The Adjective and the Noun

Piece 1 of a three-part feature on libertarianism and the 2026 Libertarian National Convention. The episode separates the libertarian idea — the lowercase-l, a tradition reaching back roughly twenty-five centuries — from the Libertarian Party — the capital-L, a coalition organized in a Westminster, Colorado, living room on December 11, 1971. It walks through the foundational commitments of the libertarian tradition, sketches its intellectual lineage from Cicero through the present, surveys five live conversations within the tradition, narrates the founding of the party in the wake of the Nixon Shock and its institutional history across five decades, and lands on the standard against which the next two pieces — and Grand Rapids itself — will be measured.