Virginia Postrel accomplished something that few other writers have: She helped redefine the debate between liberitarians and supporters of big government.

In her 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress (The Free Press), Postrel argued that most political debates are not between liberals and conservatives, but between "dynamists" and "stasists."

Dynamists are people who embrace progress and want to allow it to unfold in a spontaneous and unpredictable fashion. Dynamists don't claim to know what is best for everyone else, so they want to give individuals the freedom to construct their own futures through creativity and experimentation.

Stasists, on the other hand, want to use the power of government to manage change. Some stasists are conservatives who want to stop progress to restore a "literal or imagined past." Some are liberals who want to force people to live in their version of utopia.

The stasist label is broad enough to include Al Gore and Ross Perot; the anti-technology Unabomber and the pro-censorship Brent Bozell; and Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader.

As Postrel noted in The Future and Its Enemies, dynamists and stasists have profoundly different views of the world:

"Stasists and dynamists are ... divided not just by simple, short-term policy issues but by fundamental disagreements about the way the world works," she wrote. "They clash over the nature of progress and over its desirability: Does it require a plan to reach a specified goal? Or is it an unbounded process of exploration and discovery?"

Postrel makes it clear where she stands. She advocates a "a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition" where the future is built bottom-up by individuals, not mandated top-down by politicians.

The book was one of the reasons why Camille Paglia dubbed Postrel "one of the smartest women in America."

Postrel -- who calls herself "a small-l libertarian who occasionally votes Libertarian" -- has a long track record in the liberty movement.

From 1989 to 2000, she was the editor of Reason magazine. She has been a columnist for Forbes and The New York Times, and has written for The Washington Post, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal. In 1995, she won the Free Press Association's Mencken Award for a Reason editorial.

In 2003, Postrel published The Substance of Style, which examines the role and importance of aesthetics in culture.

                                                                                                             -- Bill Winter

Quotable

"Dynamists prefer to let changes proceed by trial and error, with little central guidance. It's a philosophy that sounds a lot like libertarianism." -- John Tierney, The New York Times, January 4, 1999

Books & Tapes

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