City of Liberty

New York's leading lights of libertarianism

Brian Doherty | June 29, 2007

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Certainly not all libertarians came out of, or through, New York. And, politically, New York City has never been any libertarian's dream.

But it is, and has always been, a place where you'll witness the glory and the world-changing energy of building something new against great odds and with a winning assurance. So it's not surprising that the founding fathers, and mother, of libertarianism considered it the only American city truly suitable for them.

In its concentration of grand human achievement, in its cosmopolitanism and grace, combined with a winning self-assured pugnaciousness, New York is the living embodiment of the openness, dynamism, and sheer human will that energizes the free markets that libertarians celebrate — and that makes New York the richest, biggest, wildest metropolis in human history.

Brian Doherty is a senior editor for reason, and author of "Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement." This article originally appeared in the June 27, 2007 New York Sun.

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