Category Archives: Libertarianism

I first met Murray Rothbard when, as treasurer of the New Jersey Libertarian Party, I invited him to give the keynote address at our inaugural convention. He graciously agreed to do it for the paltry sum of $75 plus a puny chicken dinner. Prior to his talk, I introduced myself to him, and we spoke for a while about the state of the libertarian movement before I mentioned that I was a graduate student in economics and was reading some of the books and articles that he had cited in his treatise Man, Economy, and State. I never expected his reaction to my casual remark. His eyes immediately lit up and he could barely contain his enthusiasm. He feverishly searched his pockets for a pen to no avail and, when I offered him one, he asked me for my contact information and told me that he would pass it on to some people in New Jersey who had formed an Austrian economics reading group.

The following Monday I received a call from a student member of the group who invited me to join the reading circle, which was codirected by another one of my libertarian heroes, Walter Block. Soon after, I was invited to the inner sanctum of Murrays apartment in Manhattan for a personal meeting with him. I was escorted to his apartment by a veteran member of the reading group. I was very nervous on the way, because I was anticipating a somewhat formal interview, in which Murray would grill me and easily expose the staggering inadequacies in my knowledge of libertarianism and Austrian economics. But my apprehension instantly dissipated when Murray excitedly greeted me at the door with a merry Joe, my boy, its great to see you again.

It was a memorable evening. The other student and I sat on the living room rug while Murray regaled us from his couch with jokes, anecdotes, and his observations on current affairs. The conversation was light but interspersed with questions to me about my views on economic and political matters. At one point, the question of what methods were justified in recovering ones property from looters came up. Murray opined that a store owner was justified in using defensive violenceincluding deadly force if necessaryin defending his property from looters. But he believed that if the looter had already seized the property and was running away, the owner could not employ deadly force to retrieve his stolen property and had to call the police. I timidly suggested that the store owner would be justified in using deadly force if necessary to retain control of his property whether it involved defending or recovering it. Murray thought for a moment and then said: Ahh, now THATS a conversation Im willing to have.

I also recall discussing the question of how state-owned property should be disposed of after the libertarian revolution. Murray was lukewarm on my suggestion that it should be auctioned off and the proceeds divided up among taxpayers. He was also not keen on giving ownership of the property to the employees, that is, public schools to the teachers, railroads to the engineers and conductors, etc. These options would be too time consuming, would require a state-like entity to carry out, and could reward the wrong people. The overriding goal, he said, was to return all state property to productive use in the private sector as soon as possible. In addition, he pointed out that it was indispensable to maintain the relevant technological unit intact, which meant no piecemeal homesteading of parts of highways, water and sewer systems, airports, etc. The best solution, he said with a twinkle in his eye, is to give ownership of the entire physical asset to the heroes of the libertarian revolution.

Later in the evening, a surly looking attendant at a seedy parking lot directly across the street from Murrays second-floor apartment began to loudly blow on a trumpet. Since it was a hot and steamy New York summer night, Murrays living room windows were open, and the sound was cacophonous and distracting. Murray was becoming increasingly annoyed, and after a few minutes he could restrain himself no longer. He began to yell from his perch on the couch SHADDUP! SHADDUP! in perfect New Yorker slang. At this point, his wife, Joey, wisely intervened, shushed Murray, closed the windows, and brought a fan into the room. I left Murrays apartment well after 12:00 a.m.

In the years that followed, I enjoyed increasing personal contact with Murray. I saw him countless times at conferences and seminars, and regularly met him for lunch in Manhattan during semester breaks and summers. What struck me most about Murray was not just his creative genius as an economist, social theorist, and political philosopher, but the fact that he was a real person, a term that he himself often used.

