We need Ed Crane. As he is no more, we need people with the courage, the intellect, the principles, the skills, and the determination he showed when founding the Cato Institute and leading it for so many years.
I met Ed in 1973, and I started working with him closely in 1974 or 1975. I moved to San Francisco and rented a tiny apartment on Larkin Street in the Tenderloin for $100 a month. He was a successful capital manager with Alliance Capital Management and an early pioneer in new financial instruments. He left all of that behind to advance the cause of liberty, first in electoral politics and then by founding and inspiring a multitude of institutions, the most important and lasting of which is the Cato Institute. It was the privilege of my life to be able to work with Ed, on and off as a colleague and always as a comrade, for so many years.
Ed took liberty and peace seriously. He was not satisfied with those who saw the political theory of libertarianism (now better known as liberalism) as an intellectual game or a chance for oddballs to show off how disconnected from contemporary politics they were. It was no game to Ed, but the noble cause of freeing as many humans as possible from coercion, from violence, from lawlessness, and from the humiliation of submission to power. He was always ahead of his time; for example, many decades before it even became a topic of discussion, Ed promoted the right of gay people to marry and raise families.
I had the chance to see Ed and his wife, Kristina, one last time during a brief visit to Virginia at the end of January this year. I didn’t want to say it, but we knew it was a goodbye meeting. I told him how much he has meant to me over more than five decades. My heart goes out to Kristina, their children—Geoffrey, Kathleen, and Mary—and their grandchildren, who I hope will someday understand what a great figure their grandfather was. Ed and Kristina married during a Cato Institute conference at Fudan University in Shanghai at People’s Marriage Office Number 9; Ed joked that if you think you need a government ceremony to solemnize your relationship, “then let’s get a serious government to do it.” He did much to advance the ideas of freedom in China and championed the work of, among others, Mao Yushi, who in 2012 was recognized by the Cato Institute with the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.
After learning today of his passing, I reviewed some of our correspondence, and I concluded that I could do no better than a letter I sent to him in January of 2025:
Dear Ed
I’m writing because there are a few things I think you need to hear, or at least, to read.
Your achievements have made the world much better. The world is more prosperous, more peaceful, more tolerant, and more free because of your efforts, your insights, and your dedication.
That’s not to say it’s as prosperous, peaceful, tolerant, and free as you’d like, but, unlike most people, you made real strides toward your goals. You have every reason to be proud of your achievements.
From all those decades ago when we met in, I think, David Bergland’s house in Huntington Beach, it was clear that you were the entrepreneur our movement needed. You took it from small circles of dinner club attendees and readers of mimeographed newsletters to national prominence; from gold dollar signs and black capes, on the one hand, and headbands, love beads, and clouds of marijuana smoke, on the other, to professional, focused, and respected champions of liberty; from a flakey fringe to the mainstream. You transformed the movement from a little pond with a few small fish who reveled in being the biggest in the pond, to a vast lake, even an ocean, considering your support for expanding libertarianism globally, to realize the ideals of the 19th century classical liberals for a world of liberty, peaceful coexistence, and mutually beneficial trade and travel.
You made libertarianism respectable and, for a while at least, definitely cool. (It will be cool again, but perhaps under the name of liberalism again, as the wackos who took over the LP have damaged the brand name.) From a movement of people who competed to have the most shocking and even disturbing policy views, you crafted a movement that put libertarian improvements on the table in forms that wide swathes of people could appreciate and embrace. Your creation of the Cato Institute was a watershed in the history of liberty and, I suspect, in the history of our civilization.
You took libertarianism to China and to Russia and to Latin America. It’s been set back enormously in China and Russia since, but what you did was a real achievement, and it left a lasting sense among many of what Putin and Xi have destroyed, not to mention bastions of libertarian resistance in Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, Taiwan, the Baltic nations, and elsewhere.
No one else could have done all of that. You did it, though. And to do it, you gave to our movement and to our world what you could have done, which was to become a billionaire in finance.
You also taught me a great deal. I would not have been able to do what I do for liberty without your support and encouragement, not to mention your teasing. You taught me things that I repeat, sometimes word for word, to younger people in the movement. They range from how to get competitive bids on printing, conference rooms, or whatever, to the realization that if you find yourself questioning the motives of your opponents, you have lost the debate. Your generosity of spirit made the movement bigger and more effective. Instead of seeing new groups as rivals who might compete for your share of a fixed pie, you supported those new groups, because your goal was to make the pie bigger—much bigger. And you did that. Groups such as the Institute for Justice and Atlas Network and Students for Liberty and many others benefited enormously from your support. I try to spread that mentality everywhere that there are growing networks of cooperating groups and, as you pointed out, growing the movement means growing the bases of support for liberty.
You found talented people and you gave them the platforms to excel. Instead of micromanaging every detail, you gave them the opportunities to use their own knowledge, insights, and talents to advance our common agenda of equal liberty for all.
You had the vision and you made it happen. That will always be true.
I am grateful to you for what you did for the liberty of everyone, as well as what you have done for me.
Thank you.
With respect and gratitude,
Tom
