Daily Archives: December 10, 2021

Ideological faction within the U.S. Democratic Party

In American politics, a libertarian Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party with political views that are relatively libertarian compared to the views of the national party.[1][2]

While other factions of the Democratic Party, such as the Blue Dog Coalition, the New Democrat Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are organized in the Congress, the libertarian faction is not organized in such a way.

Libertarian Democrats support the majority of positions of the Democratic Party, but they do not necessarily share identical viewpoints across the political spectrum; that is, they are more likely to support individual and personal freedoms, although rhetorically within the context of Democratic values.[3]

Libertarian Democrats oppose NSA warrantless surveillance. In 2013, well over half the House Democrats (111 of 194) voted to defund the NSA's telephone phone surveillance program.[4]

Former representative and current Governor Jared Polis of Colorado, a libertarian-oriented Democrat, wrote in Reason magazine: "I believe that libertarians should vote for Democratic candidates, particularly as our Democratic nominees are increasingly more supportive of individual liberty and freedom than Republicans".[5] He cited opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act, support for the legalization of marijuana, support for the separation of church and state, support for abortion rights and individual bodily autonomy, opposition to mass surveillance and support for tax-code reform as areas where the majority of Democrats align well with libertarian values.[5]

While maintaining a relatively libertarian ideology, they may differ with the Libertarian Party on issues such as consumer protection, health care reform, anti-trust laws and the overall amount of government involvement in the economy.[3]

After election losses in 2004, the Democratic Party reexamined its position on gun control which became a matter of discussion, brought up by Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, Brian Schweitzer and other Democrats who had won in states where Second Amendment rights are important to many voters. The resulting stance on gun control brought in libertarian minded voters, influencing other beliefs.

In the 2010s, following the revelations by Edward Snowden about NSA surveillance in 2013, the increasing advent of online decentralization and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the perceived failure of the war on drugs and the police violence in places like Ferguson, Democratic lawmakers such as Senators Ron Wyden, Kirsten Gilibrand and Cory Booker and Representative Jared Polis have worked alongside libertarian Republicans like Senator Rand Paul and Representative Justin Amash to curb what is seen as government overreach in each of these areas, earning plaudits from such traditional libertarian sources as Reason magazine.[6][7][8][9] The growing political power of Silicon Valley, a longtime Democratic stronghold that is friendly to economic deregulation and strong civil liberties protections while maintaining traditionally liberal views on social issues, has also seriously affected the increasingly libertarian leanings of young Democrats.[10][11][12]

The libertarian faction has influenced the presidential level as well in the post-Bush era. Alaska Senator and presidential aspirant Mike Gravel left the Democratic Party midway through the 2008 presidential election cycle to seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination,[13] and many anti-war and civil libertarian Democrats were energized by the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns of libertarian Republican Ron Paul.[14][15] This constituency arguably embraced the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns of independent Democrat Bernie Sanders for the same reasons.[16][17] In the state of New Hampshire, libertarians operating from the Free State Project have been elected to various offices running as a mixture of both Republicans and Democrats.[18][19] A 2015 Reuters poll found that 22% of Democratic voters identified themselves as "libertarian," more than the percentage of Republicans but less than the percentage of independents.[20]

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Libertarian Democrat - Wikipedia

Minimal state

A night-watchman state or minarchy, whose proponents are known as minarchists, is a model of a state that is limited and minimal, whose functions depend on libertarian theory. Right-libertarians support it only as an enforcer of the non-aggression principle by providing citizens with the military, the police, and courts, thereby protecting them from aggression, theft, breach of contract, fraud, and enforcing property laws.[1][2][3]

In the United States, this form of government is mainly associated with libertarian and Objectivist political philosophy. In other countries, minarchism is also associated to some non-anarchist libertarian socialists and other left-libertarians.[4][5] A night-watchman state has been advocated and made popular by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974).[6] The United Kingdom in the 19th century has been described by historian Charles Townshend as a standard-bearer of this form of government.[7]

