 Welcome to Free Thoughts. I'm Aaron Powell and I'm Trevor Burris. Joining us today is Peter Gettler. He is president and CEO of the Cato Institute. Welcome to Free Thoughts, Peter. Great to be here. How did you get involved with Cato? That goes back to the early 80s. I was an undergraduate at MIT and I was writing a paper on social security. So I went to the library. I was looking for some source material and I found some material that was published by Cato, including Peter Ferrara's book, which I now know is the first book ever published by Cato, Social Security, The Inherent Contradiction. I think Beau's always jokes that we would never publish that book now. He was an undergrad or something like that, I think, the guy who wrote that. But continue, yeah. So that exposed me to Cato and it's interesting because looking back, that's how I first discovered Cato and found out that it was a libertarian organization, a think tank. But other than finding the book and the library, I don't remember how I found out all the other information because now, of course, you'd get it from the internet. There was no internet back then. We had 300 bod modems, which I thought were lightning quick. So I'm not sure how I found out other information about Cato. But I thought about Cato and I said, boy, this is an organization. I should support, donate too. But of course, when you're at the time, I was probably 20, 21 years old. You're not really thinking about writing checks to nonprofits because you're trying to figure out how to make your next check to the bursar's office. This is my, you know, putting me on prioritizing things. And then, gosh, it was around 2000. I finally had been thinking for years as a young investment banker. I should be supporting free market organizations. I should be supporting Cato. And I don't know why I was motivated finally to write a check. And so I became a donor. I got a letter back from Ed Crane and a visit from David Bowes. And that was the beginning of my career as a Cato sponsor, which continues to this day. I joke that, you know, Bob Levy, our board chair, and Ed Crane and John Allison, my predecessors as presidents of Cato won't let me stop writing checks. So I continue to be a sponsor. I think that's important. I think it's important for our supporters to know that Cato remains at the center of my own family's philanthropy. Making the decision to become the president. Were you, I mean, it's more complex how the board works and everything. It's not like running for office, but at some point before that happened, had you mentioned to Bob or Bob Levy, the chairman, or said, maybe I might want to do this or did it kind of come out of nowhere? Not really. I wouldn't say it came out of nowhere. I was invited to join the board by John Allison. And this was in 2014. And I agreed to it, even though I tell folks that the, you know, the financial commitment that was involved was a little bit more than we were comfortable with. I knew that there was likely to be a leadership transition in the future because, you know, John Allison had stepped in in 2012, and he came out of retirement to run Cato. So it was probably a good bet that, you know, he wasn't going to be around for five or ten years. And that was really part of my motivation joining the board, was not to become president of Cato, but to have a seat at the table when we talked about it, because I thought it was very important. This was really going to be the first long-term leadership transition in Cato's history. And I think the things that made Cato special throughout the years, its adherence to principle, its commitment to libertarianism and to independence and nonpartisanship, I really felt that it was important that whoever succeeded John as president of Cato really agreed with those principles and that those were fundamental characteristics of whoever would lead Cato. And of course, at that time I had no idea that I would not have a seat at the table because I would have to reuse myself for the discussion. I actually tell a joke. The board meeting at which I was elected president of Cato was my very first board meeting. Six months before, I was elected at that board meeting, so I didn't attend. And so what I like to say is they told me to show up at nine o'clock, and I did. And that's when I found out that the board meeting actually started at 8.30 and they had elected me president and informed me when I showed up. But I told John that being a member of a nonprofit board, I view it as a serious commitment. I've been on a number of boards over the years, including some in the Liberty Movement. I view it as a serious commitment and you want to be an engaged and contributing board member. And I told John that and I've told this story any number of times since I've been at Cato. It was a few months later, I was at a Cato event at the Waldorf and afterwards John mentioned, hey, next time you're in Washington, why don't we have a meal together because I have an idea to get you more engaged in Cato. And when I had breakfast at the Henley Hotel across the street here and he asked what I would think about possibly succeeding him. I didn't have an ambition to be CEO of a think tank, but it was more a question how much I cared about Cato and its mission and really trying to do all that we