A Life in Liberty  

A famous ride — My favorite recollection of Bill relates to something that happened at Aspen in 1996. I had gone there at Doug Casey's invitation to give a talk at his annual Eris Society get-together. Bill was there, too, along with an assortment of fascinating and borderline-bizarre characters. At dinner one evening at a restaurant in town, Bettina Bien Greaves, the esteemed Mises scholar and all-around grand lady, happened to mention that she had never ridden a motorcycle. Bill immediately offered to take her for a ride, and Bettina, though nearly 80 years old and rather frail, immediately agreed. Everybody thought this adventure was a splendid idea, because Bill had ridden astride his big machine for jillions of miles along most of the roads of the known world, and therefore nobody could possibly be better qualified to carry such a precious passenger on her first trip.

After the dinner party had returned to the hotel parking lot, Bill cranked up his huge motorcycle, Bettina got onboard behind him, and the monstrous two-wheeler immediately fell over, spilling driver and passenger onto the pavement. We onlookers rushed to see whether one of them, especially Bettina, had been hurt. Fortunately, neither had sustained so much as a scratch from the ugly fall. Bill was slightly shaken and more than a little crestfallen, but he righted the machine and got back on it; Bettina gamely climbed on again; and the two roared off.

Upon her return after a long ride, Bettina reported that she had loved it.

I have never known anybody like Bill. He was unique in admirable ways. His marvelous sense of humor, fed by an amazing reservoir of allusions, made Liberty's table of contents and its headlines a delight in their own right. On a more substantive front, I especially admired Bill's capacity to be fiercely dedicated to the cause yet sensible and balanced at the same time. He loved facts and knew a great many of them. His dedication to digging up facts that others had not known or had not sufficiently appreciated was a chief reason, I think, for the magazine's success. In his own writing, time and again, Bill demonstrated that libertarianism can remain firmly anchored in fundamental principles yet so closely connected to the real world and so well informed that no one can justifiably write if off as goofy. — Robert Higgs

Bridging the gap — I first met Bill Bradford close to 20 years ago at one of John Baden's Liberty Fund conferences held at a Montana dude ranch. Before the conference began, I found Bill sitting at a table with another libertarian he had just met.

Bill was saying that his magazine did a regular poll of libertarians that showed there had been a shift from people who considered themselves libertarian primarily for ideological reasons to those who were libertarian primarily for pragmatic reasons. The former were influenced by writers such as Ayn Rand and considered freedom an end in itself. The latter were influenced by observing government failure in action and considered freedom a means to an end.

I am not sure how much of this I understood at the time. But the other person at the table was an Ayn Rand libertarian, while I, who have never read Rand or even Hayek, was at the other extreme. To me, the other person was very strange (and he probably felt the same about me) and I recall thinking that there was an unbridgeable gap between us.

But there was a bridge, and his name was Bill Bradford. As I became familiar with Liberty magazine over the next few years, I realized that Liberty was the conscience of the libertarian movement. While Reason was the public face of the movement, it was much less likely to be introspective or to report on events within the movement. Only Liberty would review and critique the strategy and tactics of those who sought smaller government. From this point of view, Liberty was and is a great magazine.

Bill could be the bridge between different sorts of libertarians because, like any good reporter, he could make people feel he agreed with everything they said. I remember once submitting an article somewhat sheepishly, because I thought that it perfectly reflected Bill's viewpoint and I wondered if he hadn't already said the same thing in the magazine. He called me and said, "I want to print your article. Of course, I don't agree with anything in it, but you are saying things that need to be said." Bill's skill at making people feel comfortable must have been critical to the success of the magazine.

Though sometimes the cause of freedom and smaller government seemed to be losing ground every minute, Bill was one of the people who gave us hope and who made this world a wonderful place for libertarians. I will miss him a great deal. — Randal O'Toole

Liberty for everyone — It's hard to write about Bill Bradford specifically, because Bill was always more interested in others than he was in himself. He was the consummate newsman, always after a story, always having something more to query or to add to a story someone else was writing. In the three years that I wrote for Liberty, he made me feel as though I was his favorite writer, and that whatever article I was working on was essential to the next issue.

After his death, as I read email stories about Bill that circulated among his friends, I realized that he had a knack for making everyone feel that way. Not because he was duplicitous in any way, but because he was sincerely interested in every story. Every article was essential to the next issue of Liberty. He couldn't do without us.

He was a kind but thorough editor. His queries were always cogent and his edits always made the article better. And his headlines! He was the master. "Splish Splash, I Was Taken to Jail" about my daughter's arrest for throwing water balloons, and "Hail Mary, Full of Smack" about a woman named Maria who smuggled heroin into the U.S. inside her stomach: those are two of my favorites. My brief experience with Stephen Cox tells me that he will be just as thorough and just as kind, but I will miss the long conversations with Bill as he made enthusiastic research suggestions or talked about obscure old movies and radio shows.

In 1991 I gave a talk at the Eris Society meetings in Aspen, Colo. Entitled "Confessions of an English Major," it was about my experience as a politically incorrect but morally erect graduate student at the University of Florida. Afterwards Bill talked to me enthusiastically about my speech, both the content and the delivery, and suggested I should run for president on the Libertarian ticket.