As a term, night-watchman state (German: Nachtwchterstaat) was coined by German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle in an 1862 speech in Berlin wherein he criticized the bourgeois-liberal limited government state, comparing it to a night-watchman whose sole duty was preventing theft. The phrase quickly caught on as a description of capitalist government, even as liberalism began to mean a more involved state, or a state with a larger sphere of responsibility.[8] Ludwig von Mises later opined that Lassalle tried to make limited government look ridiculous though it was no more ridiculous than governments that concerned themselves with "the preparation of sauerkraut, with the manufacture of trouser buttons, or with the publication of newspapers".[9]

Proponents of the night-watchman state are minarchists, a portmanteau of minimum and -archy. Arche (; Ancient Greek: ) is a Greek word which came to mean "first place, power", "method of government", "empire, realm", "authorities" (in plural: ), or "command".[10] The term minarchist was coined by Samuel Edward Konkin III in 1980.[11]

Right-libertarian minarchists generally justify the state as a logical consequence of the non-aggression principle.[1][2][3] They argue that anarcho-capitalism is impractical because it is not sufficient to enforce the non-aggression principle, as the enforcement of laws under anarchy would be open to competition.[12] Another common objection to anarchism is that private defense and court firms would tend to represent the interests of those who pay them enough.[13]

Left-libertarian minarchists justify the state as a temporary measure on the grounds that social safety net benefits the working class. Some anarchists, such as Noam Chomsky, are in agreement with social democrats on the welfare state and welfare measures, but prefer using non-state authority.[14] Left-libertarians such as Peter Hain are decentralists who do not advocate abolishing the state,[4] but do wish to limit and devolve state power,[5] stipulating that any measures favoring the wealthy be prioritized for repeal before those which benefit the poor.[15]

Some minarchists argue that a state is inevitable because anarchy is futile.[16] Robert Nozick, who publicized the idea of a minimal state in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), argued that a night-watchman state provides a framework that allows for any political system that respects fundamental individual rights. It therefore morally justifies the existence of a state.[6][17]

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Night-watchman state - Wikipedia

In November 2019, local property owners in Delaware and Maryland were sent a letter from Save Our Beach View asking neighbors to lobby local politicians against the Skipjack wind farm.

The plan, which was approved in 2017, sanctioned a Dutch company to build a 120-megawatt capacity wind energy project enough to power 40,000 homes by placing turbines 26 nautical miles offshore. The letter warned that the project would irreparably damage beach tourism, home values and the economy, lower rents generally, and produce no environmental benefit. In fact, the letter claimed, regional air quality would become worse because of them.

While the letter was signed by a local resident, it made little mention of its true author: the Caesar Rodney Institute, a libertarian think tank at the time funded by the oil industry. The subterfuge was intentional. In an interview with the State Policy Network, a group that coordinates best practices for oil-and-gas-backed and libertarian think tanks, the Caesar Rodney Institute said it produced the letter and had it signed by a local concerned beach homeowner to establish rapport with the target audience of local residents and merchants.

Save Our Beach View was also created by Caesar Rodney expressly for the purpose of undermining the Skipjack project.Our strategy was to market and promote the campaign rather than our organization, so we came up with the name Save Our Beach View, a project of the Caesar Rodney Institute, said the think tanks representative in the interview.

The buzzsaw of advocacy threatens to derail the Biden administrations ambitious goal of opening up wind energy production from coast to coast. rsted, the Dutch company in charge of the Skipjack project, has delayed construction until 2026 and may face further delays as local opposition and regulatory barriers mount.

The Caesar Rodney Institute-backed network, the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, has backed a federal lawsuit, petitioned regulators, and mobilized seaside communities to protest offshore wind turbines as an existential threat, arguing that the turbines will diminish tourism, endanger local wildlife, and could lead to leaking oil [lubricants] from turbines.

Its true that while wind energy provides many climate benefits to power generation, particularly its ability to generate power without burning fossil fuels, the energy source is not without its risks. The effects of offshore wind farms on the fishing industry, as well as marine and bird life, arenot fully understood.

