Category Archives: Libertarian

Henry George, a 19th century reformer who famously favored an end to all taxes except a levy on land, believed his system would allow us to "approach" the "abolition of government" as a coercive force. He also wrote that his single tax could fund various public services, transforming the state into "a great co-operative society." Depending on which way you tilt your head, he can sound like he's either almost an anarchist or almost a social democrat.

In Land and Liberty, the Georgetown University historian Christopher William England shows that both sides of George's thinking bore fruit after his death.

In the early 20th century, George's followers found homes in a host of progressive reform movements and progressive-run governments. But other followerssometimes the same followershelped create contemporary libertarianism. (Some even had a hand in contemporary conservatism: He kept it low-key, but National Review founder Bill Buckley was a George fan.) By the time the New Deal arrived, Georgists sometimes found themselves lining up on opposite sides of the era's debates.

Perhaps because he is so hard to classify, George is often misremembered as a momentarily popular radical of the Gilded Age, his influence on later movements forgotten. England restores him to his place in political history, both in the U.S. and abroad. (George's international fans stretched from Cuba's Jos Mart to China's Sun Yat-senfigures later honored in name but not in spirit by Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong.) And while England mostly traces George's influence on modern liberalism, he does not ignore Georgism's libertarian current. As he notes, even progressive-minded Georgists often clashed with actual Progressives: While the "dominant strands of Progressivism are now seen as opposed to individualism," most Georgists "were classically liberal, individualistic, and even libertarian on questions like vice enforcement and regulation."

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Review: 'Land and Liberty' Charts Henry George's Influence - Reason

Szymon Marciniak will fulfill his role as the referee for the Champions League final after the Pole apologized for participating in an event associated with a right-wing movement, Europe's football governing body UEFA said on Friday.

UEFA were investigating his presence at an event organized in Katowice, southern Poland on Monday, saying they abhor the values that are promoted by the group, but kept him on as the referee after an apology and clarification from an anti-discrimination body.

I want to express my deepest apologies for my involvement and any distress or harm it may have caused, Marciniak said in a statement.

Upon reflection and further investigation, it has become evident that I was gravely misled and completely unaware of the true nature and affiliations of the event in question, he went on to say.

The Polish referee Szymon Marciniak has been appointed to officiate the UEFA Champions League final between Manchester City and Inter Milan.

Marciniak spoke at an event organized by Sawomir Mentzen, who is co-chairman of the right-wing and libertarian political alliance, Confederation Party which is polling third in autumns parliamentary election.

Marciniak, 42, is one of Europe's top referees and also officiated the World Cup final in Qatar when Argentina beat France.

Manchester City face Inter Milan in the Champions League final at Istanbul's Ataturk Olympic Stadium on June 10.

source: Reuters

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Polish ref cleared of wrongdoing, will take charge of Champions ... - TVP World

Back in January, when he was forced to dole out gifts and dangle committee assignments to the 21 Republicans blocking his path to the House Speakership, Kevin McCarthy looked as if he had traded real power for a lofty title. McCarthy, after all, eventually won the gavel, but only after handing his opponents a giant red detonation trigger known as the Motion to Vacate clausea procedural move that would allow any aggrieved conference member to initiate a vote of no confidence. As I reported at the time, and in the months since, McCarthy had essentially made himself a hostage of the far-rightthe Taliban 20, as the insurgent group was calleda potentially untenable situation that seemed doomed to unravel as soon as McCarthy faced a real test, such as negotiating a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

And yet, surprisingly, over the past week or so, McCarthy succinctly neutered his opposition, winning over former enemies and passing a remarkably moderate, down-the-middle spending bill with an overwhelming majority of both Republicans and Democrats. Jim Jordan, the McCarthy rival who was supported by the 20 for the speakership, whipped support for the bill. Thomas Massie, a libertarian debt-clock obsessive who could have spiked the deal, waved it through committee. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most far-right members of the caucus, has become an unlikely ally: Republicans have huge wins in this fight, she tweeted on Wednesday, celebrating the package.

The Taliban 20 have also backed down. On Thursday morning, Im told, key members held a conference call to discuss their next movesincluding the possibility of striking back at McCarthy with a vote of no confidence. Shortly afterward, however, Rep. Matt Gaetz, the groups informal leader, told the media that the motion to vacate was the furthest thing from their minds. Behind the scenes, too, members and their outside allies came to the conclusion that this was not the time for a coup.

Excerpt from:

The Taliban 20's McCarthy Red Line - Puck

Leo Morris

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine,1971

I dont know if John Lennon was self-aware enough to see the irony of a filthy rich superstar longing for a utopia in which everything belongs to everybody, so nobody has to do without anything, the perfect equality within our reach if we just wish for it hard enough.