"We need someone like you," he said. "You're a woman, you're married, you go to church, you like raising your kids, and you're intelligent besides. We need you to demonstrate that Libertarians aren't just druggies and anarchists." I took it as a compliment but thought nothing more about it until the week before Labor Day, when Bill started calling me from the Libertarian Convention every few hours to say, "Get out here! We need to nominate you!"

I was in Utah, taking my firstborn to her college orientation, and wouldn't leave her. But I love being able to tell people, "The Libertarian Party wanted me to run for president, but I had to take my daughter to school!"

The fact that Bill was serious about nominating me says a lot about his attitude toward liberty. He knew that liberty isn't just for anarchists, or technocrats, or druggies, or men, although that is the impression the media seem to have of libertarians. Bill knew that libertarian principles are as relevant for religious stay-at-home moms as they are for pot-smoking single males. He also believed that a libertarian political victory was possible. His wasn't just the purist, out-of-the-ashes-of-anarchy libertarianism, but a workable, electable libertarian style of limited government.

That's why politics were so important to him, and why he cringed when libertarians began their talks by saying, "The first thing I would do as president is let all the prostitutes and drug dealers out of prison." The first thing Bill would have done is teach correct principles so that people could govern themselves. Letting victimless criminals out of prison would naturally follow.

There was one thing Bill loved more than Liberty, and that was his wife Kathy. He even watched "Survivor" because he knew she enjoyed the show. Kathy understood the drive of a newsman, and her unwavering support made Liberty possible. I miss their Christmas letters that usually began, "We were too busy to do anything this year," then went on to chronicle a spectacular motorcycle ride from Washington to Colorado or a camping trip in Hawaii.

In recent years, they really were almost too busy to travel. The last time I saw Bill was at the Liberty Editors Conference at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. Kathy was very ill that weekend, and I was touched by Bill's concern for her. He didn't care whether Liberty's booth was manned or not; he left the conference several times to check on her in their hotel room. I'm sure his last thoughts were not about the next issue of Liberty but about his dear wife. No tribute to Bill Bradford would be complete without a tribute to her as well. — Jo Ann Skousen

Liberty lives! — Bill and I were about the same age. Regrettably, once you turn about 55, you start noticing friends disappearing. And the pace picks up as time goes by — assuming you're one of those still in a position to notice. Even now, his absence takes me by surprise.

I don't recall exactly when we met. The earliest contact I remember was when, by telephone, he told me he was thinking of starting Liberty and asked me to be a senior editor. I agreed, but without voicing my reservations about the project, figuring it was likely to be just another libertarian pipedream which, if it survived, would become a black hole for money. Well, I was wrong, because I didn't know Bill well enough to fully appreciate his abilities. The magazine has grown into what I consider one of the best intellectual journals in the country, and absolutely the best of those with a libertarian bent. I only regret that I never delivered the first article he asked me to do, on my adventures riding the rails as a yuppie hobo.

The time I recall best with Bill was spending a couple of days "in the wind" in the environs of Port Townsend, dodging logging trucks on our motorcycles. He may be remembered foremost as a great editor, but I'll remember him as an excellent rider.

Where is he now? Just returned to dust? Maybe. Floating incorporeally in the ether? Maybe. On his way to reincarnating? Maybe. Burning in the eternal fires of a neocon hell for not being an adequately righteous 'merkun? I think not; in my opinion, Bill was an exemplar of public and private virtue. Singing eternally with the angels in the choir invisible? Not his style.

I often talked practical, applied philosophy with Bill — meaning religion and politics, but mostly politics. His views on these things were empirical. He liked to see the evidence for a given view, although he would listen to even delusional takes on reality, simply because he was intellectually curious.

And intellectually honest. Although his values were as solidly libertarian as anyone's I can think of, he was, for instance, perfectly willing to pursue and expose what appeared to be irregularities in the Libertarian Party. Not because he wanted to, but because it was right.

One other thing. Bill was, unlike many libertarian intellectuals, financially successful. It always amused him that a class of people who, arguably, understand money and the economy better than any others (including most university professors and financial pundits), seemed to have less money than anyone else this side of the welfare lines. It was nice to see someone not only talk the talk but walk the walk.

It seems to me we conduct memorials more for the benefit of the living than for the benefit of the departed. And that's fine, in that it offers an opportunity for self assessment. Like almost everyone who knew Bill Bradford, I'm really sorry he's no longer here. He was a good guy. The fact is that most people live and die without leaving a trace. When some people are gone, the most appropriate, even charitable, thought is "Good riddance." Others, like Bill, leave a real void because they leave us so much good to remember. And along with the remembrance of a truly decent human being, which itself is something of value, he left us Liberty.

As an epitaph, I urge what he seemed to suggest in one of his last emails: Bradford dies. Liberty lives! — Doug Casey

© Copyright 2010, Liberty Foundation

Send editorial comments to letters@libertyunbound.com.
All letters to the editor are assumed to be for publication unless otherwise indicated.

Send web site comments to webmaster@libertyunbound.com.