Groups backed by oil industry money demanded expedited approval of offshore oil drilling in the same regions now under consideration for wind farms.

But many of the groups leading the opposition to the wind farms are not entirely sincere in their concern for the environment and the demand that regulators slow down construction. In previous years, these groups, backed by oil industry money, demanded expedited approval of offshore oil drilling in the same regions now under consideration for wind farms. In advocating for offshore drilling, they cast aside any concerns around tourism, potential pollution, or impacts on local wildlife.

Many of the groups also emulate the appearance of local grassroots organizations, despite backing from the oil and gas industry and sophisticated communications support from national conservative groups.

David Stevenson, the director of the Caesar Rodney Institutes Center for Energy Competitiveness, has said he is raising funds to file lawsuits against wind energy projects along the East Coast. And the American Coalition for Ocean Protection has similar advocacy efforts against wind projects in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Virginia, Maine and the Great Lakes. Last summer, Stevenson, a former Trump official, led a press conference in Boston to announce a lawsuit aimed at stopping the construction of Vineyard Wind, the first major offshore wind project in the U.S., which is slated to be built 12 miles south of Marthas Vineyard.

In June, the Caesar Rodney Institute filed comments to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of the Department of Interior, arguing that regulators overseeing the Vineyard Wind project had failed to account for the lost tourism that would result from visible wind farms in the ocean.

We communicate with each other, help each other out with resources and ideas, said Stevenson last summer, speaking about the growing opposition to wind farms led by his coalition. Youve got the emotional power of the beach community, that comes without a lot of background in how to get things done, with these state policy groups.

In response to a request for comment, Stevenson wrote that the Caesar Rodney Institute, like other nonprofits such as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, protects the privacy of our donors. I cant speak for all the coalition members as we dont share donor info, but we are not receiving donations from the fossil fuel industry. Our donors do not impact our positions which are determined by the facts our research uncover. We would accept donations from the fossil fuel industry if offered. Got any contacts?

Grant information from 2019 shows that the institute was supported financially by the American Energy Alliance at the time of their Skipjack campaign.

The group does not voluntarily disclose donor information, but grant information from 2019 shows that the institute was supported financially by the American Energy Alliance at the time of their Skipjack campaign. AEA is funded by the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an oil refinery trade group, as well as the Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, the business trade group formed in part by Koch Industries. The president of AEA is Thomas Pyle, a former in-house lobbyist for Koch Industries.

My research on offshore wind shows it as an environmental and economic disaster, added Stevenson, pointing to a study showing potential harm posed by offshore windmills to North Atlantic right whales. My basic, and consistent objective is to do honest research and support things that actually work rather than whats popular at the moment.

The American Coalition for Ocean Protection includes another group, Protect Our Coast NJ, that makes similar grassroots appeals for members of the public to oppose offshore wind turbines over environmental concerns, claiming the projects will lead to an industrialization of our ocean with turbine towers that threaten marine and bird life. The group makes no donor information public, but alinkredirects viewersto donate to the Caesar Rodney Institute.

The appeals are especially insidious given that less than a decade ago, in 2014, the Caesar Rodney Institutesponsored a study that promoted drilling off of the shores of Maryland and Delaware, touting the benefits of offshore oil for jobs, energy independence, and boosted economic development.

In 2017, Stevenson called offshore drilling near North Carolina a potential boon to the local economy that would help achieve energy independence. The following year, in an article for the Heartland Institute, Stevenson praised the potential for offshore drilling near Delaware. The risks of seismic testing and oil spills have been exaggerated and are manageable compared to the potential large economic benefits, he said.

In his statement to the Intercept, Stevenson said he does not specifically endorse oil drilling and that his comments attached to the 2014 study simply called for a more lively debate about whether to develop the oil reserves off our coasts.

Highly motivated fossil fuel interests have long lobbied to prevent the adoption of wind and other renewable energy into the nations energy portfolio. The State Policy Network has long worked to prevent the adoption of renewable energy in favor of maintaining a reliance on oil, gas, and coal.