But before he was murdered in 1980, he was getting there, slowly but surely. He didnt quite become a full-fledged minimal government necessary libertarian who knew that property rights and human rights are not mutually exclusive, but in fact one and the same. He did grow up a little, though, becoming a family man who understood that freedom begins and ends with what each individual is allowed to do and how much he gets to own of what he has accomplished.

What I used to be is guilty about money, he said in one of his last interviews Because I thought money was equated with sin. I dont know. I think I got over it, because I have to either put up or shut up, you know. If you are going to be a monk with nothing, do it. Otherwise, I am going to try to make money, make it. Money itself isnt the root of all evil.

Let us all hope the United States Supreme Court is on the same learning curve that John Lennon was.

Government has two roles when it comes to private property: To protect those who own it against the machinations of those who do not, and to be cautious when taking any of it for the public good. When the government fails at the latter, it makes it hard to believe it is serious about the former.

Which has so often been the case that there should be an addendum to the national motto of In God we trust give em an inch, and theyll take a mile.

The nadir came with the despicable Kelo vs. City of New London in 2005, in which a 5-4 majority ruled that the Connecticut city taking someones property for a public purpose was the same thing as taking it for a public use constitutionally speaking. But use had always meant something for the public good, such as a dam or a road. Purpose meant whatever might benefit government coffers.

So, in Kelo, the court authorized taking property from one private owner and giving it to another, one that promised to economically develop it and bring in more tax revenue. The court thus legalized thuggery, merging the two roles of governments property function and allowing gross violation of both of them.

There are some signs, thank goodness, that the court has grown up a little since then.

In two rulings this term both unanimous the court has put some brakes on the governments cavalier treatment of private property. Even if there is scant evidence for that conclusion, perhaps you will allow me to Imagine the best.

In one ruling, the court ruled for a 94-year-old Minnesota woman whose home was taken for failure to pay a $15,000 property tax bill. The county sold the property for $40,000 and decided to keep the extra $25,000. No, the court said; that violated the just compensation wording of the Constitution.

The ruling was met with strong approval across the political spectrum, from the very conservative Pacific Legal Foundation to the very liberal ACLU. Nobody likes to see ordinary, defenseless people preyed upon by powerful bullies. It was similar to the reaction in an Indiana case from a few terms ago, when the court ruled that authorities violated the excessive fines clause by seizing a $42,000 Land Rover from a criminal who had been sentenced to probation and a $1,200 fine on a drug charge.

In the other ruling, the court ruled in favor of an Idaho couple and against the EPA, which had required them to get a federal permit to build on their property because it had a wetland, even though it was not connected to anything outside the property by a navigable waterway, a plain requirement of the legislative authorization.

This ruling was not unanimously approved, being decried by a lot of people who seem still confused by the whole public good, use and purpose justification for violating private property rights. They are still living in the 1970s, stuck in the Early John Lennon method of wishing a better world into existence. If the government says everybody needs your property, why are you being so selfish?

The human right of every man to own his own life implies the right to find and transform resources to produce that which sustains and advances life, said economist Murray N. Rothbard. That product is a mans property. That is why property rights are foremost among human right and why any loss of one endangers the others.

He wrote that in 1959, so lets forgive him saying man instead of person. The thought still rings true.

And John Lennon, self-described troublemaking son of a family-deserting merchant seaman, who through talent and hard work became part of one of the most famous songwriting duos in history, could not have said it better.

Leo Morris, columnist for The Indiana Policy Review, is winner of the Hoosier Press Associations award for Best Editorial Writer. Morris, as opinion editor of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, was named a finalist in editorial writing by the Pulitzer Prize committee. Contact him at [emailprotected]

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Morris: Property: Imagine it anew - Greenfield Daily Reporter

Weekend Reading on Womens Representation is a compilation of stories about womens representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the worldwith a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!

Happy Pride Month! This weeks Weekend Reading covers the good news and bad news surrounding women and underrepresented communities.

Danielle Smith and Rachel Notley may both be women, but they havedifferent ideasof what being Albertas next premier means. Smith is a libertarian and sees the job as protecting a womans right to make her own health choices and then getting the heck out of the way. Notley, previously a premier and a progressive, would have the state actively promote gender equality.

While applauding women in leadership in 2023 carries a whiff of retrograde politics, the reality is that female leaders, to say nothing of female leaders of colour, remain a rarity in this country. Canada has seen just one female prime minister. Even then, Kim Campbell got the job 30 years ago when her predecessor retired and governed for just five months before losing a general election and her own Vancouver seat, to boot.

When it comes to gender equity in Canada, the provincial record is slightly better than the federal 14 women have served as premier of a province or a territory. Nowhere has a woman been more likely to get the top office than in Alberta. Three of this provinces past six premiers have been women, with Smith and Notley already on that list.