A real person is one who loves liberty not as an empty abstraction, but as a real social and economic system that produces the goods, institutions, and culture that are required for flesh-and-blood human beings to live their lives peacefully, prosperously, and happily. This explains why Murray cherished and celebrated American culture and society and was proud to call it his own. Murray was an unapologetic admirer of American culture, because he viewed it as the specific historical product of the relatively libertarian and individualist American capitalist system. Thus, he loved The Godfather movies and James Bond movies, late-night visits to Dennys restaurants, and drinking martinis with his friends at the famous Algonquin Club on Forty-Fourth Street in Manhattan (where the Algonquin Round Table of famous writers, critics, and actors used to gather for lunch every day from 1919 to 1929).

A few other anecdotes about Murray the real person come to mind. Once at an Austrian economics conference in Hartford, Connecticut, Murray wanted to go to a restaurant to continue a late-night conversation he was having with me and several other graduate students. So, we all piled into my car and proceeded to search for a place to eat. We drove around for a half hour, passing numerous restaurants that had already closed. Finally, Murray could contain his frustration no longer and declared: Whats wrong with these people! Dont they realize that the Industrial Revolution occurred two hundred years ago and that we have electric lights now? Why do they stop serving hungry customers just because its dark outside? Fortunately, just as we were about to turn back toward the conference site, I spotted a pizzeria that was open for business. Murray was overjoyed and exclaimed: Joe, youre a hero of the revolution!

A few years later, I participated with Murray in a four-day conference on methodology at the US Military Academy at West Point. By the end of the second day Murray was getting bored and was eager to find entertainment outside the confines of the stodgy and somewhat oppressive atmosphere of the campus hotel. He complained to me that academics in general were too stuffy and pretentious and that we needed to break out of the hotel and go over the wall to have fun among real people. I asked the hotel concierge if he could recommend a club that featured music and dancing. He recommended an establishment that was fifteen miles away in Newburgh, New York. Six of us, including Murray, set out in a car on a route that took us along the dark winding roads through the mountainous terrain abutting the Hudson River. After a few minutes of driving, a thick fog set in and visibility decreased to ten or fifteen yards. We slowed down to twenty miles per hour. Several times we debated turning back, but on each occasion Murray exhorted us: Onward troops! Press on to our destination! We did as Murray asked and wound up having a great time, although the club was a bit of a neighborhood dive with several surly townies casting sidewise glances at our celebratory group. But Murray was just happy to sit and imbibe the atmosphere and drink while providing a hilarious running commentary on the proceedings. He was there, he told us, merely as a sociological observer. On the drive back, he serenaded us with the few lines he remembered from the disco song On the Radio by Donna Summers, which the club DJ played repeatedly that evening. Murray had a practiced musical ear and a good vocal range, and he sounded pretty good.

Perhaps Murrays greatest virtue, however, was his genuine and abiding intellectual humility. Now, Murray did not have a trace of false modesty with respect to his own monumental intellectual achievements, and he proudly acknowledged the titles Mr. Libertarian and Dean of the Modern Austrian School bestowed on him by his admirers. Yet he always generously credited his predecessors and mentors and sought to build upon their scholarship. Thus, he always considered himself, as an economist, no more than a student of Mises, and saw his own prodigious contributions to economic theory as merely attempts to advance what he called the Misesian paradigm. For example, at the famous conference in South Royalton, Vermont, which was a catalyst for the modern revival of the Austrian school, Rothbard gave a lecture in which he ventured to criticize a position taken by Mises on making ethical value judgments based on economic theory. At the time, Rothbard was nearly fifty years old, a prolific author, and one of the most accomplished and recognized Austrian economists in the world. Yet, after his talk ended, I remember him confiding to a few of us in attendance that he was still a little shaky from having publicly criticized his mentor for the first time.