In previous years, AEA has acted as the tip of the spear against renewable energy, lobbying against electric vehicle subsidies, greenhouse gas emission regulations, and wind energy projects. In 2019, AEA spent $1.7 million advocating on its agenda.

Stevenson a policy adviser to the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit that denies that the burning of fossil fuels influences global warming previouslywas amember of the Trump administrations EPA transition team. Stevenson used the position to request recordsrelating to Climategate, hacked emails from 2009 between climate scientists in the U.K. that many conservatives claimed showed doctored climate projections, and records relating to the cost of carbon regulations.

Stevenson, who was also a former DuPont executive, has reversed many long-standingfree-market principles in fighting the expansion of wind energy. Most fossil fuel-backed libertarians have long argued against environmental rules that tend to bog down energy development, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act. But the Caesar Rodney Institute, notably, cited the NEPA, which requires major federal projects to undergo careful environmental impact review and additional review under the ESA, in attempting to block wind energy.

In previous years, during the Obama administration, the Caesar Rodney Institute argued that NEPA and the ESA, along with additional environmental regulations, created permitting delays as the agencies are flooded with paperwork.

Other fossil fuel think tanks in the coalition are also singing a dramatically different tune. The John Locke Foundation, a North Carolina-based think tank involved in the State Policy Network and the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, filed comments with regulators in opposition to the Kitty Hawk Offshore Wind Project off thecoast of the Outer Banks.

The foundation argues that any offshore wind development would pose risks for the environment given North Carolinas location and vulnerability to hurricanes, depressed tourism, and potential ecological damage. But those concerns were not raised a few years ago, when the John Locke Foundation, which is funded heavily by the Charles Koch Institute and Charles Koch Foundation, advocated for oil drilling off the coast of North Carolina.

In those days, any concerns about environmental impact were minimal. There are certainly some risks associated with offshore drilling, as there are with pretty much any large-scale enterprise, said John Hood, chair of the John Locke Foundation, in a Hickory Daily Record newspaper column in 2018. But the many benefits, wrote Wood, outweighed the risks. After all, he added, There are highly traveled tourist destinations in many places around the world that have coexisted with offshore drilling for decades.

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Oil-Backed Group Opposes Offshore Wind for Environmental Reasons - The Intercept

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has released a report examining the extensive ties between the far-right and Bitcoin, many of whom built fortunes in the cryptocurrency.

In a Dec. 9 Hatewatch report, the SPLC shared its findings on how right-wing extremists and white supremacists, discuss and use cryptocurrencies claiming that many have amassed tens of millions of dollars from crypto donations.

The report How Cryptocurrency Revolutionized the White Supremacist Movement identified and compiled over 600 cryptocurrency addresses associated with white supremacists and other prominent far-right extremists to reach its conclusions.

One of the main claims it makes is that although less than one-quarter of Americans own cryptocurrency:

"Hatewatch struggled to find any prominent player in the global far right who hasnt yet embraced cryptocurrency to at least some degree."

The most common reasons these individuals used cryptocurrency was because they were debanked or because they want to hide the their transactions.

Stefan Molyneaux, who is described by Wikipedia as a far-right white nationalist and white supremacist has been accepting donations in Bitcoin for eight years. The SPLC noted that the first Bitcoin wallet that has been linked to Molyneaux dates back to Jan. 25, 2013, and that his followers have donated a total of 1250 Bitcoin since 2013.

Molyneaux has realized an estimated $3.28 million from $1.28 million in crypto donations. This is more than any other extremist studied for the SPLC report.

Greg Johnson, who goes by the pseudonym Karl Thorburn, has gained over $800,000 from crypto. Johnson is the founder of the controversial website CounterCurrents.

The site requests donations from his followers to be paid in 12 different cryptocurrencies and is currently trying to raise $200,000 goal to further its political ambitions.

