Daily Archives: June 15, 2021

(James Lawler Duggan/Reuters)

Some conservatives believe that restraining government coercion doesnt mean much if liberalism continues to advance in the culture.

Theongoing argument on the American right between classical liberals on the one hand and nationalists on the other is, at its most intellectually respectable, an argument about the nature of power.

Classical liberals of the Goldwater/Reagan school have always believed that a crucial qualitative difference exists between state power and commercial power. When divested of all euphemisms, they argue, government is nothing other than violence, and the nation-state is nothing other than a geographic monopoly on violence held by one group of people (civil magistrates) over all others in a given jurisdiction. These conservatarians are keen to remind us that every law passed by a government is executed and enforced by men with guns, and that every tax they levy is collected in the same way, with compliance ensured by the threat of force. Persistent refusal on the part of the individual to adhere to any of the governments edicts results in the expropriation of his property, his imprisonment in a cage, or, in extreme cases, his death. To their statist opponents, conservatarians point out that, with respect to its basic modus operandi, government has a lot in common with organized-crime syndicates, a similarity that scholars such as Diego Gambetta have explored in the context of the Sicilian Mafia. Milton Friedman spoke for the libertarian school of thought when he wrote that political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority.

Commercial power, these libertarians argue, is fundamentally different. Capital is persuasive rather than coercive, and businesses cannot impose their will violently on either consumers or employees without co-opting the state power described above. Whats more, the success or failure of any given company lies in the hands of the consumer, who is free to take his business elsewhere and neednt fear any threat of violence from a service provider. The individual, rather than the collective, is ascendant in the market. For conservatives of the old Reaganite school, the awful and violent power of the state is therefore to be called upon only to make this society of persuasion and reciprocal bounty economically possible by protecting property rights. George Washington articulated the animating impulse of this modest vision of government in 1797 when he noted that, like fire, government is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. State power is coercive, intractable, and insulated from economic realities, and not, therefore, to be trusted. Market power is benign, nonviolent, and self-correcting, and to be fostered enthusiastically. This was the old fusionist view of power: The violent power of the state had to be tamed and curtailed to make room for the persuasive power of the market and of civil society, or, as Friedman wrote more plainly, government should be a referee, not an active player. (Fusionism, for those unfamiliar with the term, was the intellectual and political coalition that formed on the American right during the 20th century, uniting conservatives,libertarians, and other groups on the right in hostility to communism, in the words of Alvin Felzenberg.)

The faction of the old fusionist coalition that cared most about the power of civil society (which is to say, churches, social clubs, and other nonprofit voluntaristic associations) was the social-conservative constituency. Alongside libertarians and anti-communists, social conservatives were the third leg of the famous three-legged electoral stool that formed the basis of the conservative counterrevolution of the 1980s. But after five neoconservative or fusionist Republican presidential terms had passed between 1980 and 2016, social conservatives began to feel as if their leg of the stool had been sanded down to a stub, with Republican politics being propped up by business interests motivated more by libertarian economics than by culture warring. As they saw it, the Reagan revolution had failed to arrest the exponential liberalizing of American culture that had been set loose in the land during the 1960s. Contemplating a legal-abortion regime that had remained unchanged since the Roe v. Wade ruling, the legalization of gay marriage and its rapid assimilation into bourgeois culture, the spread of transgender ideology, and the shameless exhibitions of vice that saturate entertainment media, many social conservatives began during the middle of the last decade to consider the possibility that the Reagan-era bargain theyd made with the libertarians had left them empty-handed.

This group of newly disillusioned social conservatives began to turn on libertarian politics and economics at astonishing speed. Not only was market power criticized for its ineffectiveness at checking the spread of social liberalism, it was condemned as co-conspiring and collaborating with the onward march of the cultural Left. More and more conservative thinkers began thinking of, and writing about, social and economic liberalism as two sides of the same coin, both aiming to emancipate the individual from the traditional ties that once bound one person to another.

Prominent among this group is J. D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, who appears to be contemplating a bid for one of Ohios Senate seats. In a keynote speech delivered late last month at the Claremont Institutes What to do about Woke Capital? conference, Vance criticized the American Rights historically supply-side, hands-off approach to capital allocation, which has preferred, wherever possible, to leave cash in the hands of private investors:

Now if a middle-class American wants to sell his house that he lived in for 30 years and makes a profit on the sale, he has to pay taxes on the gain, over a certain exempt amount. But if the Ford Foundation sells $200 million of property in an investment transaction, they pay zero tax, because our public policy has enriched and prioritized the foundations and the nonprofits that are destroying our country. This matters because if you work in private equity, if youre a hedge-fund manager, or if youre just a business that needs money to operate, you have to go to these people to get the capital to do what you need to do.

Vance clearly thinks that the traditional reluctance of successive Republican administrations to discourage or prohibit private transactions of which they claim to disapprove has been a great disadvantage for social conservatives. He notes that the interests of the Club for Growth and of the pro-life movement, for instance, are often in tension in ways that fusionist conservatives dont like to discuss:

A couple of years ago Stacey Abrams said, about a Georgia abortion restriction, that this was a bad bill because it was bad for business. That was the argument of our new corporate, neoliberal class. And she was right. This is something that those of us on the right have to accept. When the big corporations come against you for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they dont want people to parent children, Stacey Abrams is right to say that abortion restrictions are bad for business.

During the Reagan era, social conservatives bet on the notion that they could team up with libertarian market advocates in order to prevent agents of the state from destroying the American way of life. But gradually, many social conservatives, like Vance, came to the conclusion that the opposite had occurred. Social liberals in charge of the state and economic liberals in charge of the economy had conspired unwittingly to raze the institutions and scrap the mores about which these social conservatives cared the most, in the name of maximizing individual autonomy in all areas of life. Its unsurprising, then, that for social-conservative voters, many of whom believe their causes to have been battered and bruised by their dalliance with libertarian economics, the moral distinction between violent state power and persuasive economic power has been rendered meaningless. They did the right thing: They chose persuasion, and yet they feel as if the allegiance between liberalizing politics and liberalizing economics has left them utterly routed.