This week, aNew York Times MagazinearticleCan the California Effect Survive in a Hyperpartisan America?caught our eye, as it reinforces the importance of local politics. With Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) having declared she will run for Sen. Dianne Feinsteins seat next cycle, many have suggested thatBuffy Wicks, a 45-year-old State Assembly member who resides in the 12th district, run for her seat.

Wicks won her last election with over 85 percent of the vote. But Wicks doesnt want a higher-level office.

Soon enough, however,Wicks put out a statementthat, humbled as she was by the suggestion, she wouldnt be seeking the seat. In March, I met Wicks at her office in Sacramento, where she was seated between a window overlooking the city and pictures from her years in the Obama administration. She told me that aside from the ego boost of having House of Representatives in her obituary, there was little for Congress to offer her. Her current job is bigger and more important, she argued, than much of what happens in Washington. I pass big bills here, Wicks told me. Why would I walk away from my ability to do that and go be one of 435 people in a very divided House that does not have a great track record of actually accomplishing anything?

Consider, she said, an internet-privacy bill she drafted last year, called theAge-Appropriate Design Code. It requires websites to ratchet up their default privacy settings to protect children from online tracking and data collection. The bill wassignedby Gov. Gavin Newsom over theopposition of the tech industry,which argued that it was too complicated to implement and tantamount to a state law setting national policy. That, in fact, was the point: Wicks passed the law with help from a member of Britains House of Lords, who had created similar regulations in her country, in the hope that if Britain and California passed the same rules, a global standard was likely to follow.

TheAssociated Presslaunched a new series this month that examines health disparities experienced by Black Americans across a lifetime. The first chapter is entitled: Why do so many Black women die in pregnancy?One reason: Doctors dont take them seriously.

What should have been a joyous first pregnancy [for public heath instructor Angelica Lyons] quickly turned into a nightmare when she began to suffer debilitating stomach pain.

Her pleas for help were shrugged off, she said, and she was repeatedly sent home from the hospital. Doctors and nurses told her she was suffering from normal contractions, she said, even as her abdominal pain worsened and she began to vomit bile. Angelica said she wasnt taken seriously until a searing pain rocketed throughout her body and her babys heart rate plummeted.

Rushed into the operating room for an emergency cesarean section, months before her due date, she nearly died of an undiagnosed case of sepsis.

Her experience is a reflection of the medical racism, bias and inattentive care that Black Americans endure. Black women have the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States 69.9 per 100,000 live births for 2021, almost three times the rate for white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

RepresentWomen knows how important it is to look abroad to understand better what works and what doesnt regarding systems strategies that remove barriers to womens political power. (If you want to learn more, check out our latest research memo,Voting Systems and Womens Representation: Lessons from Around the World and the Case for Proportional Ranked Choice Voting in the UnitedStates.)

This week, the Times of Israelreportedthat Israel is ranked the lowest for gender equality of all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The OECD uses a powerful tool called theSocial Institutions & Gender Indexthat deploys the following methodology:

Toi Staffof The Times of Israel reports:

Israel scored lowest among the 38 OECD countries in a recent gender equality index, scoring less than half the average for many Western nations.

The OECD Social Institutions & Gender Index is marked from 0 to 100, with zero indicating no gender discrimination. Israel scored 33.4, compared to 20.1 for the US, 12.1, for the UK, 10.2 in France, 15.9 in Romania, and 24.7 in Turkey.

The ranking places Israel and Japan (33.3) as the OECD countries with the widest gender equality gaps

Ben Gvir heads Otzma Yehudit (Jewish power), the most extremist faction in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus coalition with far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties

In March, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation decided to reject a bill initiated by the previous coalition to introduce electronic tracking of domestic violence offenders, with Ben Gvir promising to bring a more balanced version that also tackles false accusations against men.

In response to anadvertisementcentered around trans women by Starbucks India, a new opinionpieceby Outlook India discusses the nuances of rainbow capitalism during Pride Month. While companies have the platform to raise awareness about LGBTQ+ issues, rainbow capitalism risks reducing queer identities to a passing trend or slogan. A more genuine way to celebrate pride month is by including LGBTQ+ individuals on all seniority levels in workplaces.

Many companies prefer to bring out ads online during the pride month for promotional purposes, but if we may ask them- how many of them hire queer individuals? How many are not doing labor rights violations? Starbucks has been known for underpaying the employees and union busting, how can a company like that claim to be inclusive by mere ads ? says Meghna Mehra, a member of the All India Queer Association (AIQA).