Crypto critic and author David Gerard told the SPLC in an email that although at first glance the amount of money these extremists are making from crypto is alarming, it is not a reason to associate all cryptocurrency with their actions. He claimed:

Bitcoin started in right-wing libertarianism This is not at all the same as being a neo-Nazi subculture. That said, theres a greater proportion of Nazis there than youd expect just by chance, and the Bitcoin subculture really doesnt bother kicking its Nazis out.

While extensive, the SPLC report relies heavily on historical events and incidents that have been reported previously, such as extremist publication Daily Stormer citing in 2017 a Bitcoiner TV host's views on the use of the cryptocurrency as a way to liberate its readers from what it sees as Jewish control of centralized banks.

It tied extremist Andrew Weev Auernheimer to the privacy coin Monero, which facilitates private, untraceable transactions better than Bitcoin, with a 2017 podcast when he said: I hold a lot of Monero though. Thats my big thing now. Im way into Monero. I hold a significant amount.

Excerpt from:
SPLC report examines use of Bitcoin and Monero by right wing extremists - FXStreet

Laura: Thats so interesting, because I think those examples really help when youre trying to imagine what that would be like. And the answer is Orbns Hungary.

Sam: Theyre very explicit about that. The whole Christian democrat tradition in Europe is something that they approve of.

Alex: So the sort of politicians and leaders that these people look up to basically gives away what they are after. Theyre looking for illiberal authoritarianism.

Laura: But is anyone listening to them? After a short break, well be back to talk about how much influence this group has. How worried should we be?

Alex: Now that weve established what sort of regimes they admire, I feel like we should ask, Why should we care about these guys? Your subjects are a couple of young people working at a magazine, right? Whats the case for caring about their wacky beliefs?

Sam: Its a good question. The place that I came down is that were familiar with this argument about the left: that people who graduate from elite universities have pretty extreme left-wing views compared to the median Democrat, and certainly compared to the median voter. The same thing is true of these negatively polarized right-wing, highly educated elites. Theyre far to the right of the median Republican, but all the signals point to: We cant discount it just because its a sort of a phenomenon amongst these very strange elite intellectuals, because very strange elite intellectualsand very young, strange elite intellectualshave been in charge of the conservative movement forever. Its just that the character of that movement is changing, because their character is changing.

Laura: You talk about the sense of isolation this group of guys has. Can you explain how that forms in college?

Sam: I would say that for a certain kind of white man who came up in an elite university in the past 10 years, but maybe even more so in the past five, six, seven, there was a sense of a suffocating liberal orthodoxy on their campus. If they have some other kind of ideological inputs pushing them in the direction of misogyny, or nasty racial ideas, or just a contrarian instinct, they may find themselves in a position where they go: All of the people who are the authority around me on this campus are telling me to believe this set of often superficial but nonetheless progressive things. Im going to look for the people who are saying the bad thing, the thing youre not supposed to say. And then they find each other.

Laura: Some of them are so young, like Nate Hochman. Hes only 23, just out of college. Do they maintain a sense of isolation after college? Because when you look around, elite Conservative Catholics are pretty well represented. Look at the Supreme Court, because on the Supreme Court, for a religious minority to be so well representedthis is not the mainstream version of Christianity in the U.S. They actually have a huge amount of power.

Sam: Ill say two things. One is that from their perspective, the only place in American life where conservatives have any power is basically the courts and, every once in a while, the federal government. They are very fixated on the fact that progressives and leftists control all the cultural hegemony. Thats precisely why they think its so important that when they periodically get power in the form of a Trump, and when they have a supermajority on the court, that they absolutely need to use it to enforce in the private sphere their ideal morals. Otherwise, in every input into American private morality, the morality that reigns regardless of what the government does, liberals and progressives have control. So thats their perspective. Its also especially because they live in D.C. and New York and California, where they actually are surrounded by liberals. These people arent living in small communities that are conservative, where they could. But theyre intellectual elites who want to work in the power centers. So, their perspective on what America is is totally skewed by the fact that they spend all their time on Twitter.

Alex: Its mediated, and its, like, vibes-based.

