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Libertarians: the new 'It' faction

Scott Galupo
November 23, 2007

When he isn't taping "The Price is Right" game-show host and comedian Drew Carey promotes libertarian ideas.

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It's altogether fitting that the new host of "The Price Is Right" — a game show on which contestants try to guess the going rate of various consumer products — is a free-market enthusiast.

More intriguing is said host's part-time job: libertarian proselytizer.

Comedian Drew Carey can be seen on a series of funny-but-not-kidding Internet-TV episodes sponsored by the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based think tank. So far, Mr. Carey has recommended the privatization of highways as a solution for metropolitan traffic congestion and criticized the federal crackdown on medical marijuana.

Mr. Carey joins the libertarian fold along with the illusionist-comedians Penn & Teller and HBO talk-show host Bill Maher, who has called himself a libertarian for several years.

It's not at all clear, to be sure, that the latter understands what the term means.

The acclaimed playwright-intellectual Tom Stoppard most certainly does: Describing himself as a "timid libertarian" in a recent interview with Time magazine, he complained bitterly of the nanny-state intrusiveness of the British government.

Libertarianism espouses the autonomy of the individual in both economic and social spheres — though you'll rarely hear it described with anything like academic rigor by its mainstream adherents.

As Reason magazine Editor in Chief Nick Gillespie explains, the term "libertarian" is more useful as an adjective than a noun. "It's an impulse; it's pre-political or at least pre-partisan," he says. "In any given situation, it asks, 'Do you favor giving people more freedom or less?' "

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