The socially conservative corners of the Right believe that their enemies on the left are using every weapon they have at hand to win the culture wars. The Goldwater/Reagan movement convinced these social conservatives that if they put their shoulders to the wheel of limiting state power, the result would be socially conservative culture. The implicit assumption of the fusionist program they bought into was that state power was necessarily liberal in social terms while market power was necessarily conservative. Forty years on from the Reagan revolution, this assumption has been thoroughly debunked.

American conservatives often claim that they care about procedural honesty and integrity whereas progressives go about executing their desired policies by hook or by crook. This isnt quite true, however. The question isnt whether one is going to have an outcome-oriented politics, but rather which outcome one values the most. Many conservatives value markets as worthwhile in and of themselves; these are the conservatives for whom violent state power remains the paramount evil of which to be wary in politics. But other conservatives professed allegiance to markets in the last century because they believed that markets would be friendly to their own vision of the common good. Put another way, the former group accepted a moral dichotomy between market power and state power because they really believed that freedom from violence was the supreme political good; but the latter group accepted this dichotomy because they believed that market power was red and state power was blue. Now that woke capital has shown conclusively that market power can be of a distinctly blue hue, many social conservatives are left asking why state power shouldnt be red. (Leave aside, for the moment, the mixed success of the Reaganite project in actually limiting the state, which seems unable to shake its left-wing hue.)

As a part of this shift, some social conservatives have begun to question the libertarian habit of attributing violence exclusively to the state and persuasion exclusively to the market. As noted above, this distinction goes to the heart of the fusionist project. But the budding trust-busting impulse that one sees flowering in nationalist corners of the Right suggests a loss of faith in this hard-and-fast rule of Reaganite faith, with a consensus emerging in those corners that once businesses hit a certain quantity of market share or consumer reach, they become qualitatively different entities. Businesses ability to buy out and undercut their competitors shades over from persuasion to coercion by undermining the neutrality of the marketplace, the story goes. Whats more, the globalized supply chains of huge multinational businesses allow them to do violence to their own employees by using slave labor abroad or allow for appalling conditions at third-world sites. If companies are wealthy enough to run away from the parts of the world where theyre forced, by government power, to uphold workers rights to find cheap labor in countries with fewer rights for workers in other words, less government power can we really say that in such an instance capital is persuasive and the state is violent?

Ultimately, the future of the conservative movement in America will be determined by the kind of power that conservatives come to view as the greatest threat to them. There is a lot of data to suggest that the past half century has been far kinder to social conservatives than many of them seem to believe. Its possible that socially conservative apocalypticism has been manufactured by media conglomerates distorting the pervasiveness of certain social trends to boost their ratings. But even if so, is not this distortion itself yet another example of how libertarian economics is driving social conservatives to distraction?

Speaking for myself, Ill never be able to overcome my own political gag reflex at the naked and undisguised violence of the state, despite my social conservatism (which is considerable). State violence is not cultural coercion the way that advertising or corporate censorship is. Its the real thing: coercion devoid of any adjective in front of it. But its nevertheless true that when social conservatives and libertarians came together to elect Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, they were each trying to limit two different kinds of power: the first group, social liberalism, and the second, state violence. Many hoped that both could be opposed seamlessly and simultaneously. After all, the shared foreign enemy of the Soviet Union had made them inevitable bedfellows. But what looked like inevitable, natural, and necessary political coalitions during the 20th century now seem increasingly contingent, unnatural, and artificial. Its not at all clear that the center of American conservatism can hold given the unraveling and mutual estrangement. Its not even clear that there still exists such a center at all.

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How the Right Is Dividing over the Nature of Power - National Review

(The Center Square) Bills passed during Colorados 2021 legislative session could result in up to a $617 million a year increase in taxes and fees depending on revenue estimates, according to a think tank analysis.

The libertarian-leaning Independence Institute noted that the increases come without voter consent under the states Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR), which requires voter approval for all tax increases.

Ben Murrey, the think tanks fiscal policy director, calculated that the taxes and fees result in a $430 average increase in expenses each year for a four-person family in the state.

While not all the bills have been signed into law yet, the General Assemblypassed 83 bills that will increase the states revenue before concludingits session last week, according to the analysis, with 45 of the bills including revenue projections.

Total new revenue raised under these bills, if signed into law, would amount to between $579 million and $617.3 million in FY2022-23, Murrey wrote.

Murrey said lawmakers evaded TABOR with legislation raising the states revenue. Republican lawmakers and conservative taxpayer watchdogs have long argued that Democrats have avoided TABOR requirements by hiking fees.

Colorado lawmakers avoided the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) and Proposition 117s voter-approval requirements primarily by increasing revenue through tax policy changes and through government fees, he said.

Murrey noted a pair of passed bills that overhaul the states tax code by limiting some deductions. The bills will increase state revenue by $184.5 million after tax credits.

The fees passed during the session that will raise the most revenue for fiscal 2022-23, according to the analysis, is Senate Bill 21-260,the massive piece oflegislation seeking to increase transportation funding with a bevy of new fees.

The legislation, which hasnt been signed into law yet, will raise an estimated $3.8 billion over the next decade from fees on road use, electric vehicle registrations, retail deliveries and ride-shares, among others.

Democratic lawmakers passed the legislation rather than asking voters to raise the states 22 cent gas tax, Murrey noted in a separate column.

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Colorado legislation could mean up to $617 million in tax and fee increases, think tank says - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

In September 2020, about 150 Christians gathered to stage an informal Psalm Sing in the parking lot of Moscow, Idahos city hall. They were there to protest the local mask mandate.

Five individuals were cited by police for violating the local order to wear masks, and two were arrested for suspicion of resisting or obstructing an officer. One of the events organizers was Douglas Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, a 900-member congregation with historical connections to Christian Reconstructionism (also known as theonomy), a movement that hopes to see earthly society governed by biblical law. One month earlier on Twitter, Wilson had framed his concerns about the issue in revealing terms: Too few see the masking orders for what they ultimately are. Our modern and very swollen state wants to get the largest possible number of people to get used to putting up with the most manifest lies.

In Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest, historian Crawford Gribben recounts how in recent decades conservative evangelicals, inspired by assorted strands of theonomy and survivalism, came to settle in the Pacific Northwest. Gribben explores how this group of born-again Protestants who embrace their marginal status has thrived in the wilds of Idaho and adjoining states, proposing strategies of survival, resistance, and reconstruction in evangelical America.