can do to maintain a relatively free country and a free world for future generations. It felt like the call of duty in some respects. I don't mean that and I don't want to be too dramatic about it. But my wife and I talked about it. She was, I think throughout the process, she was hoping I wouldn't get the job because she was quite comfortable in Connecticut with our life there. But we talked about it and we just said, hey, this is as individuals, as family, this is the most important contribution that we can make to advancing the principles of freedom and limited government that we really care about. And so we were up for it. Well, I think it gives us a good opportunity to pivot to Cato as an organization and think tanks in general because our listeners have – and they know that the Cato Institute produces free thoughts podcasts and they've listened to a lot of Cato people talk about all sorts of topics over the years on the show, but may not have a good sense of what a think tank is as an institution and what it does. So maybe you could tell us a bit about Cato and its role in the policy world. Yeah, I guess one of the ways to understand what a think tank is is to actually step back from the colloquial name think tank. Think tank really means a public policy research organization that produces research on public policy. I probably don't think it's the right way to describe it, but let's just start with the description of Cato and the mission that we describe on our website. We say the mission of the Cato Institute is to originate, disseminate and increase understanding public policies based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace. And our vision is to create free, open and civil societies founded on libertarian principles. I really like to distill that into what David Bose calls the production of sharp, high quality, insightful, principled research related to public policy issues of the day. You were discussing a good analogy before we began recording about an iceberg, which I thought was a great analogy. I was actually just going to segue to that because better than the dry definition, I think a conceptual one is better. I remember a few years ago, Don Bedro, the economist at George Mason University on his blog, Cafe Hayek, wrote a really good, and I've used this several times, always with attribution, just a description of what he saw Cato's role is because he was commenting on the important role Cato has played over the decades of his existence. And he talked about the difference between being someone who's oriented towards politics versus someone who's oriented towards ideas and principles, and he kind of said he was an idea guy. And the description he used is of an iceberg. An iceberg sits in the water and you only see very little of it above the water. Most of it lies below. And he described the fact that a lot of people are very interested in politics. I think that's because when there's someone running for election that a person feels they support and is simpatico with their own views, if they contribute to that person or work help them get elected, that feels like a tangible victory. And what Don was saying in this is that that little bit of the iceberg that sits above the water is what's politically feasible at any point in time. So that if you, let's say, were able to elect every pro-liberty politician you could find, that group of people could still only move policy so far in the direction of liberty and more limited government so that the bit of the iceberg above the water represents what's politically possible. And the role of Cato as he described it was to push the iceberg, shift it, turn it to try to expose other parts of it, to change the breath of what's possible, how much we're able to move in the direction of more freedom, limiting the state, etc. And the way we do that is really by trying to change the climate of opinion in the terms of debate by trying to make the arguments with our research and other activities to the academy, to media, to elite opinion makers, to policy makers about what kind of policy and really making the case for liberty and limited government in a policy world. I think that's a really beautiful description of what we're trying to do and I think it also has the benefit of messaging the people that don't put so much faith in politics. Maybe those tangible victories when someone you support wins an election feels good, but what does it really accomplish over the course of my lifetime? I think of so many election cycles where either on one side or the other folks who believe in a more limited role of government in certain realms would get their hopes up only to be dashed later and maybe some of those things we're seeing right now with the release of the Health Care Reform Act yesterday from the Congress. The world's greatest health care plan is it's not being used. The bill is officially called. Or as Michael Cannon calls it, he says that the Republicans have simply put a new coat of paint on a house they've already condemned. So it really does show you what the limits of politics can be that iceberg description really harkens back to Anthony Fisher. If you recall that Anthony Fisher, a great champion of liberty who is instrumental in the founding of any number of think tanks and also the