Sam: Completely vibes-based.

Alex: And you will never feel like you will win if you have won everything and then see that people still dont think the right way. That seems like a flaw in their ideology.

Sam: Well, its a flaw, but its a dangerous and symptomatic flaw that makes them attracted to authoritarianism because thats how they imagine youre able to change the way people think.

Laura: The argument that Hollywood is overwhelmingly liberal, and that the people who are conservative are bombarded with liberal propaganda and that they have liberal values rammed down their throats, is one you hear all the time. But the right has its own very robust and incredibly well-funded media infrastructure. You dont hear of small right-wing magazines collapsing because theres no money with anything like the same frequency you hear about liberal magazines going under. Going back to what you said about people being radicalized and pushed to the right in college, when they graduate from college, there are jobs for these people. There are so many think tanks you can go and work for if youre a young conservative, so many magazines where you can get associate editor jobs that dont exist in the liberal media. What do you make of that, and of that right-wing ecosystem?

Sam: One of the things that Nate said to me in the piece is that he acknowledges that there is this conservative welfare state for unsophisticated but right-wing people who graduate from college and want to write takes, and so he has encountered people who are not particularly smart in that world. But the thing is that there are also a certain number of people like him who are really interested in ideas and are pretty good writers, and do like to think hard about intellectual topics. For those people, its an embarrassment of riches. Part of whats so attractive about it is that you not only get a job, but you get let into this rarefied world thats both really luxurious and also rebellious. For intellectual conservatives, that is just an intoxicating stew that keeps young people engaged in conservative bullshit for a long time.

Alex: I find it interesting that if youre a young left-winger on campus, there is no network that will invite you to retreats to drink scotch with rich people, rich leftists. Even if youre a normal progressive, your entry into this world might be working for the worlds worst boss at a nonprofit, or being abused in a campaignthe lowest rung of the campaignor freelance writing for no money. I wonder if the right has this way of identifying their future talent, grooming it, and even sort of spoiling it in that way. Why do they do it so differently?

Sam: Well, to take on the left side of it, I think one of the things is that the power centers of the Democratic Party are controlled by mainstream liberals. Theyre not scouring the campuses for, like, really sparked Marxists to give internships to, and to be a mainstream liberal, it has much less of this kind of rebellious quality. Its just kind of like being invited into the power elite in a sort of uncomplicated way. Whereas right-wingers, even though we may think of this as delusional, they still think of themselves as a rebellious, insurgent troupe of outsiders with dangerous ideas, and therefore they feel that they need to teach their new, up-and-coming talent a sort of countertradition of American history and of political philosophy. On the left, there is no comparable thing. Id like it, as a left-winger who likes reading books, to get paid to live in Pomona for a week and read Karl Polanyi. That sounds good.

Alex: I would love a fellowship. I would love for someone just to give me a fellowship of some kind.

Laura: Its easier to offer someone the feeling of entering this glamorous elite if your whole thing is hierarchy. The right has this built-in advantage: This is what we believe, and were going to pull you up into it to be one of the important people. And the whole thing on the left is like, No, we want equality! We want everyone to be treated the same and to have the same opportunities.

Alex: I want everyone to get fellowships! Everyone, every working American, deserves a fellowship. I believe this very strongly.

Sam: Thats a really good point, Laura. We have incompatible goals. We dont want to create an elite elect who understand the true nature of society and then can direct it from on high.

Laura: I think its the same with the funding, too, for these magazines, for these think tanks. Its completely consistent with a right-wing view of the world that you are going to make lots of money and then dump it into an organization so that you can control what people think. Thats not really what left-wing donors are trained to do.

Sam: I think that you can have this experience as a liberalmaybe not as a revolutionary leftist.

Laura: You can have this experience if youre a liberal who is like, Im going to come up with some health care plans that will minimize the amount of coverage we offer to people with stage-four cancer.

Sam: Exactly.

Laura: Speaking of this whole ecosystem, Claremont is something that comes up in the piece. Can you explain for the uninitiated what that is?

