This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, December 18th, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The importance of the rule of law is hard to overstate.

It defines those societies not governed by the whims of central authorities.

Tom Palmer, Cato Institute Senior Fellow, and General Director of the Atlas Global Initiative for Free Trade, Peace, and Prosperity

believes that promoting liberty and the rule of law means discovering those traditions in cultures around the world.

He talks about these themes in his new book,

Realizing Freedom, Libertarian Theory, History and Practice.

We spoke December 1st following a forum for the book.

You talked a little bit today about defending Western values

and promoting Western values, and you said, I don't defend or promote Western values. Because it captures too much, if you will.

People who say that normally have in mind the ideas of the Enlightenment, of toleration of freedom, and so on.

But Western history includes a lot of things

that aren't captured in that.

You think about the history of slavery,

great empires through military conquest,

socialism, that's a very Western idea, you don't find it coming

out of other societies, a lot of terrible things that most people who use that term would reject.

And indeed, my Chinese friends make a point of saying,

people say, oh, you Chinese people, you have socialism.

They say, yeah, thanks to one of your Western values

brought to us by Carl Marx, a German communist, and

...