Atlas Network which is an organization that supports free market libertarian think tanks around the world organization I used to be on the board of directors of. But I think the story is that in the wake of World War II as the state sector was growing in the UK and the government was taking over sectors of industry, Fisher was really appalled and decided that he was going to go into politics to try to fight for freedom in a more limited role for the state. And supposedly he met with Hayek at the London School of Economics and Hayek convinced him that that wouldn't be the most productive means of achieving his vision and that it would be a better idea if he poured his energy and resources into think tanks. Think tanks is a way to change opinion, move the iceberg as it were. And so he founded the Institute for Economic Affairs in London in 1955 and was involved in founding the Manhattan Institute and a CIS in Australia. I don't think he was involved in founding Frasier but was involved early on in Pacific research and ultimately Atlas. And so another example of someone who very much believed in the iceberg analogy. So a lot of think tanks in Washington are tied, or I guess we could call it shackled to political parties, that their interests are whatever are in the interest of the political party that they're affiliated with. But Cato, we don't have a party. There's the libertarian party but we're not affiliated with them. But one of the things that comes up when we're engaging with guests or when we get comments from people is libertarianism as a set of principles is a fairly broad concept. And there are, we'll just say that there can be infighting within libertarianism and disagreement about principles within libertarianism. And so you have the wide range of on the one hand the kind of classical liberal, more moderate positions and on the extreme other end you have your outright anarchists who all call themselves libertarian. So how does Cato deal with, we're the big name representatives of the libertarian tradition within Washington. So how do we deal with what exactly we mean by libertarian and the kind of conflicts ideologically and principle wise as opposed to just policy differences within this broader big tent. So I spent most of my life outside the liberty movement and as a long period as a donor to Cato and other organizations but didn't consider myself necessarily an active participant in the movement and I was always a bit amused or maybe chagrined at a lot of what I would say pointless debates that go on. And I think that's a bit what you're describing, these debates about I've been at cocktail parties and I see people saying, you know, you're not a real libertarian because you believe this and I am because I believe that. And I just think that there's so much that we agree on that there seems to be predisposition on a part of libertarians is sometimes because there's a lot of folks who are intellectually engaged and interested in debate ends up spending I think a bit too much more energy on those kind of pointless arguments rather than kind of trying to keep an eye on the big picture and kind of larger struggle between liberty and statism. So I try to not spend a lot of energy in those types of arguments and try to discourage others as well. That might be the answer. And I think it ties into the iceberg analogy as well because if we're locked in a long game here of advancing liberty, like we're not going to win out and have Libertopia tomorrow and we've got a long way to go and so it always feels like those sorts of disputes are disputes happening way at the quite a farther down the road to liberty than we are now. And we can all agree like if it's going to take a while, let's work together to push that iceberg bit by bit. And then if that happy day comes when we're at the point where like, should the state do this minimal thing or this even more minimal thing, then we can hash out those arguments but we're not there yet. And that shows why you're the host of the podcast and I'm only a guest because you articulated that better than I did. But I think it calls to mind some other things as well. Because Libertarians have areas of agreement and disagreement with almost anyone along any point in the philosophical spectrum and certainly with any government that's in power, I think that there are a lot of people in the liberty movement who maybe relish being in opposition a little bit too much. And I think that this has important implications for our message. You know, sometimes Libertarians come in for criticism about being too negative or too pessimistic. And one of the things that I really try to do is to take a much more balanced view because things just are never that black and white. I think of the way the world has changed since the Cato Institute was founded in 1977. Well, in 1977 the government told airlines which airlines would fly between which cities and how much they could charge and what railroads and trucking companies would charge for freight. There was significantly less personal freedom from the perspective of... Well, one of the things that's amazing to me is in 1986, nine years after the founding of Cato Institute in Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court upheld the Georgia Sodomy statute. And so personal