Another example occurred when I met Murray at his favorite Jewish deli in Manhattan. It was sometime in the early 1990s, when he was working on his monumental two-volume treatise on the history of economic thought. Over lunch, he eagerly told me about the many new discoveries he had made: the unjustly obscure economists he had dug up; how one apparently minor economist was actually a brilliant movement builder although his influence was evil; how modern psychobabble, which he generally detested, was actually useful in explaining the thought of a famous classical economist. And on and on he went in his rapid-fire New York style of speaking. He was especially gleeful when he informed me about the novel interpretations and critiques he was developing that would puncture the overblown reputations of some of the most venerable figures in the history of economic thought. While he spoke, I rarely uttered a word, because I was fascinated by what I was learning and intent on absorbing every new idea and insight. I was also stunned by the breadth and depth of his knowledge about a subject that he had not previously written on in much detail. But he must have mistaken my uncharacteristic silence as a sign of boredom, because after about an hour he suddenly stopped and sheepishly apologized for monopolizing the conversation. I assured him that I was not bored and urged him to continue, and, to my delight, he happily resumed his discourse for another two hours or so. Later, I thought to myself, How could he think that I ever would want to interrupt him, a creative genius who was giving me a private seminar on a work in progress that was destined to be a classic as soon as it was published?

Happy Birthday, Murray! I know the world will not soon see your like again.

Link:
Recollections of Murray on His Ninety-Fifth Birthday - The Shepherd of the Hills Gazette

Running scared from a tall guy with a tricorn hat, Iowa Republicans are moving to limit competition on the ballot.

The controversial election reform bill that was rushed through the Iowa Legislature last week will, if signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds, make it harder for citizens to vote but also harder for alternative candidates to get on the ballot. The legislation drastically increases the number of signatures required for third-party and no-party candidates.

Republicans who crafted the measure probably have one Iowa man in mind: Bryan Jack Holder, four-time candidate for U.S. House in Iowas 3rd Congressional District.

Holder is a Libertarian from Pottawattamie County in western Iowa, a repeat candidate known for wearing an American Revolution-era hat and a star-spangled necktie. His 15,000 votes in 2020 were more than twice the difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates, earning Holder spoiler status. Democratic incumbent Cindy Axne won reelection against former U.S. Rep. David Young.

The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances by running for public office, as all of you have done, is the foundation stone of our constitutional and democratic republic, Holder said during an Iowa House hearing.

In Republicans imagination, theyre losing close races because Libertarian candidates are siphoning away what would otherwise be GOP votes. Some say Holder cost them the 3rd District election.

Instead of making an effort to win over voters, Republicans want to erect barriers to keep third-party candidates off the ballot.

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Senate File 413 more than doubles the number of signatures required for alternative candidates to get on their candidacy petitions from 1,500 up to 3,500 for presidential, gubernatorial and Senate candidates; more than 1,700 signatures for U.S. House candidates, up from 375.

The legislation also significantly increases the number of counties required to be represented among petition signers. Top-of-the-ballot candidates will be required to have at least 100 signatures from at least 19 counties, while U.S. House candidates will need at least 47 signatures from half the counties in the district.

The new county requirements may be unconstitutional under a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision, according to Ballot Access News. In Moore v. Ogilvie, the high court ruled that Illinois signatures-per-county requirement was a rigid, arbitrary formula that discriminates against the residents of the populous counties in the exercise of their political rights.

Its not the first time in recent history that Republicans who control Iowa State government have stifled ballot access for third-party candidates. In 2019, the Legislature approved and Reynolds signed a law to move the third-party candidates petition deadline up from August to March.

Iowas 2019 law, dubbed the incumbent protection act by critics, is the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit brought by Libertarian Party of Iowa members.

Under the legislation approved last week in the Iowa Legislature, third-party and no-party candidates will have the same condensed timeline for gathering petition signatures, but with much higher thresholds. The obvious intention is to protect vulnerable Republicans from competition.

The new election bill also tinkers with petition requirements for candidates for office in cities that have primaries or runoffs. The mark increases from 25 signatures to 100 in big cities.

Iowa has a long tradition of inclusive elections. For at least the last 10 general elections, there have not been fewer than eight presidential candidates on Iowa ballots. Back in 1992, there were a whopping 14 candidates on the ballot.

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But Iowa Republicans dont trust voters to make the right choice. They are concocting a system to filter out would-be candidates who might pose a threat to their electoral success. Its a paranoid and insecure look for a political party whose power is only growing in Iowa.

Former President Donald Trump is openly toying with the idea of creating a new political party, which would take on both Democrats and Republicans who are insufficiently loyal to Trump.

During an interview on Iowa Public Radio, Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann was asked about the prospect of a Trump third party. Kaufmann dismissed the notion.

Thats not going to happen. You want Republicans and Democrats to hold hands and sing We Are the World, try introducing a third party and making that third party immediately relevant, Kaufmann said.

The message to third parties is clear: You cant win because we wont let you.

adam.sullivan@thegazette.com; (319) 339-3156

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Threatened by Libertarians, Iowa GOP moves goal posts - The Gazette

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaking at CPAC on Saturday. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The group that puts on the Conservative Political Action Conference is called the American Conservative Union, but the first two days of speeches at this years CPAC in Orlando suggest the right-wing activists who attend the annual conclave have embraced a foreign political ideology.

Its not that the event wasnt patriotic. Each day began with the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem and countless speakers professed their love of country. Instead, it marked the further transition of the American right away from its libertarian roots to a more European model of populist politics. Government no longer was the enemy, but instead a tool to combat threats like big tech and cancel culture.

This political shift was most notable in what was not mentioned onstage. While the House of Representatives was passing a $1.9 trillion COVID bill that would, if enacted, be the most expensive piece of legislation in American history, there was little discussion of it or the national debt or a host of other former right wing bugaboos. When speaking onstage about the legislation, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was riled that spending in the legislation was misdirected in his view. He didnt criticize the underlying cost but instead waste like what he termed a Silicon Valley subway, a provision to extend a mass transit line from San Francisco through to San Jose.

Instead, the focus was on the type of culture-war red meat that had been a staple of Trumpism. There were strident warnings about Marxism and Black Lives Matter, hardline stances set out on immigration and the rise of China and newfound zeal to combat and regulate social-media companies.Politicians took turns touting their willingness to take on the left as they all tried to tap into the but he fights ethos that fueled Trumps rise.

This is not to say that libertarian tendencies disappeared. The mandate that all attendees at the event wear masks provoked ire among some attendees and required prominent signs and a reminder onstage. Speaker after speaker celebrated that they were in Florida, a state with relatively lax restrictions in place due to the coronavirus. Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, heralded her states approach to COVID, saying proudly that she never mandated masks or ordered a single business or church to close to loud applause. More than 1 in 500 South Dakotans have died of COVID-19 in the past year and the state has the second highest rate of cases in the country.But as COVID restrictions have become a culture war battleground and mask-wearing a political signal almost as potent as a hybrid Subaru or a pair of cowboy boots, these attitudes seemed to be as much about owning the libs as libertarianism.

Another sign of the Europeanization of the American conservatism was the growing presence of the international far right at the conference and even the looming specter of white nationalism. There were recorded video messages from Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, as well as hard-right politicians in Spain and Croatia.During breaks in the conference, a video from samurai futurologist Gemki Fuji repeatedly played proclaiming Trump to be a real American samurai while a right-wing South Korean politician claimed his country saw left-wing voter fraud too.

Perhaps most unsettling was the appearance of Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona on Saturday. Gosar, a hard right-wing backbencher who touted false claims of voter fraud before the assault on the Capitol on January 6, appeared on a panel on immigration less than 12 hours after appearing at a separate white-nationalist event sponsored by those who found CPAC full of squishy sellouts.

At that gathering, the six-term Arizona Republicans speech was followed by remarks from a Holocaust denier who said America needed to protect its white demographic core and called the attack on the Capitol awesome. While onstage at CPAC, Gosars first remarks, without prompting, were I want to tell you, I denounce ... white racism before shifting to the topic at hand.