Major corporate houses in India have been at the forefront of campaigns fostering LGBTQ+ inclusion. According to the first ever global analysis done by the Boston Consulting Group on how companies are treating members of the community, more and more Indian companies are adopting a no-discriminative inclusion policy. This includes some of the marquee names of India Inc like Reliance Industries, Mahindra and Mahindra, Godrej and Tata Steel.

But ironically, the same corporations are reportedly simultaneously functioning as a major source for donations and electoral bonds to a political party which has often been under the scanner due to its policies and bills against the LGBTQ+ community, according to reports.

The hypocrisy is not limited to India. Corporates across the world that are eager to wave their flags during June, support anti-gay and homophobic politicians via donations. According to a report by Forbes, nine of the biggest, most LGBTQ-supportive corporations in America gave about $1 million or more each to anti-gay politicians in the last election cycle.

OurWomen Experts in Democracy Directoryis finally out!

This is a great resource for finding qualified and knowledgeable women experts in the democracy reform space for events, conferences, boards, and more.The directory includes experts from a wide range of fields and backgrounds, and its a great way to ensure that women are represented in conversations about democracy. Clickhereif you would like to join the directory.

On a lighter note: Its been a great year for strawberries in my garden.

And Mountain Laurel is lovely:

Thats all for this week! Have a great weekend and happy almost summer!

Up next:

U.S. democracy is at a dangerous inflection pointfrom the demise of abortion rights, to a lack of pay equity and parental leave, to skyrocketing maternal mortality, and attacks on trans health. Left unchecked, these crises will lead to wider gaps in political participation and representation. For 50 years, Ms. has been forging feminist journalismreporting, rebelling and truth-telling from the front-lines, championing the Equal Rights Amendment, and centering the stories of those most impacted. With all thats at stake for equality, we are redoubling our commitment for the next 50 years. In turn, we need your help, Support Ms. today with a donationany amount that is meaningful to you. For as little as $5 each month, youll receive the print magazine along with our e-newsletters, action alerts, and invitations to Ms. Studios events and podcasts. We are grateful for your loyalty and ferocity.

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Weekend Reading on Women's Representation: Stereotypes Can ... - Ms. Magazine

Fox Business is shutting down Kennedy, the nightly program hosted by Lisa Kennedy Montgomery in the 7 p.m. time slot, and replacing it with reruns of Larry Kudlows namesake show.

Kennedy will air for the last time on Thursday. The show had a seven-month hiatus in 2020, with the network citing the demands of the evolving pandemic crisis coverage at the time.

Montgomery, a host since 2015, will remain with Fox, a spokesperson confirmed to TheWrap. The political libertarian has a background in pop culture that includes experience as an MTV VJ, is a frequent panelist on Fox News Outnumbered and guests on The Five, and also has a podcast, Kennedy Saves the World. She is currently on a comedy tour with Jimmy Failla of Fox News Radio.

Maria Bartiromos Wall Street fills the time slot on Fridays, which will also see Barrons Roundtable replace Wall Street Journal at Large with Gerry Baker, in the 7:30 p.m. slot, Broadcasting & Cable reported. Barrons Roundtable currently airs Saturdays at 10 a.m. Baker will continue to contribute to Fox News Media, the report said.

Kudlow, who served an economic policy advisor and director of the National Economic Council under President Donald Trump, joined the network in 2021 after his White House stint.

Infamously, Kudlow was caught in his debut show on a hot mic saying bulls multiple times while a clip of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris aired, leading to an on-air apology.

He previously was a senior contributor for CNBC, which he joined at its founding in 1989, and a host of The Larry Kudlow Show. He also hosted a talk radio show on politics and economics on WABC.

Prior to his media career, Kudlow worked in various capacities in politics, first as a Democrat and later switching parties. He worked in the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan.

Also Read: James Van Der Beek Becomes Fox News Favorite Actor After Anti-Biden Rant (Video)

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Fox Business Shuts Down Kennedy, Will Replace With Kudlow Reruns - Yahoo Entertainment

Religious freedom is a staple of the American experiment. How religious freedom is practiced is another story. While many Christians, since the Moral Majority movement under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, have attempted to push Christian values into schools and the local and national laws, the aftermath has been a reversal of the desired outcome. Gay marriage is legal nationally. Marijuana is legal in many states. Singleness among young people is up. The country has moved less toward the right-wing Christian platform and more toward a liberal libertarian stance. People want to live their lives, and people want their neighbors to live their lives, too. In fact, despite the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, Gallups 2022 poll stated that eight out of 10 Americans want abortion legal in some capacity. Yet, this still doesnt mean the right-wing politicians have changed their offense in the arena of religious discourse. With Texas leading the charge in framing the 2024 platform, expect the GOP to out Christian each other, as it is the 11th commandment in GOP politics.

