George H. Smith, RIP

David BoazGeorge H. Smith, the brilliant libertarian philosopher and historian, died April 8  in Bloomington, Illinois, where he had lived for many years. He was 73.George was probably best known for his bookAtheism: The Case against God, published in 1974 and still in print, but he spent more time over the past 50  years on his libertarian scholarship. In the 1980s and 1990s he was a frequent lecturer at seminars of the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies and at other libertarian conferences.George ’s early writings and lectures were on philosophical topics, but around 1982, when we needed a lecturer on American history for the Summer Seminar in Political Economy, we asked George if he could do the lectures. And then he delivered three brilliant lectures on liberty in American history. Afte r hearing his lectures on a topic we had not known him to be an expert on, Ed Crane said, “Why don’t we just have George do all the lectures?”One attendee at the seminar in those years, Nashville entrepreneur Crom Carmichael, told us, “These lectures are great, but you’re only reaching 75 people. You need to scale up.” Not long afterward he created Knowledge Products and hired George to conceive, write, and edit what ended up being dozens of professionally producedaudio lectures on philosophy, history, economics, and current affairs. Some of the tapes were read by professional readers, but the narrators also included Charlton Heston, George C. Scott, Lou...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs