In the Tradition of Liberty.
In the Tradition of Liberty.
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FUSION’s archive of commentary.
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George Hawley’s insightful article, “The Myth of Republican Radicalism“, will probably surprise many readers, but not me. His research confirms what most research has shown over the past few years: the Republican voters’ attitudes on a host of contentious topics remains roughly what it was before Donald Trump’s 2015 ride down the escalator. The real question should be why so many people think otherwise. This confusion is not just a Democratic phenomenon. Republican elites and many officeholders remain starkly out of touch with their own voters. They were shocked in…
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George Hawley has done a great service, puncturing the myth of a Republican base that has suddenly, in the Trump era, adopted reactionary views on matters of race and sex. The Internet is not reality, and neither is elite punditry: There may be some crazy newfangled far-right subcultures on the web and lots of media interest in them, but they do not seem to have moved the needle when it comes to Republican attitudes overall. I especially like that Hawley makes his point with straightforward descriptive data. Tasked with responding…
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According to progressive pundits, scholars and politicians—and even some former supporters of the GOP—the Republican Party is now a party of the far right. This is not a new claim. Many have made this case since Barry Goldwater won the 1964 presidential nomination, against the preferences of the “Eastern Establishment”. The charge was leveled against Ronald Reagan. A generation ago, George W. Bush was accused of much the same thing. After Donald Trump became the 2016 presidential nominee, however, the assertion that Republicans tipped over the line into extremism was…
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In “Getting Real About Free Trade,” Sam Gregg offers a modest case for free trade. Gregg and I sing from the same sheet of music, and we agree that classical liberalism provides a grounded and realistic framework for navigating the complex realities of political economy. Gregg rightly points out that even the modest case for free trade is compelling because it is grounded in our understanding of the finite and fallen human person. The brilliant and enduring legacy of Adam Smith lies in this revelation. Human beings are the only…
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Back when Saturday Night Live was regularly funny, it ran a parody of an ad for a product called Shimmer. Husband and wife (Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner) argued over whether new Shimmer was a floor wax or a dessert topping. Zany spokesman Chevy Chase glides into the scene, interjecting, “Hey, hey, hey, calm down, you two. New Shimmer is both a floor wax and a dessert topping!” He sprays some onto Radner’s mop and some onto Aykroyd’s butterscotch pudding, at which point Aykroyd blurts out “Mmm, it tastes terrific!”…
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In June 1946, Switzerland’s newspaper of record Neue Zürcher Zeitung published a long two-part article entitled “The Centenary of British Free Trade.” Its author, the German market-liberal economist Wilhelm Röpke, pointed out that Britain’s decision to cast off tariffs unilaterally in 1846 had been a kind of miracle. Against enormous domestic opposition, Britain’s prime minister Sir Robert Peel, backed by a coalition of Tory, Liberal and Radical MPs, opted for a new economic world by successfully persuading Parliament to repeal the protectionist Corn Laws. “To the jubilant contemporaries and to…
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In September, Claremont Graduate University “ended its graduate program in political philosophy after nearly six decades,” the campus paper Claremont Independent reported. The proximate cause of the program’s demise remains murky. The school claims that there were not enough faculty to support graduate students. The faculty suspect the school simply wanted to cut loose what it considers, in the words of Claremont political philosophy professor Charles Kesler, an “old fashioned, unscientific” program. Simmering beneath this relatively amicable disagreement is a long-running philosophical tension. Kesler, like most of the political philosophy…
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A few years back at a conference in New Orleans, after a few sazeracs, a colleague and I got talking about liberalism and its critics. He waxed poetic in his defense of the ongoing importance of classical liberal principles, of their enduring truth, in the tradition of Locke, Mill, Jefferson, and, of course, Adam Smith. I told him that the principles were all well and good, but that he had a deeper problem – the kind of subject whom liberalism imagined had been made obsolete. We’re losing liberalism because we’ve…
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In a high school cafeteria segregated by bros, geeks, and emos, where would Adam Smith sit to eat his fish sticks? Apply this question to the academy: Where would he sit in a cafeteria segregated by economists, historians, and philosophers? Perhaps he would eat at his own table. Smith is too philosophical for economists, too economic for historians, and too historical for philosophers. Yet this apparent lack of fit is, as Erik Matson persuasively explains in his essay “Why We Read Adam Smith“, one principal reason why Smith is worthy…
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In 1876, free traders gathered to celebrate the 100th publication anniversary of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. In New York, public figures, journalists, academics, and Smith enthusiasts gave toasts to “commercial freedom, or the unfettered intercourse of nations” while honoring Smith’s magnum opus which many considered “among the masterpieces of genius.” In London, another political economy fete featured speakers exalting the “immortal” Adam Smith while lamenting the perception that his doctrine of free trade was still underappreciated. Fifty years later, in 1926, a series of lectures at the University…