freedom has changed dramatically for gays, for other groups. You know, there tends to be a lot of focus on economic issues where the picture hasn't been necessarily a very bright one. And one of the reasons that we focus on that is when we all get our paycheck, we wonder where the other half went. So it's natural, I think, as a human to focus on economic issues. But, you know, one of the things that, you know, I learned as a longtime sponsor of the Cato Institute and the role Cato helped play in my personal evolution, the evolution of my own personal philosophies, teaching me that you've got to be able to look at all aspects of freedom and keep a balanced picture of where some are advancing, where some are retreating, there are elements of personal freedom, where things have been moving in the right direction. It's obviously concerned now with a change in administration, but on a state level, a lot of very positive focus, I think, on the criminal justice system, changes in drug laws, educational freedom. I know that our education system, the government monopoly on education, such as it is in the United States, has created a situation in which none of us are satisfied with our education system, but it was, you know, 13 years after the founding of Cato in 1990 that the first school voucher program started in Milwaukee. Now you have half the states or more with educational choice programs of varying qualities and hundreds of thousands of students studying pursuant to those programs, so that's some place where things have been moving in the right direction. I also try to take some comfort from the fact that, you know, if you look at any long period of time, it seems like the planet is freer at the end of that period of time. Well, definitely since 1989. I mean, between... Yeah. Definitely. You know, when you... I was thinking about, you know, Cato turning 40 in 1977 and if you Google, you know, 1977 Red Square Revolution Day Parade, you can see a pretty dramatic example of how the world has changed in some positive ways. And then, of course, there are clearly areas in which, you know, the battle has been moving in the wrong direction, you know, the growth of the, you know, surveillance state and, you know, a lot of concerns about technology and privacy and, you know, relatively unsettling role of government there. You discussed how Cato in affecting you in your views and when... I think you gave your first speech upon being announced president to the staff. You told a story about David Bowes visiting you in your office after 9-11, which I thought was a fascinating story. Yeah. I alluded to that when you talked about what brought me to Cato and, you know, when I became a donor. So, six or nine months after I became a donor, maybe it was a little longer than that, you know, I got a call or an email about David was going to be in New York and could we meet. So, we set up the meeting and 9-11 intervened and the meeting was, I don't know, two weeks after 9-11 and the building I was in was the closest one to ground zero that actually wasn't structurally damaged in the attack and David visited, we'd had a chat, nice chat in my office and then I brought him upstairs to the cafeteria where there were these big windows that overlooked ground zero and, you know, there were still dumpsters that said aircraft parts on the side and things like that. It's still a very horrific scene. And David, we both talked about the concern about terrorism and David also mentioned being very concerned about what was going to happen to civil liberties in the United States in the wake of the attack and at the time I thought, man, it's just not even in my frame of reference and boy, looking back on it was quite a prescient comment or a prescient concern because when you think of the way our country has changed in the last, you know, 15, 16 years since the attack, clearly there's been, you know, much higher risk profile for civil liberties of all types. I definitely wasn't thinking about civil liberties right after the attack either. So, I mean, it is a lot of people, even libertarians, were thinking we got to go get them kind of attitude. So, keeping that cool head is important. Which was okay, you know? Yeah. But yeah, that balance really struck me and I really thought quite a bit about it that Ed used to say, hey, all these things are connected, you know, our views on economic freedom and foreign policy and civil liberties and educational freedom, they're all, you know, it's all parts of the same common thread and I guess I have a greater appreciation for that now. And I've said this before maybe to you guys that one of the things that drew me closer to Cato over the years was I felt I was learning so much from the scholars here and my own view was evolving. You know, I grew up during the Cold War. I had a much more, you know, hawkish attitude towards the, you know, the Soviet Union and the communist bloc. But, you know, the world changed and before I came to Cato and as a sponsor and started thinking about these things perhaps a little bit more deeply, I realized my personal views weren't evolving as the world evolved and I think that's one of the arguments that Cato was making at the time about how our relationship with NATO and troops in Europe and troops in South Korea, we didn't