commies… Israel would not exist either…” He replies: “Sometimes I think about Taiwan, Luke, and I cry. It is not the mission of the U.S. government to save the world, nor can it succeed in doing so.”
On Mar. 22, 2007, Brian Doherty wrote for Reason magazine:
Los Angeles-based journalist Cathy Seipp—best known in the blogosphere for her excellent Cathy’s World blog and her National Review Online columns–died yesterday of cancer.
She was an occasional Reason contributer and a full-time Friend of Reason–she helped organize a wonderful L.A. Press Club event for Nick Gillespie’s Choice: The Best of Reason anthology and my own This is Burning Man .
Most importantly, especially for those of us in L.A. lucky enough to know her, she was every bit as funny, lively, and unpredictable in person as she was in her writing. Her wit and enormous capacity for friendship drew around her the most interesting swirling nexus of L.A. writers, politicos, and characters one could ever hope to meet.
I was only ever a peripheral member of her circle, but I enjoyed every moment, and the opportunity to be part of a world, strange and vast and bound together pretty much only by Cathy, including porn industry reporter and Jewish world chronicler the inexplicable Luke Ford ; the fiery defender of common decency and courtesy, advice columnist Amy Alkon; superpolitical journalist Mickey Kaus; leading lawblogger Eugene Volokh; French journalist (and wife of our old colleague Matt Welch) Emmanuelle Richard; and almost everyone who was interesting and fun and smart in the many worlds of L.A. journalism, most of which would not have intersected but for her.
I’ll always treasure particularly the memory of an afternoon learning gun safety, loading and aiming techniques with her and Professor Volokh and a pack of her wonderful friends. Los Angeles, and the world of journalism, will be duller and sadder without her. For people wishing to honor her memory, she has requested donations to the Humane Society in her name.
In 2008, a friend emailed me: “I hadn’t realized you’d interviewed Brian Doherty re. Radicals for Capitalism. I’m just irredeemably to Brian’s left about some issues, but, as a funny kind of leftie, I’m sympathetic with principled movement libertarians on a number of matters–civil liberties and war (three cheers on this to Brian’s wife), of course, but also monopolies, licenses, subsidies–and the state.”
On Aug. 23, 2010, Brian posted on my FB wall during my chat with photographer Lane Hartwell: “This is one of the more curious “two people I know knowing each other and I can’t image whys” of the Facebook era. Hello to both of you, while I’m interrupting….”
Lane shot photos for Brian’s story on Burning Man.
On Dec. 12, 2014, I post about how I want my own media company just like I was promised when I converted to Judaism. It does not have to be a magazine, it could be a vertically integrated digital-media company. What’s important is that I get what’s coming to me as a Jew.
Chaim Amalek: “IF this stands, what next – Indians running Goldman Sachs? Big beefy gentiles making goy-friendly movies in Hollywood? Hashem send us Moshiach already so that we can regain control over the New Republic!”
Brian Doherty:
Well, Luke, I hope you get it, but be warned that apparently if upon getting this publication you dare fire an editor (after having fired ANOTHER editor to hire that editor, but apparently the first firing was OK) you will be vilified as a force of cultural destruction and one of the worst (somethings) in America by an echo chamber of privileged professionals living in the past.
This story is about staff departures at The New Republic is presented as the death of journalism, like anybody cared about TNR anymore anyway (maybe five times a year I’d hear somebody talk about something in there, about as often as I heard someone remark on a new essay in Hustler).
Brian Doherty:
Luke—I suggested that before posting about this controversy, you should have to answer 5 multiple choice Qs first about articles the Hughes TNR ran, then about 5 articles run in the decade before Hughes took over. You note that NO ONE asserts that anything about the Hughes TNR has been disgraceful or destroyed TNR’s vaunted traditions—-basically, this is all about firing ONE editor (who edited it before, then didn’t, then did again–the mag survived) then everyone else allegedly dedicated to its traditions quitting. If anyone “killed TNR” it is all of them. (Oh, wait, he hired someone who talked tech jargon and acted like something more than trad print journalism was necc. in the 21st century.)
And everyone writes about it as if Hughes is to blame, as if HE purged the mag. They purged themselves.
Over the course of my life, I’ve blurted out many things that I later regretted so intensely that I shuddered and flinched upon remembering them (in 2023, I was diagnosed with ADHD and getting on medication diminished the emotional instability that drove me to frequently say and do things I quickly regretted). Around 2005, I told Brian, who had a beautiful wife (their marriage didn’t last long) at NPR, that his Mrs. was so fine that he didn’t deserve her and she should be with me instead as he’s a pervy libertarian while I’m a respectable conservative whose behavior is governed by God’s immutable law.
I felt so embarrassed by that jokey remark whenever I thought about it that I apologized to Brian about five years later (many things I say and do seem fine to me until I get depressed and frightened about my prospects and then my old provocative ways appall me in ways they don’t do when I feel strong) via Facebook on July 7, 2010 after he accepted my friend request. He responded: “Luke—You are forgiven. In reality, I took it to be an interesting/amusing aspect of the way you chose to communicate, and was never offended by it. Good to hear from you again. Since Cathy’s death I’ve had no entree into those old social circles in which we were likely to run into each other. I hope you are well.”
On March 23, 2026, the New York Times said:
Brian Doherty, a writer who colorfully chronicled the libertarian movement in articles and books, most notably a sweeping history that covered eminent founding figures like the novelist Ayn Rand and the economist Milton Friedman as well as obscure oddballs with an anarchist streak, has died in Sausalito, Calif. He was 57.
Mr. Doherty was found dead on March 13 in Golden Gate National Recreation Area. His brother, Jim, said he fell the night before from a steep overlook of San Francisco Bay during a walk with friends who were scouting a site for an art performance. He had a leg injury and walked with a cane.
Mr. Doherty produced an eclectic body of work that had as a common thread his fascination with how bands of outsiders on the cultural and intellectual fringes infiltrate the mainstream. He was especially interested in movements with no central authority.
Besides libertarianism, he wrote books about 1960s underground comics and the Burning Man hippie-art-tech festival in the Nevada desert. For magazines, he covered seasteading, the notion of dwelling on the high seas beyond any national jurisdiction, and the Free State Project, which seeks to entice libertarians to move to New Hampshire and influence the state’s politics….
Mr. Doherty and a partner, Angela Keaton, called themselves husband and wife but, consistent with his disdain for government authority, never legally wed. The relationship ended in a separation around 2012.
He and another partner, Meghan Ralston, bought a home together in Cathedral City, Calif., near Palm Springs, but they also went their separate ways, in 2018, while remaining friends.
Mr. Doherty was living in Cathedral City at the time of his death. Besides his brother, he is survived by his mother.
“He was just passionate about oddballs, mystics, creative types, loners,” Ms. Ralston said in an interview. “People with real exuberances.”