Bill Minutaglio has distinguished himself as an award-winning Texas journalist with the Abilen

Bill Minutaglio has distinguished himself as an award-winning Texas journalist with the Abilene

Reporter-News, San Antonio Express-News, Houston Chronicle, and Dallas Morning News, where he has

worked since 1983 as a special writer. His work has appeared in many national publications including

Talk, where he is a contributing writer, and the New York Times. He has coauthored two books and served

as a contributing author to three others. He lives in Austin with his two children and his wife, Holly.

In my review of Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism I mentioned the Cato Institute’s online

symposium, which utilizes the book as a take-off point for a discussion about the libertarian movement

in general, and I note here the posting of Virginia Postrel’s contribution, which takes the

“pragmatist” line: Rand and Rothbard are “dogmatists,” and really, in Postrel’s view, religious

rather than political activists. This is nonsense, of course, and the whole thing is really a set-up

for La Postrel to wonder why most libertarians aren’t “freethinkers,” i.e. more like herself:

“There’s no libertarian hierarchy to excommunicate heretics, but within libertarian organizations

free thinkers do feel informal pressures to conform. It’s safest and most rewarding to stick to a

straightforward anti-government script.”