kind of evolve our own foreign policy and our military footprint in the world for a pretty fundamental change in the world and risk profile that we faced. So this is, as you mentioned, Cato celebrating his 40th birthday this year and like to point out that we have been fighting the empire for as long as Luke Skywalker has. But in those 40 years, I mean, there have been, as you said, there have been many trends that are in a positive direction. There have been trends that are in a negative direction. Cato has been involved in a lot of policy issues and questions in four decades. When you look back at these 40 years, our first 40 years, what do you see as like, as our greatest victories? Are there particular issues that stand out in something where Cato, you know, we won on that one? I think the greatest victory is the mainstreaming of libertarianism as a political philosophy, which is really a sea change from 1977. I think one of the things, Trevor reminded me of my first day at Cato, my first presentation. I think I said that speaking of Star Wars, when 1977, going to a libertarian function was kind of like taking a look at the Star Wars bar scene. At the time I made that joke, to be honest, I've never watched Star Wars all the way through, but I have now at least seen the bar scene. I just saw your heart break from here, I think. I would have made it hard for me to vote for you, president. But that's an incredible achievement, you know? And I've never, you know, one of the difficult things for Cato is that the things we're fighting are so big, right? The entitlement state and government spending and just the power of the federal government with, you know, a meaningful budget, but still a small, you know, we're $30 million roughly organization. That's a pretty big fight and a pretty big mismatch. And as I said earlier, people like tangible victories, like winning elections. And, you know, I think that the impact that Cato has had as a sponsor, I never doubted. In fact, over the years as I became more involved with Cato, the organization ended up earning the largest share of my family's philanthropy because we felt that the battle was so important and that the mission was so important and that Cato was so effective. For the reasons that we mentioned earlier, the fact that it really stands out in Washington as, you know, a very principled organization and one that truly is independent and nonpartisan. And I think sometimes people ask, oh, if you're, you know, if you're critical, as we are of almost every administration, right, there are elements that we support, policy areas where we support the initiatives and the thrust of almost any administration in their areas where we disagree. And it's critical that we focus on the things that we support and have impact in advancing policy in those directions, but it's equally important that we try to get the brakes put on when things are moving in areas where things are moving in a direction that we disagree with. And one of the things I've learned quite clearly since I've been here, because people ask, well, if you're criticizing an administration in this area or another, does that reduce your access? Does it reduce your effectiveness as an organization and the amount of impact you can have? And I've really seen it being quite the opposite. I think that, you know, really just in the last few months when I see the access that people here have on the Hill and some of the meetings that we've had with officials in the administration where I think what we have to say carries a lot of weight because people know that, you know, we are principled and when we have a viewpoint, it's going to be well thought out. We're going to have important ideas to add in specific areas of policy. And it really comes down to a quote that I think Ezra Klein made a few years ago when he said that, you know, I often disagree with Cato, but when they say something, I know it's what they really think. I'm paraphrasing. But I think that that really does set Cato apart. I had lunch with George Will a few weeks ago and he sat down and the first thing he said, he looked at me and he said, you know, Cato's never been more, the Cato Institute's never been more important. And he was deadly serious and I think it's because he's a little bit exasperated seeing what you referred to earlier as, you know, most organizations in Washington, they line up with you, the red team or the blue team and they're therefore willing to make compromises to not criticize their team. And I think that that can dilute your influence and again, make people view you through a partisan lens and erodes the credibility that you have. And since we, it's really the, I often say the greatest assets of Cato and it's a tribute to Ed Crane and David Bowes over their decades of leadership of Cato that we, you know, the institute has those really significant points of pride that we do tell it, you know, the way we think it is. Integrity, it's, like my dad always said, it takes a lifetime to build and seconds to destroy and I think it works that way for a think tank too. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I think it's something that's, you know, that can never change. And we really have to have that commitment and I think we do. At the same time, we talked a little earlier about sometimes people enjoy being more, and it's human nature to want to kind of complain or whine and I think it's important to keep a positive outlook on what we're doing and, you know, being adequately focused on the areas where policy is moving in a positive direction and where we can help it move, you know, and then in that direction, you know, more significantly. But you mentioned like specific areas of, you know, we had a conference last weekend and I was thinking about just some things that have happened in the last week. You know, we've got some interesting feedback from the Hill on the fact that, you know, every senator was given a copy of our report on the TPP and it was said that, you know, this is a great example of, you know, the work think tank should be doing to contribute to a difficult issue. We talked about educational freedom a few minutes ago. I mean, Jason Bedrick wrote a paper earlier this year with an example of really a new idea for him, combining, you know, the idea of educational savings accounts with tax credit funded scholarships into tax credit funded ESAs. And there are now two states, Missouri and Arkansas, where there are bills pending, you know, based upon that work. This, the new administration that came in in January is, I mean, it's different in its policy preferences than administrations that have come before, but it's also different in its style and its tone and it's the way that it seems to fit into the Washington system, including the think tank system. So does the Trump administration change the way that Cato operates or do we have to think about the way we do things differently in this administration? I don't think it changes the way we operate because, you know, for the reasons that we mentioned, we still have to approach things as we would with any administration. Try to make the most of areas of agreement and make sure that we're vocal in areas of disagreement. It changes some of the feedback we get, you know, because I think whenever there's a new administration that there's a desire, think about eight years ago, there's a desire to be hopeful, you know, whether the candidate you support has won or lost, you know, one case you're hoping for the best and the other case you're hoping that, you know, the worst outcome doesn't come to pass. So you see like heightened criticism, do you think, of you, of Cato since Trump took office and that sort of what you seem to imply. I mean, I've seen it with like Alex. You know, I get mail from sponsors or calls from sponsors and some of them. I wrote about this in my last bi-monthly memo. There are some who don't think that we're, you know, enthusiastic enough about Trump. And look, I concede that in the economic realm, there's reason for hope. The regulatory reform efforts, you know, feel pretty real. We're hopeful that, you know, tax reform can happen in a way that is very positive. We're still hopeful in the healthcare realm, notwithstanding, you know, the bill that was released yesterday and so we get all that. But I think that, you know, most of our sponsors recognize that, look, it's critical for Cato to say what it really thinks. And as I mentioned earlier, I don't think that necessarily shuts us out of the debate. In fact, it makes us, you know, more effective in the debate because I think we have enhanced credibility. And also, one of the things that I should mention, in addition to, you know, the commitment to principle and independence is, you know, and this again relates to the years of leadership of Ed and David and which continue under John Allison, which is the commitment to quality and, you know, a high intellectual standard. And I think that that reflects very well on us so that policymakers, whether they agree with us or not, recognize that there is value to be had from engaging with Cato. How do you think think tanks might be changing? Because the model, some people argue the model is changing for a different time. We used to, as opposed to just feeding papers into Capitol Hill and you didn't have blogs. You didn't have as many media outlets as you can do. You didn't have podcasts down if we're doing now. Is there room or time to sort of rethink how think tanks are behaving and trying to innovate into the future to maybe more public facing or different ways of reaching people? Well, you've hit on some things that certainly there are significant ways in which think tanks have changed. One that I don't think we have to get into maybe too much, but just the proliferation of think tanks has been pretty amazing. David Bowes and I were talking about that earlier, how it used to be kind of a few big players in town and now the University of Pennsylvania, they rank think tanks and there are thousands of them around the world. But you've hit on something that I think is really important. I think sometimes we get caricatured that I'll be speaking with someone who's... Usually it's at a moment which they're frustrated about the path of policy or the public debate and they'll caricature think tanks as producing white papers. And when I think about the full range of activity, the 15 or 700 blog posts we do a year and the 1500 plus TV and radio appearances, the 900 op-eds and books and research papers I think are an important thing as well because the way