Gribben describes his book as a social history of theological ideas based on long-distance interviews of several subjects and in-person fieldwork. Rather than crafting a journalistic expos or a theological critique, Gribben employs biographical, institutional, or thematic approaches.

Previous accounts of Christian Reconstructionists have tended to focus on these believers theocratic vision of a future Christian polity rather than their separation from mainstream society. Today, Gribben concludes, these practitioners of strategies of hibernation may no longer be as marginal as some have assumed. In a series of illuminating chapters, Gribben astutely examines the history of theonomist migration to the Northwest, the eschatological assumptions underlying the original Reconstructionist vision, theonomic political theory, the movements influential educational ideas, and its thoughtful and innovative use of publishing and electronic media.

For these theonomists, present-day survivalism is closely linked to a future reconstruction of a godly society and Christianitys earthly triumph. Theonomy is a diverse theological movement, arising within a conservative Reformed milieu. Its central ideas were first articulated by Rousas John Rushdoony, a California-based Presbyterian pastor and the son of Armenian immigrants. Gary North, Rushdoonys estranged son-in-law, is one of many to carry its banner forward into the 21st century. Although theonomy first gained notoriety through its bold application of Mosaic law to the existing political order, more recent adherents have often sanded down its sharp edges.

Among the most intriguing features of Reconstructionism is its view of human history as it relates to Christs second coming. For much of the 20th century, American evangelicals were mainly premillennialists, believing Jesus would return to earth before inaugurating a thousand-year reign of peace and prosperity (the Millennium). Premillennialism went hand in hand with pessimism about existing social conditionsif Christ needed to come before things would get better, then why waste much energy on making them better in the here and now? By the 1970s, works like Hal Lindseys best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth had popularized a premillennial eschatology that stressed cultural and moral decline and applied apocalyptic prophecies to the Cold War.

Rushdoony challenged this dominant paradigm in the early 1970s, shifting toward a postmillennial view that saw the earthly progress of Christianity as a precursor to Christs return. First in a biblical commentary and then in volume 1 of his magnum opus, the pretentiously titled The Institutes of Biblical Law, Rushdoony argued that most believers lacked faith in Christianitys ultimate triumph. The whole of Scripture, he countered, proclaims the certainty of Gods victory in time and in eternity (emphasis mine). The saints were called upon to fight for a Christian society here and now, and their victory in this world was assured.

The unalloyed triumphalism of Reconstructionism appealed to some disheartened evangelicals. Douglas Wilsons evolving theology was shaped by Rushdoonys postmillennial vision, although he has subtly distanced himself from the more extreme aspects of Rushdoonys application of ancient Israels legal code. Because of years of hard work by Wilson and his followers, Gribben argues, Moscow may now be Americas most postmillennial town, with two large, thriving Reconstructionist congregations and members who play important roles in the towns social and economic life.

In his chapter on the Reconstructionist understanding of government, Gribben carefully examines the historical origins of the movements odd coupling of Old Testament legal codes and libertarian politics. While other evangelicals were being drawn to Barry Goldwaters 1964 presidential campaign, Rushdoony began working for the conservative William Volker Charities Fund. The Fund played a key role in getting libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek appointed to the faculty of the University of Chicago, and it embraced Hayeks anti-statism.

While Rushdoony advocated the adoption of Mosaic civil law in a reconstructed Christian political order (including stoning those who engaged in homosexual behavior or disrespected their parents), he also embraced a small-government model that would have warmed the heart of Thomas Jefferson. Theonomys focus on Old Testament regulations has had little impact on conservative public policy, but Rushdoony and Norths tireless efforts to reconcile Christian principles with libertarian governing philosophies have been quite influential among some Christian conservatives.

Reconstructionists have also shaped evangelical educational theory. Rushdoony first gained attention with his forceful critique of public education. Inspired by theologian Cornelius Van Tils argument that a neutral philosophical perspective was impossible and that secular and Christian approaches were fundamentally incompatible, Rushdoony advocated Christian alternatives.

By the 1990s, Wilson had become a widely acknowledged authority on homeschooling, promoting a classical curriculum based loosely on Dorothy Sayerss previously neglected essay, The Lost Tools of Learning (1947). Moreover, Wilson helped found both a seminary and a small residential liberal arts college (ambitiously christened New Saint Andrews) in Moscow. Pacific Northwest theonomists separated themselves from the public school system as part of their strategy to transform society at large. Before we can enlist in the culture war, Wilson commented, we have to have a culture. And that culture must be Christian.

To promote their educational ideas and socially conservative vision, Wilson and company have creatively used both conventional book publishing (establishing Canon Press) and the internet. Behind all these ambitious efforts is the ultimate goal of cultural renewal or reconstruction. As the communitys organ, Credenda Agenda, put it bluntly, publishing is warfare. This campaign included a well-publicized series of debates between Wilson and atheist journalist Christopher Hitchens in 2009 over whether Christianity has been good for the world. (Gribben mentions the interaction with Hitchens at least five times.)

Gribbens study is a welcome contribution to our understanding of the theonomist movement. His dispassionate, non-alarmist account allows the participants to speak for themselves. Occasionally, however, Gribben seems reluctant to pursue more searching questions, and his appraisal can sometimes be muted. It provides little comfort, for instance, when Gribben reassures readers that while Rushdoony may not have approved of democracy, he didnt actually approve of its violent subversion. Allowing subjects to speak for themselves can periodically wander toward accepting their self-portraits. Still, Gribben handles complex cultural and theological questions deftly and with admirable sensitivity.

Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America raises a host of fascinating questions that no single work of this sort can answer. Two such questions spring to mind.

First, despite all their dismissals of benighted pietism, isnt it ironic that Rushdoony, North, and Wilson all ended up following 20th-century evangelicals in disparaging state intervention and embracing libertarianism? Despite the theonomists reverence for the Puritans, libertarian assumptions appear to trump the Puritans focus on the common good and their conception of the state as a moral agent. As such, their theonomy appears to owe more to Rand Paul than to, say, the Massachusetts Bay Colonys first governor, John Winthrop. In this sense, is it really accurate to affirm, as Gribben does, that the Moscow community has successfully resisted American modernity?

