The respected author and historian of the freedom movement died last week, his employer confirmed.
The body of Brian Doherty, 57, editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, was found on Thursday “after a fall” in the area. Part of Yates Battery Park of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the letter was written.
The National Parks Service confirmed that they responded to an incident that occurred at Battery Yates on Thursday “involving a male visitor who reportedly fell off a cliff into the water.”
“A person has been found and pronounced dead,” Scott Carr, a park service spokesman, said in an email. “We have no additional information to share at this time.”
The Golden Gate Bridge is seen from the Fort Baker Marina in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. Doherty was found in the Battery Yates park section of the recreation area.
(Los Angeles Times)
Doherty was the author of several books, with Reason saying his most notable work was the 2007 study “Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.”
“Doherty rescues freedom from obscurity,” Wall Street Journal wrote about work“masterfully capturing the appeal of ‘pure vision.’”
Libertarianism’s role in gun control and the courts was the subject of his works, and Doherty had no shortage of admirers.
Loren Dean, chairman of the California Libertarian Party, said it was Doherty’s work at Reason that brought him to the libertarian movement.
“Brian Doherty was the best kind of libertarian: someone who held fast to the principles of libertarianism as they are,” Dean said in an email. “He was a tireless advocate for gun rights and police reform, writing books on both [former U.S. Rep.] Ron Paul and Burning Man; his work did not sit on the ‘left’ or ‘right’ side of the authoritarian box, but happily outside that tired framework, where the principles of freedom really sing.”
Doherty began working at Reason in 1994, according to the obituaryleft the company and returned in 2000 at the behest of Nick Gillespie, then the chief editor.
“What I loved most about Brian was his abiding interest in what was going on at the fringes of American civilization, politics and thought, and his deep appreciation for the beauty that markets bring honestly and without morality,” Gillespie wrote in his farewell to Doherty, who had many opinions published in The Times.
Away from the headlines, Doherty spoke of “liberal and whimsical” subcultures, according to the obituary report, including New Hampshire’s Free State Project and Seasteadersa growing community of people dedicated to living at sea.
The Seasteading Institute tweeted its condolences and noted the group “Thank you for his integration of sea travel over the years.”
Doherty was a native of Queens, NY, who majored in journalism at the University of Florida and joined the liberal arts college group in 1987, according to a Reason report.
He moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s and joined a group known as the Cacophony Society, a gang that “inspired or created events ranging from the novel/film Fight Club to urban exploration, billboard conversions, Yes Men, flash mobs, and ‘Santa Rampages,'” according to the report.
One of those projects translated into the establishment of the annual Burning Man festival, the report said. Doherty later described the famous artsy, hippie-like festival in his book “This Is Burning Man.”
“Libertarians talk a lot about freedom and responsibility. Brian combined the two,” said Editor-in-Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward in her obituary. “His strange, colorful life – full of jokes and festivals and music and books – was the epitome of a life lived freely and freely.”