people consume information has changed. People getting information from Twitter and the internet blogs. But it's also important to have, again, that intellectual stature, that commitment to quality. An analogy I often make is we get contacted by people on the hill or people in presidential campaigns that want to know what we think on an issue or a policy area and they want to see some material and you're just not gonna... I don't think it's very effective to print out a bunch of blog posts to give them. You need to have some serious research that illustrates a depth of knowledge on a topic in a way that really helps them. And now some of the things that we're doing to reach... Some of the stuff you guys are doing at Libertarianism.org is just outstanding. Different types of content. The multi-million dollar grant that we got that I think you guys are really delivering on by developing... And I think many of the listeners probably don't know about these things, but the suite of online courses that we're developing that's focused on young people and teaching them about liberty and the role of the state and Libertarianism and political philosophy and economics are just outstanding. And the marketing tactics that you've employed to drive increased participation, increased traffic to the site and increased use of these really important and valuable tools has been outstanding. I think the Libertarianism.org traffic was up about 150% last year, which is outstanding. Well, that's a little bit interesting too. The existence of Libertarianism.org because that's clearly long game thinking. I mean, that's not policy papers. We were saying, hey, you should read this essay from 1835. It's probably not going to get to the hill and not going to be turned into a piece of legislation, but we're trying to influence people. But that seems to be something uniquely Libertarian. I don't think that the Center for American Progress has something analogous to Libertarianism.org in terms of exploring the depth and the history and the philosophy of these ideas. That's a different thing for a thing to do. Yeah, I think Libertarianism is a... There certainly is an underlying intellectual framework for progressivism and for conservatism. Absolutely, yeah. But the way that they're practiced now in contemporary America, Libertarianism seems almost unique in that we're a set of policy prescriptions. Of course, that's what we write about at Cato, but we're also a coherent and long intellectual tradition and a shared set of principles and values and ideas that... I wonder, though, how much does that... One of the big questions is if we like to say... I mean, we like to think we're right in our policy prescriptions. Otherwise, we wouldn't believe them. And that a lot of the stuff that we see in Washington kind of confirms, like, yes, we told you if you passed Obamacare, it was going to run into exactly these kinds of problems and look it did. Like, we told you so as kind of a... I always get sick of having to say it. But if the arguments are on our side and the economics are on our side and the principles are on our side... And the history. And the history, then why are we still the outsiders? Why are we still... You can... David Bowes and David Kirby do this study. I think that's the wrong way to talk about it. Because to me, libertarians are very much insiders because people ask, when has there ever been a libertarian country? Sure. Minus are always is the United States because when you read the Constitution, right, which specifies limited and enumerated powers for the federal government and a very expansive view of liberty, to me, that's a libertarian document. And I view libertarians as the heirs of the enlightenment and the classical liberal tradition and the founding of the United States. And so I think it doesn't serve us well when we talk about it as if it's a new philosophy or we're the outsiders or it's about recapturing. The libertarian tradition of the United States recapturing the libertarian meaning of the Constitution. But we hit a lot of things there. So let's back up and talk about some of them, particularly how think tanks are changing and maybe we can talk a little bit about, you know, what the future of Cato holds and some of the things that we're thinking about, you know, strategically and how we can increase our impact. But when you mentioned... That was my next question. ...libertarianism.org and, you know, I was thinking of the word entrepreneurial, you know, and that is something that kind of runs through, to me, libertarianism and many of the libertarians, I mean, many of our very generous sponsors are entrepreneurs who've built great businesses and I think that we've had a very entrepreneurial approach to this organization as well. You know, going back to its founding by Ed and Charles, you know, the founding and building of Cato was very much an exercise in entrepreneurship. So I think that that's certainly, you know, an important part of the libertarian tradition. The way I think about the future and continue to innovation and we've talked about some of these things with respect to libertarianism.org and some of the other elements of media, the internet that we're using to reach audiences and I think there's more of that we can do. I think it's really important