In late May, Republicans in Texas attempted to pass a bill that would require the Ten Commandments to hang in every classroom. CNN reported, Senate Bill 1515 was effectively killed early Wednesday morning after House lawmakers did not meet a midnight deadline for a vote that would have advanced the bill for a third and final passage. [A bill that would have required Texas public schools to display the Ten Commandments has failed, Ashley Killough and Tina Burnside, May 24, 2023.]

While this might be heartbreaking to many God-fearing citizens, the fact that it didnt pass in the end has a conspiracy cloud hovering over it. How could it get so far but not pass? Unless the bill was Republican virtue signaling to begin with.

CNN described the heart of the bill: The bill, authored by Republican state Sen. Phil King, requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in a conspicuous place in each classroom in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom.

While some might state this as a simple loss, I cannot help but wonder if the Ten Commandments debate was simply a way for Texas politicians to throw breadcrumbs to their constituents. Because while Im sure there are many authentic Christian men and women within the Texas Republican Senate, can anyone argue that Republicans are the party of religious values?

The Ten Commandments argue to have no god before the Jewish/Christian one, to not covet your neighbors wife or goods, to not steal, to not lie, etc. Is that really the face of Donald Trumps MAGA party? Are Gods commandments, passed on by Moses, really the values of capitalism and die-hard patriotism? One could argue the current GOP value system puts country before God like an idol. Heck, there was a literal golden statue of Trump at CPAC 2021. And for those who havent read their Old Testament lately, the Jewish people built a golden calf while Moses was being instructed by God on how the law should be lived out. Though I would argue Trump is more of a golden donkey.

This battle for the Ten Commandments in schools is an old one. I remember this fight in the 1990s when I was in school. So why bring it up again? Because the GOP has cloaked their awful anti-people policies in religious language for 40 years now. Youd think these Christians would step back from the Torah and look to Jesus words in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:11-12) to embrace mourning, mercy, meekness, purity, peace, persecution and the poor in spirit.

Just one problem. Those ideals dont fit in a party that fights against any that disagrees with them. But if the Texas lawmakers throw out an old battle and let it quietly go away, they can get their day in the papers but not actually have to abide by any of the commandments they want in plain sight. Are you really telling me they just let the vote slip past midnight after three previous votes? Smells about as fishy as the little boys sardine lunch Jesus used to feed 5,000 people.

As the 2024 election comes closer, expect more stunts like this. Just as President Joe Biden promised student loan forgiveness he knew would never pass as quickly as he attempted, each side throws out something to look like they care. Its the 11th commandment in politics: Thou shalt virtue signal to look like thy cares.

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The 11th commandment | News | vcreporter.com - Ventura County Reporter

In 2001, the libertarian anti-tax activist Grover Norquist gave a memorable interview on NPR about his intentions. He said, I dont want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I could drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. Everything about the line was designed to provoke: the selection of a bookish and easily horrified audience, the unapologetic violence of drag and drown, the porcelain specificity of bathtub.

As propaganda, it worked magnificently. When I arrived in Washington, two years later, as a novice political reporter, the image still reverberated; to many it seemed a helpfully blunt depiction of what conservatives in power must really want. Republicans were preparing to privatize Social Security andMedicare, the President had campaigned on expanding school choice, and, everywhere you looked, public services were being reimagined as for-profit ones. Norquist himselfan intense, gleeful, ideologicalfigure with the requisite libertarian beardhad managed to get more than two hundred members of Congress to sign a pledge never to raise taxes, for any reason at all. The Republicans of the George W. Bush era were generally smooth operators, having moved from a boom-time economy to the seat of an empire, confident, at every step, that they had the support of a popular majority. Their broader vision could be a little tricky for reporters to decode. Maybe Norquist was the one guy among them too weird to keep the plans for the revolution a secret.

But, as the Bush Administration unfolded, it became harder to see the Republicans as true believers. Government just didnt seem to be shrinking. On the contrary, all around us in Washingtonin the majestic agency buildings along the Mall and in the rooftop bars crowded with management consultants flown in to aid in outsourcing, and especially in the vast, mirrored, gated complexes along the highway to Dulles, from which the war on terror was being cordinated and suppliedthe government was very obviously growing.

However much the Republicans had wanted to downsize government, they turned out to want other things morelike operating an overseas empire and maintaining a winning political coalition. Bushs proposal for privatizing Medicare was watered down until, in 2003, it became an expensive drug benefit for seniors, evidently meant to help him win relection. After beating John Kerry, in 2004, Bush announced that Social Security reform would be one of his Administrations top priorities (Ive earned capital in this election, and Im going to spend it), but within just a few months that plan had run aground, too. House Republicans saw how terribly the policy was polling and lost their nerve. Meanwhile, more drones and private military contractors and Meals Ready-to-Eat flowed to Iraq and Afghanistan and points beyond. New programs offset cuts to old ones. Norquist was going to need a bigger bathtub.

