George Hamilton Smith (February 10, 1949 – April 8, 2022) was an American author, editor, educator, and speaker known for his writings on atheism and libertarianism in the United States.
Early life and activism
Born in Japan in 1949 to Frank and Juanita Smith, the young Smith grew up mostly in Tucson, Arizona, which continued to be reprinted many years after. In an op-ed for The New York Times in 1992, he defended the right of the Boy Scouts of America to refuse membership to atheists.
In November 1999, Smith wrote "In Defense of Rational Anarchism", He wrote: "Those familiar with its [i.e., 'consent' theory's]<!-- In cite --> long history will understand that it has everywhere and always been used to defend and expand the absolute power of govern-ment."
His published works often dealt with such issues as capital punishment (which he opposed), anarcho-capitalism and philosophical anarchism, religious toleration, and atheism. Among many figures, he wrote about Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Ayn Rand, to a collection of work by Lysander Spooner.<!-- , whom he he discovered in the late 1960s, around 1967, writing in The Lysander Spooner (1992) that he discovered him "nearly twenty-years ago" when he found No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority. --><!-- --> In 2013, Cambridge University Press published his book The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism,
Philosophy
Smith emphasized the importance of what he termed the "habit of reasonableness." In a 1976 lecture delivered to the Society of Separationists, he articulated the intellectual honesty he valued, stating: "one has nothing to fear and everything to gain, from the honest pursuit of truth."
Death
Smith died on April 8, 2022, in Bloomington, Illinois. He was 73.