Does the Cato Institute Need Saving?

The Cato Institute has a reputation among the left of being not much more more than a conservative think tank (sometimes recognized as libertarian) that serves the whims of the Koch brothers, which is why the recent plea by executive vice president David Boaz to "Save the Cato Institute" from their very benefactors should be so interesting to progressives... but has been largely ignored or, worse, dismissed as something that the left shouldn't care about at all (see many of the comments at a Daily Kos post here). I think this attitude is completely wrongheaded, and here's why.

Largely as a side effect of my mostly unread ramblings here, I have begun to embrace my Marxist and socialist leanings and now read more progressive websites and blogs. And what I have noticed is that while progressives are better than conservatives at sticking to the facts, they are far from perfect. They cherry pick. They distort. They commit all the cardinal sins of conservatives of twisting the facts to fit their views. The main difference is that they aren't as bad as the conservatives.

This is why we need the libertarian Cato Institute. Yes, it cherry picks and distorts the facts when it wants to, but it also calls out both progressives and run-of-the-mill conservatives when they do the same. The left needs fact checkers like those at Cato to keep them honest! Conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute aren't good enough when both they and the progressives agree on something or whose views are not that far apart.

Take the war on drugs, for example. The GOP is generally speaking all for it. The Democratic Party has a wide range of voices on the subject, but when push comes to shove they follow the GOP line (just look at the way Obama has changed his tune so dramatically once in office). And few Democrats are as radically in favor of drug legalization as the Cato Institute, which holds that position for a variety of reasons, the most important of which, from a progressive point of view, is the harm drug prohibition does to the poor and minorities.

To wit: the left needs a voice like Cato that is unusually independent and provides unusually honest policy analysis.