Self-identified libertarians have always been tiny in numbera handful of economists, political activists, technologists, and true believers. But, in the decades after Ronald Reagan was elected President, they came to exert enormous political influence, in part because their prescription of prosperity through deregulation appeared to be working, and in part because they provided conservatism with a long-term agenda and a vision of a better future. To the usual right-wing mixture of social traditionalism and hierarchical nationalism, the libertarians had added an especially American sort of optimism: if the government would only step back and allow the market to organize society, we would truly flourish. When Bill Clinton pronounced the era of big government over, in his 1996 State of the Union address, it operated as an ideological concession: Democrats would not aggressively defend the welfare state; they would accept that an era of small government had already begun. It almost seemedas in the famous bathtub drowning scene in the movie Les Diaboliquesas if the Democrats and the Republicans had joined together in an effort to dispatch a shared problem.

Had you written a history of the libertarian movement fifteen years ago, it would have been a tale of improbable success. A small cadre of intellectually intense oddballs who inhabited a Manhattanish atmosphere of late-night living-room debates and barbed book reviews had somehow managed to impose their beliefs on a political party, then the country. A sympathetic historian might have emphasized the mass appeal of the ideals of free minds and free markets (as the libertarian writer Brian Doherty did in his comprehensive, still definitive work Radicals for Capitalism, published in 2007), and a skeptical one might have focussed on the convenient way that the ideology advanced the business interests of billionaire backers such as the Koch brothers. But the story would have concerned a thriving idea.

The situation is no longer so simple. At first, the Republican backlash against Bushs heresies (the expensive prescription-drug benefit, the lack of progress against the national debt) cohered into the Tea Party andonce the G.O.P. establishment made its peace with the movementinto Paul Ryans stint as Speaker, with its scolding fixation on debt reduction. But that period scarcely outlasted Ryans Speakership. It was brought to an end by Barack Obamas crafty (and somewhat under-celebrated) relection campaign, in 2012, in which he effectively cast Romney-Ryan libertarianism as a stalking horse for plutocracy, rather than a leg up for small business, as Republicans claimed.

Doctrinal libertarianism hasnt disappeared from the political scene: its easy enough to find right-of-center politicians insisting that government is too big. But, between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, libertarianism has given way to culture war as the rights dominant mode. To some libertariansand liberals friendly to the causethis is a development to lament, because it has stripped the American right of much of its idealism. Documenting the history of the libertarian movement now requires writing in the shadow of Trump, as two new books do. Together, they suggest that, since the end of the Cold War, libertarianism has remade American politics twicefirst through its success and then through its failure.

In The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism (Princeton), Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi argue that things didnt have to turn out this way. Zwolinski, a philosopher at the University of San Diego, and Tomasi, a political theorist at Brown, are both committed libertarians who are appalled at the movements turn toward a harder-edged conservatism. (They are prominent figures in a faction called bleeding-heart libertarianism.) Their book is a deep plunge into the archives, in search of a primordial libertarianism that preceded the Cold War. They contend that the profound skepticism toward government and the political absolutism that characterize libertarians have animated movements across the political spectrum, and have, in the past, sometimes led adherents in progressive directions rather than conservative ones. (In the call to defund the police, for instance, the authors identify a healthy skepticism of too much centralized government.) As they see it, libertarianism once had a left-of-center valenceand could still reclaimit.

If this sounds a little optimistic, it does make for an interesting historical account. The first thinker to self-identify as libertarian, the authors point out, was the French anarcho-communist Joseph Djacque, who argued that private property and the state were simply two different ways in which social relationships could become infused with hierarchy and repression. Better to abolish both. The social Darwinist Herbert Spencer denounced imperialisms deeds of blood and rapine; the abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Lysander Spooner condemned slavery as an instance of the governments usurping natural rights. In the history of resistance to the modern state, Zwolinski and Tomasi see libertarians everywhere. This approach can sometimes come off as a land grab; my eyebrows went up when they claimed the abolitionist John Brown as a libertarian hero. Then again, Brown was a fiercely anti-government radical who sought to seize a federal armory to provision slaves for an uprising, so maybe its not much of a stretch.

All this genealogy can seem a little notional, but certain suggestive rhythms recur: Zwolinski and Tomasi show how many thinkers return to personal liberty and the right to private property as bedrocks. That isnt only an American grammarit comes from Locke and Mill, and, as The Individualists stresses, from some French sources, toobut its the one in which the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are written. Why do so many Americans own guns? Probably in part because gun ownership is protected in the Constitution. Such choices by the Founders dont make America a libertarian country, but they do insure that libertarians will be around for as long as the Constitution is.

