In 1984, David Padden founded the Heartland Institute — an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank — and put Bast in charge of the nascent organization. Bast has been president and CEO ever since. "Personally, I'm a fallen-away libertarian. I place a high value on individual freedom and I tend to look at most issues from that perspective. But I'm not sure it is the only way anymore," Bast told the Chicago Tribune in 1995.
