About Cato Unbound

Editor: Jason Kuznicki

Senior Editor: John Samples

Past Editors: Will Wilkinson, Brink Lindsey

Cato Unbound is a virtual trading floor in the intellectual marketplace, specializing in the exchange of big ideas. To be sure, there is no shortage these days of online forums for hashing out the issues of the day. All too often, however, the advantages of instant analysis and communication are compromised by obsession with the trivial and ephemeral. Here at Cato Unbound we try to step back, take a deep breath, and focus on the larger picture.

Each month, Cato Unbound will present an essay on a big-picture topic by an important thinker. The ideas in that essay will then be tested by the comments and criticism of equally eminent thinkers, each of whom will respond to the month’s lead essay and then to one another. The idea is to create a hub for wide-ranging, open-ended conversation, where ideas will be advanced, challenged and refined in public view.

But the discussion only begins at Cato Unbound. It ends, if it ends at all, with you. Cato Unbound readers are encouraged to take up our themes and enter into the conversation on their own websites, blogs, social media, and even in good old-fashioned bound publications. Cato Unbound will scour the web for the best commentary on our monthly topic, and, with permission, may publish it alongside our invited contributors. We also welcome your letters. (Send them to JKuznicki@cato.org.)

“Protection … against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough,” wrote John Stuart Mill; “there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling.” Here at Cato Unbound, we aim to do our part.

Welcome. All you have to lose are your preconceptions!