Gosar is still an outlier at CPAC, but the annual event traditionally follows where conservative activists lead it, and the new nationalism of politicians like Josh Hawley has clearly replaced what Florida governor Ron DeSantis derided as the failed Republican Establishment of yesteryear. The party of Lincoln is looking more and more like the party of Le Pen.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

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The New Foreign Flavor of CPACs Red Meat - New York Magazine

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who opened his remarks with a joke about his much-criticized trip to a Cancn resort, cast conservatives as Jedi rebels against the rigid conformity of the socialist left a call to arms at an event steeped in complaints of cultural victimhood. This years conference is titled America Uncanceled.

But Mr. Cruz also had a message for members of his own party.

Theres a whole lot of voices in Washington that want to just erase the past four years, want to go back to the world before, he said. Let me tell ya right now: Donald J. Trump aint goin anywhere.

Josh Hawley, a junior senator from Missouri, after defending his efforts to contest the election results as taking a stand, proclaimed a new nationalism that included breaking up technology companies, standing up to China and tightening borders. The oligarchs and corporate media, he said, want to divide Americans with lies like systemic racism. Hours before his speech, Mr. Hawley announced legislation requiring a $15 minimum wage for corporations with revenues over $1 billion.

None of the men, its worth noting, made any reference to Mr. Biden, a sign that the party continues to lack any cohesive line of attack against the new administration.

But what was equally striking is how far the speeches differed from traditional Republican ideology. A party that has defined itself as defenders of the free market now believes big technology companies wield too much power and the government needs to put more restrictions in place. Concerns about interventionism abroad have replaced hawkish doctrine as the driving foreign policy force. Nativism has gone mainstream and the politics of cultural grievance, focused heavily around race, dominate among conservatives that once delighted in mocking sensitive liberal snowflakes.

Of course, some of this rhetoric isnt quite accurate. Although pandemic rules vary across the country, stay-at-home orders are lifted in all states and businesses are largely open in most. Even as Republicans fret about being canceled by liberals, local parties in recent weeks have censured members of Congress who strayed from overwhelming support of Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Cruz is correct that there are some Republicans who hope that the party will revert to its pre-Trump policies and rhetoric. After watching the speeches at CPAC, its hard to imagine how the party could have once rallied around a fiscally conservative, hawkish on foreign policy Republican like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, their 2012 nominee.

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CPAC and the New Republicanism - The New York Times

This week, Connie Lawson (R) announced her resignation as the Indiana Secretary of State. She was first appointed to the role in 2012 to fill the office vacated by Charlie White (R), after he received felony convictions for voter fraud, theft, and perjury.

Lawson will submit her formal resignation once Governor Holcomb selects her successor and the successor is ready to serve, according to a press release.

The mid-term vacancy perpetuates one-party tyranny, and represents an increasingly common practice to disenfranchise Hoosier voters by ensuring that Republican candidates only run as incumbents, said Tim Maguire, Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Indiana. Open races, without an incumbent, are far more competitive and give Hoosier voters a fair fight among the candidates.

In 2018, Lawsons eligibility to run for a second term was contested because she had served nearly 3 years in office to fill Charlie Whites term. Attorney William Barrett represented Lawson before the Indiana Election Commission, saying that Lawson was eligible to run, but she would have to step down when she reached the 8-year mark in March 2020.

Lawson is the longest-serving Secretary of State since Robert A. New first held the office after Indiana gained statehood in 1816. She may surpass News tenure, depending on the timing of her formal resignation.

First, the Libertarian Party of Indiana calls for all elected officials of all parties to uphold the integrity of public office by not violating the law.

Second, the Libertarian Party of Indiana calls on the incoming Secretary of State to publicly declare his or her ineligibility to run for re-election for a second time in 2026.

Third, the Libertarian Party of Indiana calls on the General Assembly to clarify the law so that time in office as a temporary appointee is included in the Constitutional limitation of serving no more than 8 years in any 12 year period.

Fourth, the Libertarian Party of Indiana calls on the General Assembly to amend the Constitution of the State of Indiana so that all gubernatorial appointees of elected offices must receive simple majority approval confirmation by the General Assembly. This rebalances power from the executive to the legislative branch, and better represents the will of the people.