Second, and more broadly, while theonomy has certainly proven influential in ways unrecognized by scholars, just how seriously should Christians take its theological and social project? Evangelicals can sometimes be taken in by the appearance of scholarship. Answering those who claimed theonomists were weighty thinkers, former First Things editor Richard John Neuhaus once commented acerbically:

One might object that the argumentation of the theonomists is more often obsessive and fevered than well-reasoned, and the pedantry of bloated footnoting should not be mistaken for scholarship. One may also be permitted to doubt whether there is, in the explosion of theonomic writing, one major new idea or finding that anyone outside theonomys presuppositional circle need feel obliged to take seriously.

Though downplayed by Gribben, Rushdoonys circle of fellow travelers should give any thoughtful Christian considerable pause. To note only a few red flags: In the first volume of his Institutes, Rushdoony appeared to flirt with Holocaust denial. Years later, he promoted the work of a writer who endorsed geostationary theory, which denies that the earth orbits around the sun. Gary North was among the most alarmist and apocalyptic of the Y2K prophetsat least until the clock struck midnight at the close of 1999. More recently, Wilson authored a booklet, Black & Tan, that adopted discredited Lost Cause views regarding secession and described the allegedly benign features of antebellum slavery. It is easy (especially in the age of Twitter) to confuse quantity with quality and strong opinions with wisdom.

Biographer Michael McVicar once speculated that Rushdoony was one of the most frequently cited intellectuals of the American right. Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America provides an insightful exploration of the larger social and regional contexts inhabited by Rushdoonys offspring. While strict theonomists remain comparatively few, their influence has been significant in some surprising places. Lamentably, they have usually championed an approach more narrowly ideological than genuinely scriptural.

Gillis J. Harp teaches history at Grove City College. He is the author of Protestants and American Conservatism: A Short History.

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Meet the Conservative Evangelicals Practicing 'Strategic Hibernation' in the American Northwest - ChristianityToday.com

There are not so many self-identified Libertarians in Latin America, but the Reason Foundations Senior Fellow Daniel Raisbeck is one of the most prominent. The Colombian academic has run for political office, but is better known for his academic work, and his research and writing on economic and civil liberty for the libertarian intellectual standard bearer, the Reason Foundation.

Finance Colombia executive editor first encountered Raisbeck when he was running as the Libertarian candidate for Bogots mayor, 6 years ago. Now with the votes being counted in Perus election between a self-identified Marxist and an authoritarian daughter of a former president currently serving a prison sentence for trampling human rights and supporting death squads, the following conversation with Raisbeck couldnt have come at a better time.

What can observers take from events in Peru? And what takeaways are relevant for Colombias upcoming 2022 elections, and for economic and civil liberty more broadly in the Americas? Daniel Raisbeck has some prescient observations.

Finance Colombia: Im here with Daniel Raisbeck, and I know you are an academic here in Colombia, based in Bogota, you have a long resume. I met you when you were the libertarian candidate for mayor in Bogota, but I know that you also work with the Reason Foundation. Tell us what would you describe yourself as; what occupies your time mostly? When you meet somebody in an elevator, how do you describe yourself for the readers?

Daniel Raisbeck: Yes, well first of all thanks a lot for the invitation Loren, its great to talk to you again. Well, when I get that question I guess the straight answer is that Im part academic but Ive really worked mostly in journalism during the past few years before I was at Reason I was a chief editor at the PanAm Post for a few years and now I do also a lot of digital marketing for Reason, and I did that before as well; so I think its part of an editors job nowadays.

Finance Colombia: PanAm post is a great political publication, weve interacted with them before, weve done interviews with them before and they are a great publication for keeping up on politics down here in Latin America. So now, what I want to ask you is that this is an election year in several countries, Ecuador just had elections, Peru is in the middle of counting their final round in elections, Colombia is gearing up for elections next year, and its interesting because you can look at things from a free market perspective. Obviously, free people deserve free markets and we have luminaries, we have people like Hernando de Soto who was a candidate in the first round in Peru, he didnt make it to the final round; and my question to you throughout this conversation, really what I want to ask is as we as we look at Ecuador, as we look at Peru as we look at what might be coming up in Colombia is through the lens of free markets and free trade and civil liberties as well what can we take away from these elections?

What can observers take from events in Peru? And what takeaways are relevant for Colombias upcoming 2022 elections, and for economic and civil liberty more broadly in the Americas? Daniel Raisbeck has some prescient observations.

I think that Ecuador, if we start with Ecuador theyve gone from a very leftist candidate before with Correa then they went to Moreno who everybody thought was going to kind of, not everybody, but people thought was going to really pattern Correa but he went in a little bit of a different path, I wouldnt call him a you know necessarily a free market person but he did at least go in an unexpected direction and now we have Guillermo Lasso who just beat Andres Arauz, what does that say for the region, what does that say for the prospects of governance, civil liberties? And I know this is a huge question but also if we look at trade regionally, trade within internationally and then of course, Ecuador is an interesting case because its a dollarized economy, can we read anything from this in some ways a surprise result, a lot of people werent expecting it. Maybe it says that the people in Ecuador had enough or wanted to go in a different direction. Im not an Ecuador expert and Im not native to the region. How do you analyze the results here in Ecuador with Lassos win?

Daniel Raisbeck: Well, I think its definitely the feel-good libertarian story of the year because Lasso is sometimes described in the mainstream media and in English, also in Spanish as a as a conservative because as far as I understand I think hes a member of Opus Dei and maybe hes conservative from that social perspective, but he has very strong ties to the libertarian community in Ecuador and actually not a lot of people know this outside of the country but Ecuador has one of the strongest, if not the strongest network of libertarian institutions in terms of think tanks and academics and even certain institutions like the Guayaquil Chamber of Commerce.

The people that have staffed and led it in the past few years have been very much in favor of free market ideas, which is not the case for example with a Chamber of Commerce, a typical Chamber of Commerce in Colombia, which is just usually just a croniest kind of facade for commerce but anyway, so I think yes it is a surprise because Lasso actually barely made it into the the second round into the runoff, I think he got even he was under 20% of the votes he barely beat this other guy Yaku Perez, an indigenous candidate and Andres Arauz was Correas protg, or whatever you want to call him, he got over 30% of the voting, so he was the favorite.

