In the Tradition of Liberty.
In the Tradition of Liberty.
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FUSION’s archive of commentary.
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The mansion of libertarianism contains many rooms—or so I am told. I’ve read the major works of the principal libertarian thinkers, as I think all students of contemporary politics should, but I never had any connection with the libertarian movement as such. The current divisions within the movement strike me as analogous to those between the Lovestoneites and the Schactmanites within the Communist Party USA in the 1930s, or between RYM II and the Worker-Student Alliance in what was left of Students for a Democratic Society in the late 1960s:…
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In “Libertarians Need to Get Real About Politics,” Daniel Klein and Zachary Yost argue that libertarians and classical liberals should generally prefer Republicans to Democrats in electoral contests. The authors acknowledge that Republicans—including, presumably, Donald Trump, although he is named only once—may not live up to libertarian ideals or preferences. Republicans might even constitute a kind of evil. But since the American government is going to exist, and the presidency will be controlled by either a Republican or a Democrat, Klein and Yost insist that it is incumbent upon libertarians…
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All libertarians will agree that government exists in the United States. Thus, they will agree that governmental evil is afoot. They will also agree that that evil may be greater or lesser. Since it is fanciful to hope to eradicate governmental evil entirely, the conscience calls libertarians to mitigate governmental evil. To do one’s part, one must formulate and assess rival evils. America has a two-party system, Democrat and Republican. That contest is not the only one; there are contests between rival evils that cut across the two parties and…
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How do you react when you learn of a new state law, Supreme Court decision, executive order, or federal regulation on an issue that matters to you? In recent months, setbacks for drug decriminalization initiatives in Oregon and British Columbia have sparked fierce criticisms of the attempt to use criminal penalties to solve public drug use and drug addiction. Those criticisms mirror similarly sharp attacks made on drug decriminalization programs when they first launched in recent years. Citizens on both sides of this policy battle feel strongly. Rapid shifts in policy carry them on…
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Memorial Day is the one federal holiday that connects the nation to war and requires sustained reflection on the most serious actions the government asks of the citizens. Since Vietnam, this has been made difficult by the loss of national unity. The major facts are known. The WWII-era draft was replaced by the all-volunteer army, the elites did not serve as they had in WWII, and the college class protested the war. Indeed, half the young men received deferments, so division was what is now called structural. At the same…
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When Rick Graber called to tell me that I had been awarded the Bradley Prize, I was lost for words. As my mother will tell you, usually in exasperated tones, that doesn’t often happen to me. But one reason for my shock was my knowledge of previous Bradley Prize recipients. Consider some of those people: John Taylor, Amity Shlaes, Robert George, Gary Becker, Edwin Meese, Thomas Sowell, Rabbi Lord Sacks, Allan Meltzer, and I could go on. They include Nobel economists, distinguished historians and legal scholars, four-star generals, cabinet members and…
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In its brief history, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been the subject of three of the most important separation of powers cases in the last half century. In the first two cases, NLRB v. Noel Canning (2014), which addressed the recess appointment power of the President, and Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), which dealt with the authority of the President to remove a sitting head of a single-member independent agency, the Supreme Court sided with the challengers. In the third case, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial…
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sprawling epic with beautiful camerawork and excellent acting. Shogun is more than a great work about 17th-century Japan, however. It draws attention to truths that are just as relevant today as they were halfway across the world more than 400 years ago. For a society to be maximally conducive to human flourishing, it must balance individualism and collectivism. Getting this balance right has results in a respect for human rights, a strong civil society, and a healthy state. A proper balance also prevents amoral Machiavellians from hijacking political power. Enter the…
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The nomenklatura of the later Soviet Union described their crumbling system as “real socialism.” They meant to stave off critics who highlighted the gap between Communism’s promises and Communism’s realities. The rhetorical defense had the opposite of its intended effect. Socialism had been tried, and was obviously failing. Today’s advocates of a tighter institutional relationship between religion and the state—whether or not they embrace labels like integralism or Christian Nationalism—should recognize that their ideas are also being tried. The Islamic Republic of Iran is doing for Islam what they wish…
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It has been a century since Vladimir Lenin, the father of the Soviet State, died in 1924 at the age of fifty-three, a victim of poor health and multiple strokes. He was once considered by Communists everywhere as a theoretician of the rank of Karl Marx, a philosopher and ideologist of the first order. But as the French political thinker Raymond Aron aptly noted, Lenin’s writings are of little philosophical interest, since hate and ideological fiat motivate them from beginning to end. A narodnik or populist supporter of revolutionary…