Sam: The Claremont Institute is a right-wing, socially conservative think tank in California. Claremont was one of the first places that came out and said, Lets go for Trump. Because of its populism, its nationalism, its way more aggressively patriotic. Claremont has been punching way above its historic weight in the Trump era, and since Trump, playing a role in trying to justify his coupin effect, playing a role in bringing more illiberal and scary strains into acceptable conservative discourse. A lot of the people who are these young New Right figures move through its very robust programming and fellowships for young conservatives.

Laura: Going back to the coup thingyou mentioned that John Eastman, who wrote the memo on how Trump could try to stay in office despite losing the election, is associated with Claremont.

Sam: Yeah. Hes a legal scholar, a constitutional scholar, associated with them. He wrote the memo for the vice president telling him how he could constitutionally make it so that Trump would stay in power, basically.

Alex: Some of the people youve talked to, I think, are actually surprisingly realistic about the unlikelihood of their vision of society happening democratically. But my question is: Are they going to install a Catholic theocracy, though? Like, regardless, are they going to do that?

Sam: I dont know. I actually dont know if I have a great answer to this question. Internal to conservative debates and even internal to people who are sympathetic to New Right goals, theres an acknowledgment that the public is really not with themthe conservative public, even. Trumpism doesnt represent some victory for hard-core conservatives, like Catholic hierarchical authoritarians. Its more like a victory for Jacksonian libertarian impulses. Tanner Greer, this right-wing blogger who is quite smart, wrote this blog post about this discrepancy between the means of the New Right and their ends. His line is, Pity the Whig who wishes to lead the Jacksonian masses!that in effect, they are inheritors of some sort of patrician, pietistic, Northeastern puritanical tradition, which wants to impose all these orthodoxieswhich is not really what Trumpism represents. That said, if these people are serious about trying to impose this moral orthodoxy on America, then thats why they become more sympathetic to things like John Eastman telling Trump, You can keep power, no matter what, or people like Adrian Vermeule, whos a Harvard integralist who believes that you should use the administrative statewhich used to be the thing that the conservatives hated more than anythingyou should use the levers of power and the administrative state to nudge the moral orthodoxy of America toward Catholic theology, that you should use the unaccountable powers of the state, nondemocratic powers, to achieve their ends. And so the reason that theres this sympathy, I think, for countermajoritarianism, for anti-democratic measures, for state power through the bureaucracy as opposed to through the legislature, is that they know that their ideas are really not a majoritarian proposition.

Alex: Well, Im alarmed now. Sam, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

Sam: As you can see, I could talk about this forever.

Laura: I feel like we very rarely end on a note of being alarmed.

Alex: Not usually, yeah.

Laura: Well be like, Oh, this thing we were talking about didnt actually exist.

Alex: Its fine!

Sam: Wait, so we dont have to be worried about the rats? Was that the takeaway?

Alex: No more worried than usual was our conclusion.

Sam: Were more concerned about Catholic theocracy than rats.

Alex: Than rats, Havana syndrome

Laura: Or cops dying from seeing fentanyl without touching it or taking it.

Alex: It was really nice talking to you, Sam.

Sam: You too.

Laura: Before we end the show, I have a correction. On our recent episode about rats, I said that 311 doesnt have a rat response squad. A listener from D.C. wrote in to say thats actually wrong: Many cities have a whole process for responding to rat complaints. So we looked into this, and the New York City Health Department says that after you call 311, Your complaint will be routed to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The health department will inspect the property within two weeks of receiving the complaint, unless the property was recently inspected. My apologies for getting that wrong. If you want to know more about the state of rats in New York, I can highly recommend checking out the rat information portal at nyc.gov/rats.

Alex: Im sorry, I cant hear the phrase the state of rats in New York without my mind immediately going to Albany.

Laura: Well, do you have a URL recommendation?

Alex: I dont knowwould there be a landing page for Cuomos book?

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The Illiberal Upstarts Trying to Reinvent Conservatism - The New Republic