And I think there were several things from what I saw and you mentioned it Loren, Ecuador is a dollarized economy since 2000 and in my opinion that has been their great advantage and thats what saved them during the Correa years because Correa who was an ally, close ally of Hugo Chavez, he didnt like dollarization he was a critic of dollarization even before he was president when he was an economics professor. So he wanted to get rid of it, he even tried with this parallel currency that he tried to introduce but it failed and the interesting thing is Arauz was even more radical than Correa. So he had a paper that he published I think before he was a candidate or a blog post in which he explained step by step what had to be done in order to de-dollarize Ecuador, which included basically very strong currency controls and other very harsh measures, and the interesting thing there is that at the beginning in 2000 when Ecuador had to dollarize with inflation, somewhere between 60%-70% of the population was against using the dollar, and now after two decades its around 80% or more I think its 88% in the last poll I saw in favor of the dollar and they dont want to go back to the Sucre or any other new currency with someone like Arauz in charge.

And it was very radical what he was proposing, he wanted to use the reserves of the central bank to just basically hand out money and it was going to be, I think it was going to be a very difficult situation if he was elected for Ecuador so I think its very hopeful results, not only for Ecuador but for the region. But again you cant read too much into it because its only one country, and the same day that that Lasso won, we were encouraged at first with Hernando de Soto as you mentioned in Peru who was about to qualify for the runoff, he was in second place at the beginning but theyre very slow in counting the votes and by the next day he was no longer in second place. Now its between well Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, but the worrying part, I mean Im not a big fan of Keiko but the worrying part is this Pedro Castillo guy who came in first place who is an avowed MarxistI was reading his program and I mean theyre quoting Marx, hes praising Fidel Castro and Vladimir Lenin, theyre proposing to nationalize all the strategic sectors of the economy, regulate the free press, so I mean this is the real deal in terms of hardcore Chavismo and I think its very worrisome whats happening now in Peru.

Finance Colombia: Yes, I think that you know its weird because we have Fujimori, Keikos father, Alberto Fujimori, on one hand he can take a lot of credit for defeating the Sendero Luminoso, the shining path, the Maoist rebels, on the other hand, and there are some parallels here in Colombia, but I think more stark, on the other hand hes accused of human rights and civil liberties violations, and so its its almost like you can look at Pedro Castillo as obviously a threat to economic liberty almost certainly civil liberty, but then its not exactly that Keiko Fujimori has a great record for clean governance and so, Peru is almost more worrying than Ecuador.

Aside from these two candidates, and aside from this election in the past two years the governance crisis in Peru as far as the ability of anyone to govern and theres a certain degree of instability there, not like a military coup kind of instability but in almost like a constitutional crisis, and I would wonder if either of these people whoever wins, I would bet against either one of them finishing up their term the way that things go, and I know I dont know anything about Peru, here in Colombia at least I can say I know something about it, I dont know much about Peru at all so whats the prognosis, what are the options and the alternatives and what are we going to see in the next two or three to four years?

Daniel Raisbeck: Well, youre absolutely right about the political instability in Peru because during the last few years youve had several presidents end up in jail or former presidents end up in jail, which is quite astonishing from a Colombian perspective because weve never had a president even have to resign in the middle of his term as has been happening in in Peru, let alone we have big scandals for example with ex-president Santos, theres proof and people have gone to jail because Odebrecht financed his campaign, but hes in the clear, at least he has been for now, you had Ernesto Samper whose campaign was financed by the by the Cali cartel and nothing happened to him either, so its very surprising from seeing what happens from Colombia, from one perspective you could say its encouraging because you can say at least theres consequences for these kind of actions, on the other hand it has brought tremendous instability and I think that has contributed to the situation we see now because one of Castillos proposals is basically to get rid of the constitution, to hold a constitutional assembly and thats always dangerous because thats part of the classic recipe of the Chavista regime or the Chavista playbook. The first thing these guys do when they get in power, they get elected, but the first thing they do is they change the constitution and they change all the rules of the game, the first priority being holding on to power indefinitely. So I think its quite clear that this is what Castillo is looking for in in Peru and curiously he has the excuse of instability as a way of introducing his very drastic changes, including changing the entire constitution. And by the way Peru, besides all this political instability that we have been talking about, economically it has been pretty successful, it has introduced a lot of measures in favor of economic liberty, it ranks pretty high in the Cato Institute / Fraser Institutes economic Freedom Index, youve seen tremendous growth and reduction of poverty over the last 20 years.

So I think that the problem with these, and with this obsession with politics thats fueled also by social media, and you see of course in almost in every country is thatChile is a very good example, that people very easily lose sight of what they actually have and of achievements that that are real over the past years and decades and then just on the spur of the moment you can have what happened in Chile which is that people actually went out and voted to change the constitution which has produced the most successful results by far, of any Latin American country. But its very easy especially for certain political sectors to spread frustration and I mean obviously frustration can be very legitimate and very real, but I dont think in the case of Chile, in the case of Peru that that merits throwing the constitution out of the window, especially when in both cases the constitutions have produced quite positive results.

Finance Colombia: You know, I have explained to people looking at Latin America, Ive explained to people that that theres a history of going out of the frying pan into the fire as we say in English, and I said look its not that (Nicaraguan dictator) Somoza was good, but then you go into maybe a worse situation. Its not that (Cuban dictator) Batista was good but then you go into a worse situation. In Venezuela you actually had maybe a decent president who was very naive and but even still, even there you had kind of like we said, in Colombia, in Peru you had that even worse, you had a very stark social division that led to the conditions that created Chavismo. I think that you mentioned Peru which is by most measures, including economic opportunity has been the most successful country in Latin America, arguably maybe Uruguay can compete with that which is an entirely different situation, but still I think that Peru like you said has been economically successful but its had a political governance crisis and a lot of thats been justifiable, theres been some corruption and things like that.