Zwolinski and Tomasi emphasize the contingencies in libertarianisms history, but the most consequential contingency was the Cold War, which closely followed the publication, in 1944, of a core libertarian text, Friedrich Hayeks The Road to Serfdom. An austere Austrian economist who taught at the London School of Economics, Hayek had become alarmed that so many left-of-center English thinkers were convinced that economic central planning ought to outlast the Second World War, becoming a permanent feature of government. Back in Vienna, Hayek and his mentors had studied central planning, and he believed that the English were being hopelessly nave. His economic insight was that, when it came to information, no government planner, no matter how many studies he commissioned, could hope to match the markets efficiency in determining what people wanted. How much bread was needed, how many tires? Best to let the market work it out. The price system, Hayek wrote, enables entrepreneurs, by watching the movement of comparatively few prices, as an engineer watches the hands of a few dials, to adjust their activities to those of their fellows. He coupled this insight with a warning: Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and naziism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.

The Road to Serfdom, a text that relied on Austro-Hungarian historical experience to make a point about wartime English policy, was initially rejected by American publishers. But once it saw print, and won a rave in the Times, Hayek became a phenomenon. Anxious and unprepared, he was pushed by his publisher onto the stage at Town Hall, in New York City, to address an eager audience of American industrialists who were sick to death of Roosevelt. An abridged version was published by the Readers Digest in the spring of 1945, and was then made available as a five-cent reprint through the Book-of-the-Month Club, which distributed more than half a million copies.

And heres what one of the worlds greatest songs sounds like when I sing it.

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Hayeks work more or less invented libertarianism in twentieth-century America. As the Cold War wore on, his warnings about the perils of central planning gained urgency. Small libertarian think tanks, newspapers, and philanthropies appeared across the country through the nineteen-fifties.

Hayeks mentor, Ludwig von Mises, arrived in America and began teaching a seminar in Austrian economics, at N.Y.U., underwritten by a businessmans fund. The movement was insular, fractious, New Yorkish. On West Eighty-eighth Street, a late-night salon convened in the apartment of Murray Rothbard, a student of von Misess who had become the chief propagandist of libertarianisms extreme wing. (Robert Nozick, who became libertarianisms most important philosopher, dropped by.) In Murray Hill, Ayn Rand held post-midnight sessions with her own circle, which, at different times, included Alan Greenspan and Martin Anderson, who would become a leading domestic-policy adviser to Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Even to ideological allies, the Rand circlein which everyone seemed to be in psychotherapy with the novelists lover, Nathaniel Brandenappeared to be a cult. What if, as so often happens, one didnt like, even couldnt stand, these people? Rothbard asked.

Libertarian thinkers, on the page, tend to be prickly, disputatious, and drawn to absolutes, which is why they make for good copy. Those traits were deepened by an isolation from real power; they lorded over some small-circulation journals and a couple of budding think tanks, but that was basically it. Von Mises, among the crankiest of the originals, was once summoned to a small conference in Switzerland with a handful of libertarian grandeesthe few other people on earth who actually agreed with himand stormed out because they didnt agree with him enough. Youre all a bunch of socialists, he said. When Milton Friedman, the most urbane of the libertarian greats, published a pamphlet, in 1946, denouncing rent control, Rand fumed that he didnt go far enough: Not one word about the inalienable right of landlords and property owners.

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The Long Afterlife of Libertarianism - The New Yorker

Hard-right lawmakers who have for years resisted increasing the nations borrowing limit did not mince words about how they thought Speaker Kevin McCarthy fared during negotiations with President Biden over averting a federal default.

Nobody could have done a worse job, said Representative Dan Bishop of North Carolina, who said he was fed up with what he said were Mr. McCarthys lies about the deal he was going to get.

Representative Bob Good of Virginia openly marveled at how our own leadership caved to Democrats on major tenets of the debt limit bill that Republicans passed last month. Representative Chip Roy of Texas claimed the deal had torn the conference asunder and promised Republican leaders would face a reckoning.

But for all the fury about the deal by far the biggest test of Mr. McCarthys leadership since he became speaker in January few far-right Republicans have yet to seriously entertain the notion of ousting him over it.

A movement to depose Mr. McCarthy as speaker could still bubble up, particularly if he is forced to rely on Democrats to win a procedural vote to get the debt-limit deal to the floor or to lean more on Democratic votes than Republicans to pass the measure. So far, though, there has been little appetite for such a move among even the most conservative lawmakers in his conference.

