An acclaimed author and historian of the libertarian movement fell to his death last week, his employer confirmed.
The body of Brian Doherty, 57, senior editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, was found Thursday โafter a fallโ in the Battery Yates park portion of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the publication wrote.
The National Parks Serviceโs law enforcement agency confirmed it responded to an incident at Battery Yates on Thursday โinvolving a male visitor who reportedly fell from the cliffside into the water.โ
โThe individual was recovered and pronounced dead,โ said Scott Carr, parks service spokesperson, in an email. โWe do not have any further information to share at this time.โ
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 portion 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 โRadicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.โ
โDoherty has rescued libertarianism from its own obscurity,โ the Wall Street Journal wrote of the work, โeloquently capturing the appeal of the โpure idea.โโ
Libertarianismโs role in gun control and the courts was the subject of his works, and Doherty had no shortage of admirers.
Loren Dean, chair of the Libertarian Party of California, said it was Dohertyโs work at Reason that brought him into the liberty movement.
โBrian Doherty was the best kind of libertarian: one who holds true to the principles of liberty as they are,โ Dean said in an email. โHe was a tireless champion of both gun rights and police reform who wrote books on both [former U.S. Rep.] Ron Paul and Burning Man; his work did not sit on either the โleftโ or โrightโ side of the authoritarian box, but delightfully outside that tired frame, where libertarian principles truly sing.โ
Doherty began working at Reason in 1994, according to the publicationโs obituary, left the company and returned in 2000 at the behest of Nick Gillespie, then editor in chief.
โWhat I liked most about Brian was his abiding interest in things happening on the margins of American culture, politics, and thought, and his deep appreciation for the prodigious bounty that markets deliver reliably and without moralizing,โ Gillespie wrote in his farewell to Doherty, who had many opinion pieces published in The Times.
Far from just heady subjects, Doherty covered โboth libertarian and whimsicalโ subcultures, according to the obituary, including New Hampshireโs Free State Project and the Seasteaders, a growing community of individuals dedicated to living on the seas.
The Seasteading Institute tweeted its condolences and noted the group had โappreciated his coverage of seasteading over the years.โ
Doherty was a native of Queens, N.Y., majored in journalism at the University of Florida and joined the collegeโs libertarian group in 1987, according to Reasonโs obituary.
He moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s and joined a group known as the Cacophony Society, a gang that โinspired or created phenomenon ranging from the novel/movie Fight Club to urban exploration, billboard alteration, the Yes Men, flash mobs, and โSanta Rampages,โโ according to the obituary.
One of those projects translated into the formation of the annual Burning Man festival, the obituary stated. Doherty later chronicled the famed artsy, hippie-like festival in his book โThis Is Burning Man.โ
โLibertarians talk a lot about freedom and responsibility. Brian embodied both,โ Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward said in his obituary. โHis weird, colorful life โ filled with comics and festivals and music and books โ was a model of life lived freely and openly.โ