Theres been Odebrecht and different things with past presidents, but I think that even in the US, which is relatively stable, as an American I fear a constitutional convention because things can get worse. Because I think that a lot of ideas can come in from some of the worst in western Europe but I think that there are some of the bad things that can come in as far as government intrusion and erosion of civil liberties, and at least theres a history of that where down here the intellectual pedigree of a free market you have people that are like out there preaching in the wilderness like Hernando de Soto in Peru for example, who they kept trying to blow up for writing books you dont see a lot of that and so I think that its very scary, but let me ask you this, do you see a worst case scenario because its not like Castillo no, Keiko Fujimori might win and then we have probably economic liberty but maybe not necessarily good governance or the best human rights record as far as civil liberties either way but then lets suppose Pedro Castillo wins is it a potential Venezuela or is that hyperbole?

Daniel Raisbeck: Well, I think you have to take these threats very seriously and you have to believe people, you have to believe what theyre saying because I mean the problem in Venezuela as you well know was that people said this will pass, this too will pass and were not gonna become the next Cuba, as many Cubans warned them, and in fact they did end up becoming like Cuba, and Argentina they havent been that far behind.

I mean the institutions were stronger, they were actually to get rid of them in 2015 and then after a very mediocre government by Mauricio Macri the traditionalists came back to power right? And you still have tremendous problems there with inflation and just terrible economic conditions, you had defaults, you name it, so I do think that what these people say and its also you know a case of birds of a feather flocking together so now you have for example Evo Morales gloating about his candidate winning in Peru. So I do think Castillo is part of this movement and I do think its very dangerous, and unfortunately as you were saying the only alternative now since de Soto didnt qualify for the runoff, is Keiko Fujimori and you have a different set of problems as you mentioned; maybe authoritarianism of a different type. I think shes also in it for her family right?

When I first ran for the house of representatives in 2014 and when I talked about taxes people were looking at me as if I was an alien or insane because that was not an issue in Colombian politics.

But if youre a Peruvian voter and the problem is that Fujimori name and the family generate so much rejection that theres a good chance I think, that Castillo can win, but the problem with that is that as I said, I think this is the real deal. His government program is just, I mean it should send chills down anyones spine when you read it, because theyre very open about what they want to do and its not for instance

Im sure youve noticed this Loren but in Colombia, Gustavo Petro, whos our version of Chavez, hes very skilled at evading these questions so hes spent the last five or so years trying to disassociate himself completely from Chavez and from Chavismo and Venezuela, even though he used to boast about being an advisor to Chavez and to travel to Venezuela all the time. He brought Chavez to Colombia, to Bogota and so what Petro does for instance is say when they ask him if you want to implement the Venezuelan model, and he says no, he starts talking about climate change and how he doesnt want to have anything to do with fossil fuels in the economy and all of this, and somehow he fools journalists all the time with that rhetoric but Castillo is very open, hes praising or his movement is praising Fidel Castro, Lenin, hes quoting Marx, They described themselves as a Marxist Leninist organization. I mean this guys not even trying to hide it so I think you have to take that seriously and if he were to win I mean the thing with these countries is that its never from one day to the next, if Castillo wins, the next day its not going to be even aswell it usually takes some time, there is some resistance it then it will be a question of how Perus institutions actually are able to resist that, but from what weve seen and especially if he somehow gets a new constitution made in his image approved, then I think its extremely dangerous and of course you can always have a new Venezuela as well, why not?

Finance Colombia: You know its scary, we have a lot of readers in the mining sector, we have a lot of readers in the petroleum sector, its interesting because now I live here outside of Medellin and I get into some interesting conversations and I say look Im not Colombian, Im not trying to take sides or even less to be an imperialist and tell Colombians what to do, but sometimes Im in interesting discussions and I say I lived in Bogota when Petro was the mayor and I remember the trash scandal and these things and what its like, its weird because we almost have kind of a Petro like situation happening in Medellin right now.

Daniel Raisbeck: Youre like the Venezuelans who migrated to Peru.

Finance Colombia: Exactly! And its interesting because I talk to people, theres a lot of people who areand as you know in Colombia theres a lot of, theres like, its not a formal movement but I get memes sent to me and WhatsApp and Facebook and things like that and I understand because I mean in the US its kind of almost the same thing, its like we dont want Trump or we dont want Hillary for different reasons or down here its like we dont want Uribe and we dont want Petro, you know? Because I know people here who, its not that theyre lefties but they are dissatisfied with the human rights record of Uribe, and thats okay, thats understandable because I mean part of liberty theres economic liberty and free trade and free markets but look at whats happening in the US right now. Theres intrusive government, and one thing Ive got to give you credit and Ill go ahead and do this publicly, when I first interviewed you five or six years or seven years ago I was skeptical about your drug policies that you talked about, but you know what? Youre right because I look at the US now. New York has legalized it, the US and the world hasnt fallen apart, and its not that drugs are good. Putting smoke in your lungs isnt the best thing, but the point is that if you as a sovereign individual have the right over your body, if you want to do that as long as you dont bother anybody else, as long as you dont come and steal my television, do what you want to do, and as the libertarian argument has won, we dont see the world falling apart, right?

But I dont want to get off on that tangent, the point is still that we get this left argument which is socialism and intrusive government and then we get a right argument which is things like a restriction on social liberties and like, you know, Opus Dei and lets make the church a official state organ and lets make church policies law and its weird because libertarians go no, so you cant come and intrude on my private life, no you cant violate my civil liberties but yes Im a capitalist and I want to have free trade and in Latin America, the argumentand to the US to a certain degree, but I see less of a public discussion in Latin America, and to a large degree less of a public discussion in Europe too, is that it tends to be this: Its not a matter of civil liberties and economic liberties together, but it tends to be kind of this Marxism class struggle thing versus thisand Im not taking a position for or against the church, but kind of like lets make almost like an official religion like we see in the south of the United States, and my question: Is there a chance of candidates breaking out of that? Is there is there a chance ofI see in Central America sometimes theres some movements, but what are the prospects, one for that breaking out and then two lesswell let me ask you that first and then well come to here locally here in Colombia.

