Ed Crane lived a big life. Some will see the previous statement as an obvious one, and one made evident by the fact that Ed, along with Charles Koch, founded the Cato Institute, the world’s foremost libertarian institution.
Except there was more. While there will be obituaries of Ed all over print, online and other prominent media in the coming weeks, they’ll arguably gloss over that first and foremost, Ed was an entrepreneur.
Evidence supporting this claim can be found in the numerous billionaires, executives, policy visionaries, and politicians who will note his passing while also taking the time to read about him. What’s notable about the prominent circles Ed was part of is that it wasn’t always this way. Which explains the entrepreneur in Ed.
He was a libertarian when vanishingly few knew what one was, or realistically before the descriptor existed. About this, Ed liked to joke that when he set about creating the small l, libertarian movement in the early 1970s, there were as many odd lifestyles as there were libertarians.
Within this variegated collection of people, Ed uniquely saw something much bigger. This hopefully explains the mention of the variety of big names who will be reading about him and thinking about him in the coming days and months. With the eventual exception of Charles Koch, very few were around when Ed began. All political movements require well-to-do patrons, yet the prominent weren’t in the room when Ed began to craft his vision.
It underscores the importance of entrepreneurs. They believe deeply in something that most everyone rejects as ridiculous. Ed was just that kind of believer. He knew there were Americans who, much like him, felt uncomfortable with the policies of Democrats AND Republicans. Ed would build a philosophical movement around them.
Which calls for more thought about the seeming oddballs that showed up to the original libertarian gatherings over fifty years ago. Underlying his humorous quip about the variety of lifestyles represented was Ed’s belief that these freedom-loving people embodied what made the U.S. so special.
That’s because Ed wasn’t anti-government as much as he was for choice about local government. To him, the primary purpose of the federal government was to protect the right of individuals to live as they wished. He once wrote in Forbes that a “fierce individualism” was at the core of the U.S.’s founding, and that the federal government should make its focus all about protecting individual liberty.
As for government, Americans would ideally find a little or a lot of it in the cities and states they freely chose. Let people migrate to their policy bliss rather than having it forced on them in one-size-fits-all fashion from Washington.
The problem was that neither Republicans nor Democrats embraced the libertarian view. No doubt Republicans were at least rhetorically non-interventionist on matters economic, while Democrats were more rhetorically free thinking about matters of personal liberty, but both Parties had a tendency to stray. See the Republicans and the crisis they caused in 2008 with their myriad interventions in the natural workings of the market, but also see the adamancy of Democrats in 2020 and beyond that everyone be locked down, everyone wear masks, and everyone get the coronavirus vaccine. As for wars in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, both Parties tended to start wars that had nothing to do with national defense.
With libertarianism, Ed created a philosophical home for those who wanted a federal government that taxed much less, that was defined by a much narrower scope, no officials of government policing the bedroom and personal decisions more broadly, combined with a healthy skepticism about foreign wars. Ed died still of the belief that what you’ve just read described the views of a plurality of Americans. Was he wrong? Perhaps the better question is whether anyone from either Party has ever run for national office while expressing the basic philosophy that Crane and other libertarians espoused.
Notable about Ed’s libertarianism is that with individual freedom the proverbial north star informing his thinking, and that of the scholars inside the Cato Institute, innovative policy ideas began to emerge. Interesting about Ed and Cato’s calls to for instance free people from the freedom and retirement-savings strictures of Social Security, is how outside the norm of thought these ideas were in the 1970s (Cato formed in 1977) and 1980s. The very notion of private Social Security accounts was beyond the pale in consideration of the much talked about “Third Rail,” but that’s the point of entrepreneurs. They see what others don’t, including solutions that few – if any – have ever considered.
By the 21st century, President George W. Bush was actively campaigning on private retirement accounts, and after re-election in 2004, he was working with Congress on legislation. Ed and Cato’s Jose Pinera (architect of Chile’s pension privatization) brought the idea to Bush, and while he failed, no one ever said Rome was built in a day. Ed was arguably just early. It wasn't fhe first time.
Ed was in many ways the original non-interventionist on matters of foreign policy (he and Cato took these stances at great cost in a funding sense given the very real fear gripping the U.S. after 9/11), not to mention that Ed was for marital freedom (think gay marriage) long before it was seen as fit for discussion within the upper reaches of the Democratic and Republican parties. Wasn’t it Bill Clinton who signed The Defense of Marriage Act into law…?
All of what you read in the previous paragraph is worth considering given the persistent attempts by media types to falsely portray Cato as a conservative or Republican think tank over the decades. Ed was a true liberal in the classical sense long before the leaders of either major political Party happened on ideas associated with personal freedom.
Considering immigration on its own, Ed deeply felt that those who loved themselves enough to risk it all to get to the United States had revealed themselves as American for doing just that. Welcome them in! Ed felt this way right as “compassionate” Democrats like Barack Obama were talking tough about the border, and employing deportation while in the White House.
As for the Republicans, Ed persistently reminded them that there’s nothing about “growth” in the Constitution, that the true aim of the GOP should be individual freedom. As Crane so wisely put it with great constancy, you’ll have all the growth you could ever desire if the people are free.
Funny about Ed was that he looked the part of a Republican, which he was ok with. Ed's aim with libertarianism was that its appearance mirror its importance. At Cato, where I worked from 2003 to 2015, employees were expected to dress conservatively while thinking radically. And so they did, all the while changing the terms of the policy discussion for the much better.
It brings things back to Ed’s entrepreneurialism. What began as fringe developed into a very serious, and in many ways elite form of thought against all odds. Which explains the mention early in this tribute about the various high achieving and important people from business, policy and politics who knew Ed and Cato, including some of the most prominent business types who served on Cato’s board. That the corporate affiliations of John Malone, Rupert Murdoch, Fred Smith, Ted Forstmann, and David Koch don’t require mention tells you just how far Crane took libertarianism, and how far-reaching his vision was.
It unearths one final memory of Ed ahead of a great deal more writing about him, his life, and his ideas in the future: Ed loved the company of the Cato staff. He was deeply committed to freedom, and very much enjoyed spending time with the Cato employees who brought words and action to his commitment. Thought of another way, while Ed could have been aloof or exclusionary in consideration of the prominent names who were also his friends, a walk by his office invariably coincided with regular employees at all levels in there talking with him. There was no pretense in the man, but lots of reverence for those who were part of Cato’s mission.
While those outside of Cato would occasionally quip that Cato stood for “Crane and the others,” Ed’s letters to supporters were invariably about the monthly policy staff meetings, and how inspired he was by Cato’s policy team and their commitment to liberty. Ed worked tirelessly to build Cato and keep it afloat, and his energy was informed by the people working for him.
Which is why Ed Crane will very much be missed by all who knew him. They and libertarianism loved him, and he loved them back.
