Brian Doherty is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 journalist. He is a Senior Editor at Reason

Reason (magazine)

Reason is a libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 60,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.- History :...

magazine. He is the author of This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground (Little, Brown, 2004), Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs

PublicAffairs

PublicAffairs is an imprint of the Perseus Books Group, an American book publishing company located in New York City. From PublicAffairs' web site:...

, 2007) and Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment (Cato Institute

Cato Institute

The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the largest privately held...

, 2008).

Before working for the Cato Institute in the early '90s, Doherty served as an intern at Liberty Magazine

Liberty (1987)

Liberty is a leading libertarian journal founded in 1987 by R. W. Bradford in Port Townsend, Washington, and currently edited from San Diego, California, by Stephen Cox...

and wrote on music and popular culture at The Independent Florida Alligator

The Independent Florida Alligator

The Independent Florida Alligator is the daily student newspaper of the University of Florida. The Alligator is the largest student-run newspaper in the United States, with a daily circulation of 35,000 and readership of over 52,000...

. As a student at the University of Florida

University of Florida

The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...

, Doherty played bass

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

 in several punk rock

Punk rock

Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 bands, including The Jeffersons and Turbo Satan. He founded Cherry Smash Records in 1993.

Doherty has said that he is a "principled nonvoter

Non-voting

Non-voting is a strategy employed by various radical libertarians and anarchists who wish to promote a free society yet who view voting to be either unethical or impractical...

" who has "been saved the embarrassment of ever having to feel any sense of responsibility, of even the smallest size, for the actions of any politician." He supports capitalist anarchism.

Doherty has written that so-called "Islamists" are "not a mortal threat to Western civilization ... and do not warrant the suppression of civil liberties

Civil liberties

Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...

 or the huge cost, in lives and money, of the

War on Terror

The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...

 wars waged by Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 and Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

."

External links

• Booktv.org interview with Brian Doherty
• Review of Radicals for Capitalism
• Video of interview/discussion with Doherty by Will Wilkinson
  Will Wilkinson
  Will Wilkinson is a Canadian American libertarian writer. Until August 2010, he was a research fellow at the Cato Institute where he worked on a variety of issues including Social Security reform and, most notably, the policy implications of happiness research. He is currently working on a paper...
  
   on Bloggingheads.tv
  Bloggingheads.tv
  Bloggingheads.tv is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers...
  
  
• Charts and reviews of Doherty books, Amazon.com
  Amazon.com
  Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...