Mr. McCarthy negotiated the compromise with that threat in mind, attempting to strike a careful balance: he could and likely would lose conservatives votes, but could not afford to reach a deal that so infuriated the far right that they would move to oust him. When asked on Tuesday by reporters if he was worried about whether the hard-right flank of his conference would try to remove him, Mr. McCarthy replied: No.

Under the rules House Republicans adopted at the beginning of the year that helped Mr. McCarthy become speaker, any single lawmaker could call for a snap vote to remove him from that role, something that would take a majority of the House.

One hard-right Republican so far Mr. Bishop has publicly said that he considered the debt and spending deal grounds for ousting Mr. McCarthy from his post.

Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, said on NBCs Meet the Press Now that he had discussed the issue with the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania. Lets get through this battle and decide if we want another battle, Mr. Buck said was the response.

And in what has become a hallmark of his leadership style, Mr. McCarthy has rallied the support of an influential conservative whose opposition to the deal could have doomed the bill: Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, an influential libertarian who sits on the powerful Rules Committee.

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Can McCarthy Pass the Debt Deal and Keep His Job? - The New York Times

The debt limit deal negotiated by President Biden and Speaker McCarthy has cleared its first hurdle as Congress prepares to vote on the measure before the June 5 default date.

The House Rules Committee advanced the legislation to the House floor in a vote late Tuesday evening. All four Democrats and two Republicans voted against the measure, with seven other Republicans voting in the affirmative.

The two GOP dissenters Congressmen Chip Roy and Ralph Norman have called the legislation not a good deal with no substantive policy reforms and insanity respectively.

Congressman Thomas Massie a libertarian who often votes against key spending priorities of Congressional leadership kept his cards close to his chest as the hearing kicked off, but eventually offered his blessing to the legislation.

Im reluctant to disclose how I might vote on this rule at this moment because then all the cameras leave, Mr. Massie said, which elicited a laugh from the crowd.

Mr. Massie did support advancing the bill to the House floor so that every member could express their opinions on the legislation, though he himself did not commit to voting for the bill on final passage.

If we want to control the overall amount of spending and if there are policies or things that we dont see happening that need to happen, or things that shouldnt be happening in the administrative branch, then that is our opportunity, to cut spending Mr. Massie said of budget negotiations that will happen later this year. I dont like the process that led to this bill, Im not going to lie.

Mr. Massies equivocation is a reminder that Mr. McCarthy will likely have to rely on Democrats on the House floor if he hopes to pass the bill. A center-left caucus in the House, the New Democrat Coalition, publicly endorsed the bill Monday, buoying hopes that Mr. McCarthy can count on a substantial number of Democrats.

Messrs. Biden and McCarthy have achieved a bipartisan agreement that will save our country from default until 2025 and protect our nation from economic collapse, the group said in a statement. There are 94 members of the New Democrat Coalition serving in the House.

So far, there are dozens of Republicans who have denounced the legislation. The conservative Freedom Caucus has said they are trying to have less than half of the House Republican conference vote for the final measure.

That a deal had been reached in principle was announced by Messrs. Biden and McCarthy late Saturday evening. The Fiscal Responsibility Act, as it is known, is 99 pages long and includes a number of modest changes to federal spending and regulations.

The two men agreed that the debt limit must be pushed high enough so that this level of brinksmanship does not occur in the shadow of the 2024 elections. The bill will raise the debt limit by more than $2 trillion pushing the next debt limit fight to January 2025 at the current pace of spending.

The only two spending areas to see year-over-year increases are the Pentagon and veterans services. All other discretionary spending from healthcare, education and research to green energy investments will be capped at a level that will result in hundreds of billions of dollars in savings over the next six years.

Mr. McCarthys team also won a victory by slashing the budget of the Internal Revenue Service. In total, more than $20 billion will be cut from the agency responsible for collecting taxes a 25 percent cut to its total budget.

Republicans took aim at the IRS early in this Congress, passing a bill that would rescind funding for the more than 80,000 new IRS agents who were hired as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act last year.

The Biden administration agrees with the conservative House members that the deal does not represent a significant change in federal spending. Its flat, one White House source told NBC News of the deal. Its a difference of about $1 billion. In a divided government, were not going to get the spending levels Democrats want.

Appeasing his right flank is a key priority for Mr. McCarthy. Congressman Eli Crane a Freedom Caucus member who believed the original Republican debt limit proposal did not go far enough told CNN that he has had conversations with some of his Freedom Caucus colleagues about calling for a vote of no confidence in the speaker, which could lead to another seemingly endless voting process to either retain Mr. McCarthy or choose a new leader.

It does come up from time to time, Mr. Crane said of the possibility of removing Mr. McCarthy. We look at all of the alternatives and contingency plans that could play out over the next two years.

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McCarthy-Biden Debt Limit Deal Clears First Hurdle in Key House ... - The New York Sun