Butler was a libertarian at a time when there were very few libertarians in the world. Like many supporters of the free market, he was first attracted to the Republican Party. He supported Barry Goldwater for President in 1964, but he soon came to realize that limited government was a chimera and that the State was by nature opposed to liberty.

As he put the issue in a letter to me in November 2014: "It was just a few months more than 50 years ago that I sat in the Cow Palace in San Francisco as part of my state's delegation to the Republican National Convention (i.e., the Goldwater Convention). . . Afterwards, I was enjoying a drink at the top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel with one of Goldwater's advisors. I asked: "Now that Goldwater has the nomination, let us suppose that he gets elected president.