for an organization to stay focused and to recognize, you know, what its model is and what the areas in which it's intended to operate because there's so much that's worthwhile to do or that needs to be done or that you want to do. It's really easy to fall into the trap of trying to do everything and that is just a prescription for wheel spinning, less impact, ineffectiveness. But I think there are a lot of areas in which or a lot of assets that Cato has that can be leveraged. Like we have this fantastic, you know, policy staff and the human capital in this building that is, you know, a really valuable resource and we obviously, it generates a lot of product and a lot of activity and a lot of influence. But I think that there are ways we can think about increasing, you know, leveraging, you know, those important human capital assets that we have and I think that what happens to a lot of non-profits is that they want to keep growing and they usually think of growth in what I would call conventional ways, the way that they've always grown. So for a think tank it's about, hey, let's raise more revenue so that we can hire more policy staff. And I'm not sure that's the best approach. I think over time, I think we do want to grow and by growing we can significantly impact, increase Cato's impact but I think that there are ways that we could can grow and invest to increase the impact and what we're generating out of our existing, you know, policy staff. Maybe this is because I'm a former business guy and so I think of things in, you know, the terms that a, you know, a profit generating enterprise would think of, you know, the policy work and the research we produce and think about, hey, have we, I think a lot of think tanks, they keep investing in policy staff and generating more research and I think that there's a case to be made for, you know, investing a bit more in what I would call distribution, trying to figure out how to get, you know, more widely propagate, you know, or leverage some of the work that you're doing. I think it's important to recognize that, again, it's about turning that iceberg and with a $30 million budget here in D.C., we're not going to trigger some kind of mass conversion exercise in the United States that's going to turn, you know, tens of millions of people into libertarians but we do have to ask ourselves, so that shouldn't become our mission but I think we can ask ourselves, you know, what kind of investments we can make in technology and, again, leveraging in certain ways the work that we do, the existing work we do, which is excellent in high quality and figure out how to get more mileage out of it. So I'll change the mission, kind of leverage some of the existing assets to generate a little bit more impact. I think some of the things that we've talked about, libertarianism.org, technology communications for the core think tank activities are examples of that but I think that with the digital world having, and I think Kato is actually very good at that and that's borne out by, you know, some of the surveys that we follow that rank think tanks and when you look at the statistics on, you know, our digital penetration and mobile and social media, it's really outstanding. So I think that we're doing a really good job there but I think that, hey, if we raise more money would the next best investment be in, it would probably be in some policy staff but maybe making some of these investments and distribution as well and maybe thinking about some more inventive ways to leverage Kato's role in the movement and the existing human capital here and a lot of the contact that we have. Just up meeting with, you know, Mark and Katie who run the intern program and we've got, I think, 1,350 applications for the summer intern program which is amazing and, you know, we brag about, wow, that's, you know, like 37 applications for every slot in the intern program so we have a lower acceptance rate than Harvard. I think about that and I say, okay, I don't care about the low acceptance rate. I'm trying to think, how can we leverage some more of those people? Are there ways that we can bring more of those people? Not necessarily in as interns because I think we have limits to the, we want to make sure that we create an excellent experience for the interns and, you know, with the finite staff. There are only so many, you know, the intern class for whom we can create a positive experience and an excellent experience can only be so big but are there other ways that we can exploit that pipeline of talent that we have? So we've been exploring and, you know, tossing around some ideas in that regard and we're going to have an event in May when Kato turns 40 and we're going to have some leaders from the policy world and a lot of presentations by Kato scholars as well but talking a little bit about some of the things that we've been discussing here, what Kato has accomplished, what it means but then also talking a little bit about the future and we expect to more fully flesh out some of these ideas as to how we can leverage these really outstanding assets to create, you know, more impact in the policy world. Thanks for listening. This episode of Free Thoughts was produced by Tess Terrible and Evan Banks. To learn more, visit us at www.libertarianism.org.