Daniel Raisbeck: Well, you mentioned several points. First about the drug issue, well, I think youre absolutely right and for instance in my campaign I never said that Im in favor of drug consumption, its just a critique of the inevitable consequences of having drugs being illegal of prohibition because that just leads to just terrible things like people, innocent people being murdered for being innocent bystanders and in the middle of a drug war and of course we saw that in Colombia, especially in the 80s when I was growing up, you see it now in in Mexico and across Central America, and I mean if you think about it, its kind of strange because the drug war was officially launched or some scholars consider that the beginning of the drug war was under Richard Nixon and one of the first things that happened was that they were pressuring Mexico into spraying fields, not only poppy fields I think but also marijuana fields with pesticide several decades ago, but now right across the border from where you were spraying, now you have legal marijuana in all these states.

I saw a poll today in in Reason that they published an article about it, I think 66% of Americans favor the end of federal prohibition, and I mentioned that because its amazing that in Colombia they legalized medical marijuana a few years ago, but I know and you probably know a lot more than I do from friends in the in the industry that even though you have that on paper, in practice its terribly hard for instance to have a bank account opened for these companies, and thatsI mean, I dont think politicians should ever intrude in the economy and say we should support this industry or that industry, but this is a no-brainer in the senseIm not saying that you should get subsidies because that would be corporate welfare, but Im saying if you have a product where the where they say in Colombia the brand is already created, its probably colombian hemp and where you have the States putting all these obstacles in front of these entrepreneurs and investors, you even have lots of foreign investment from Canada and other countries, and especially in a time like now when you have such high unemployment levels, a need for more taxation to bring in more taxes, you need to create businesses. And why arent they making life easy for all these businesses? Its just mind-boggling to me at least.

Finance Colombia: I agree, I think that the other thing that happened in in the drug war is it changed the relationship fundamentally between the police or between law enforcement more broadly, and the populace because before the police went after the bad guys, they went after robbers, they went after people who did violent crimes and that relationship changed fundamentally to going after people who arent doing a crime against anybody, theyre not violating anyone elses personal liberty or theyre not doing a property crime against anyone but its like lets search that car or lets certainly stop and frisk as they say in the United States, lets search that person and were gonna search that person for something that they own thats theirs, not stolen property or anything that they obtained by deceit or something like that, and in the past years its really changed the fundamental relationship.

Now none of this at least from my standpoint is to is to excuse any of the damage that any kinds of drugs have done or anything like that, but the way that the policing is done and the violation of civil rights and even if you say OK, this is a crime or this isnt if you look at like in the US and its happening here in Colombia too, what happens to innocent people? Because now I suspect you because youre a 20 year old kid and youve got long hair, and youve got raggedy clothes, Im just going to stop you, versus Ive got on a tie and Ive got my hair cut, something like that and now its like youreits a crime completely who you are, not that youve taken any action or anything like that, and we see that down here as well.

Now youve been generous with your time, I do want to ask you, Colombia has elections next year and we look at obviously the perennial people like Petro who probably will be a candidate, you have some interesting things happening where you have Sergio Fajardo, who most people consider to be center left, then you have the Centro Democratico which is really not centrist at all, so my question is from a prognosis but then also looking at it through a lens of liberty, because I dont think thatyou know Petro obviously is no fan of economic liberty, whats the prognosis as far as the panorama and aside from the three that I mentioned, if we look at other maybe candidates out there like Char, like Vargas Lleras, what do you see as the weather forecast for 2022 from a really what might happen perspective, but then also lets look at it from an economic freedom and civil liberty perspective?

Daniel Raisbeck: Well Loren, this is something I write about often and yes, I think youre absolutely right in terms of, I mean Petro is just hard left, he tries to camouflage that somehow or to or to hide it with his rhetoric about climate change and the environment but heI mean he was an ex guerrilla member, I mean, last time he was a candidate he said exactly which companies he was going to expropriate, he says you have to print money, as much money as possible to get out of the of the current crisis. I mean from whatever perspective you see it, he is definitely not what you need in Colombia right now.

Uribe is by no means a conservative in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. I mean theres nothing Thatcherite or Reaganite about Uribe. I mean he introduced the wealth tax in Colombia when he was president, when he said as all taxes, that it wasnt going to be permanent and it was going to be temporary, and its become permanent and now his party wants to make it even more permanent.

The problem again and I think its similar to other countries for instance Peru at the moment, is that the alternative and I mean, by what I mean the most probable alternative which is some candidate from Uribes party, is that as you said their only ideology is Alvaro Uribe, so this is very difficult for people in Colombia, especially in the media to understand, but if you get rid of the whole debate around the FARC because it was when he was president he went after the FARC as you know, with a lot of impetus but if you get rid of that, if you ignore that and if you look at their actual policies, Uribe is by no means a conservative in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. I mean theres nothing Thatcherite or Reaganite about Uribe. I mean he introduced the wealth tax in Colombia when he was president, when he said as all taxes, that it wasnt going to be permanent and it was going to be temporary, and its become permanent and now his party wants to make it even more permanent.

Finance Colombia: Yes, its a different conversation.

Daniel Raisbeck: He created all kinds of subsidies and he was proud of it, hes proud. He doesnt see a welfare state as a kind of a crutch that you need to kind of help people when they need it and to get them off welfare as soon as possible. He is and his party, they are proud of the amount of people that are on welfare and they try to increase the number of people who are on welfare for electoral reasons I think, and when you see things like the debate over Uber, the sharing economy has had so many problems in Colombia and the peak absurdity in my point of view because Uber is technically or has been technically illegal, but a lot of people use it anyway, theyre taxed and theyre taxed so its illegal but theyre taxed.

Finance Colombia: So many government people use Uber.

Daniel Raisbeck: Yes, of course.

Finance Colombia: And the only reason Uber still functions is because if you want to get from downtown up to up north to where you live or something like that, you know, and especially in Bogota where the taxis are so well loved, and Im being sarcastic, you know, because so many people even in the government rely on Uber thats why theyre not shutting it down but they just harass the drivers, they grab your car and then you have the Colombian equivalent of civil forfeiture happening down here, and its almost a form of government sanctioned corruption.

Daniel Raisbeck: Yes, but I mean Uribe was in favor of the taxi lobby against Uber when, this was before the pandemic, because itsyeah its not the main debate anymore, and hes been in favor of tariffs to help different industries, hes very interventionist, hes even ended up as an ally in the congress of Jorge Enrique Robledo, so I mean from a pro-liberty or libertarian or classical liberal standpoint or whatever you want to call it, its very frustrating because people associate Uribe as a right-wing neoliberal conservative, but when you look at what he actually does I mean theres nothing of the sort, and theres no real alternative, and from my experience at least when you try to for example to run as an independent, its also very difficult because there are all these barriers to entry in the market so its very expensive and the political parties are all about bullying for themselves and they have set up all these obstacles to prevent any real competition, much as is the case in the real economy.

Finance Colombia: So if you look at of the candidates that might run in the next election, who would you say is the, if you were to rate them obviously probably Petro would be at the far end of the scale but who would be the friendliest and we dont know whos going to run yet, but of the people that are kind of in the chattering class as we say or the gossip of who might be a candidate next year, who would be probably in the front runner strictly through the lens of free people = free markets?

Daniel Raisbeck: Yes, well, its difficult not to be pessimistic, I try not to be pessimistic, but I think Petro at the moment is running very strong and hes definitely going to be a favorite and I think a lot of people write him off just because they say hes never going to be president and I think its very dangerous to make those assumptions, of course you can be president and theres nothing in facthe came very close a couple of years ago, so that first of all. But in terms of for example who I would vote for, if the elections were today or tomorrow the only candidate who I see and were a pre-candidate because we havent even entered that primary stage or if you want to call it that, but the only one who Ive heard making the right kinds of noises even though Im not his biggest fan is Enrique Pealosa, the former mayor of Bogota because he has been outspoken at least on Twitter for what its worth criticizing these tax reforms, criticizing this idea that you can just tax the rich to no end and that thats the way to finance this European style welfare state that everyone in Colombia fantasizes with, and the assumption is that through wealth taxes or taxing businesses or the big businesses that already contribute the largest amounts to the state that youre going to be able to solve all problems.

And so hes been pretty outspoken about that, and hes saying the obvious thing, which no politician or I usually dont hear politicians saying, which is that, fine you can have a punitive tax regime which is what you already have in Colombia and they want to make it even worse, no ones no one is stopping you from that, youre a sovereign country you can have that, but the consequences of that are that, a) youre not going to have capital coming in because people dont want to, especially in a country like Colombia, people dont want to, riskinvestors who want to risk their capital in order to further their profits, to be taxed into oblivion, and on the other hand you have people who are already in Colombia but if they feel the tax pressure is overbearing then they can very easily leave because they have the money.

Finance Colombia: Exactly.

Daniel Raisbeck: Which has been happening so I would root for Pealosa at the moment. Do I think hes going to win? No, would I even be enthusiastic that if he were to win that he would implement these ideas? No because I also know him from Bogota. He did some good things as mayor but hes also very statistbut hes very statist in urban politics kind of way.

Finance Colombia: In context youve got I mean you cant look at somebody, you know, were not going to elect Hayek so youve got to take it in, so I know

Daniel Raisbeck: I completely understand, and I mean I voted for Duque four years ago, and Duque was saying, the current president his entire campAnd thats why I feel that to a certain extent what the few libertarians in Colombia, what weve done has been somewhat successful in terms of setting the terms of the debates because when I first ran for the house of representatives in 2014 and when I talked about taxes people were looking at me as if I was an alien or insane because that was not an issue in Colombian politics.

I think the last politician who really talked seriously about taxes was Alvaro Gomez in the 80s and 90s, I mean of course because of the FARC situation and the security situation, but taxes werent really on the top of the agenda and if you look at Duques campaign, Duque, I mean you can see it on Twitter because people are retweeting his material from the campaign. He was promising, he was criticizing Santos high taxes, he was promising to lower taxes even though it came with the with the caveat of lowering taxes and raising wages, which kind of you cant do by government fiat, but the fact that he made cutting, he was talking about austerity, about reducing the size of the state, getting rid of useless government agencies. The fact that he had to constantly mention that I think, it was a positive development during that campaign and the problem now is that he instead of doing what he said he was going to do, he did the exact opposite. Hes been raising taxes, he not only didnt get rid of useless state agencies, but he created new ones like the Ministry of Sport among others! So right, its a difficult situation so even if you get a guy like Pealosa and he wins on that platform, theres nothing guaranteeing that he would actually implement these free market policies.

Finance Colombia: Let alone you know, getting things through congress and I think that Pealosa is interesting because he was pretty well regarded at least in hindsight from his first term. My opinion as an outsider but as an outsider that follows Colombian politics was that Bogota politically had become so polarized that whoever gets in there, youre going to have half of the people against you and it seems like youre almost in a no-win situation, and I think the US is kind of going through a phase like this too where theres a polarization to that is impinging upon governance.

I remember when Ronald Reagan and Tip ONeill would get together and work things out, you know? Im from Ohio and in Ohio the Republican governor Jim Rhodes would get together with Verne Riffe, who was the Democrat speaker of the Ohio House. Same situation at the state level and they had their ideologies and they had their beliefs, but they would get together and hammer out governance and they were opponents but they were not enemies, and today we have situations where we have people that look at each other as enemies and that negatively affects governance. Youve been great with your time I really appreciate it, I hope to have you back more frequently. I mean its just like the saying goes free people deserve free markets and we dont editorialize a lot in Finance Colombia but the two go hand in hand and its a chicken or egg thing: You cant really in the long term have one without the other and its not even the most popular thing in the US but its even more of a rarity down here where people go: what can we get? or theres this corporatism and theres this idea of, Im gonna buy votes using the government, not specifically in Colombia but really as a region and then to be fair, its not a Latin American problem because we look back at ancient Rome with voting in bread and circuses leading to destruction, so its not like picking on Latin America, its really a human condition and so I want to encourage you and I really am looking forward to continuing to re-engage with you to get your expert opinion on colombian politics within the region as a whole.

Daniel Raisbeck: Well thanks Loren very much and as I said at the beginning I think before we started the interview that I really admire your work at Finance Colombia, I follow you and follow the newsletters on the website and please do keep it up.

Finance Colombia: Okay, stay safe.

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Finance Colombia The Reason Foundation's Daniel Raisbeck On What Peru's Election Can Tell Us About Economic Liberty In Colombia & Latin America -...