Libertarians work toward smaller government that is accountable to the people of Indiana. These improvements will return power to Hoosiers, the rightful owners of all power, per Article I Section 2 of the Constitution of the State of Indiana: That all power is inherent in the people; and all free Governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety and happiness.

The Libertarian Party is the third largest political party in the United States and has been on the ballot in Indiana since 1994.

Libertarian Party of Indiana

Excerpt from:
Libertarian Party of Indiana's response to Secretary of State's resignation - Shelbynews

The Bad Election Bill is here and its bad.

House File 590 and Senate File 413, sponsored by Republican Rep. Bobby Kaufmann and Sen. Roby Smith, would cut early voting mail and in person to 21 days, down from 29 last year and from 40 in 2016.

In response, my senator, Democratic leader Zach Wahls, introduced a bill that would expand the early voting window to 45 days, which is consistent with what overseas voters get under federal law. Its going nowhere, of course, but it makes the point.

Other lowlights of the Republican bill include a lot of micromanaging of auditors to address imaginary problems like dead voters or auditors not doing list maintenance.

Voters would be moved to inactive status, the first step to cancellation, after missing just one general election, not two. Skip one governor election, which about 20 percent of voters do, and the cancellation clock starts ticking. And the inactivation happens before youre even notified by mail.

In a nod to the Libertarians, petition requirements to get on the ballot are once again raised. This is about a persistent Libertarian candidate has pulled just enough votes away from Republican David Young to allow Democrat Cindy Axne to win two terms in Congress with under 50 percent of the vote.

Requirements for nominating convention attendance are also increased, to a point where even the major parties would have difficulty seating the 25 delegates that would be required to fill a legislative district vacancy. Ill bet most legislators dont have 25 active county central committee members in their districts.

Satellite voting would, to my surprise, not be completely banned, but auditors could not set sites on their own. Only petitioned sites would be allowed. Thatll increase costs. Often, people ask nicely for a satellite before petitioning, and we schedule the three or four hours they really want. A petition obligates the auditor to six hours.

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The bill would eliminate the use of conventional postmarks to decide if a ballot is on time, and instead would only allow intelligent bar codes. Overseas mail does not have these bar codes.

The first day to request a ballot would move to 70 days before the election, which was the law through 2002. From 2004 to 2016 there was no first day to request a ballot. Then it was moved to 120 days in 2017.

My professional and political feelings differ here. In a college town where every lease turns over on Aug. 1, way-too-soon requests are a problem, and were a big problem in 2004. I was living in a high turnover apartment complex that year, and we were doorknocked in June. People request the ballot then move, and we mail the ballot to a bad address. So I liked the old 70-day law.

But when combined with later laws which require request forms to be handed in within 72 hours, 70 days would kill summer door knocking for absentee requests, which of course (in normal non-COVID years) Democrats rely on more than Republicans.

In an amendment, the bill also closes polls an hour earlier at 8 p.m.

This bill could have been even worse, but its bad enough.

Twenty-one days is bad for in person early voting. It will mean longer lines and bigger crowds; 21 days is absolutely unacceptable for mailed voting. It means anyone who is out of town or shut in who has any kind of problem mail delay, spoiled ballot, any problem at all is just out of luck. Twenty-nine days was barely enough time to fix these problems. We dont even learn about mail delivery problems for several days. Twenty-one days also compresses all the mailing out into a week and a half, burdening both the post offices and the election staffs.

This bill is on the fast track to passage, but there may still be time to get some small improvements. Auditors of both parties across the state are against this. We simply want to do our jobs and help voters, and this proposal makes that harder.

John Deeth lives in Johnson County. He writes at jdeeth.blogspot.com

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Iowa's bad election bill will stifle early voting, micromanage auditors - The Gazette

From: Kathleen Leason

Columbus

Rep. Ryan Lauer, our state representative, co-sponsored and supported House Bill 1005 that expands private school tuition assistance.

The bill increases income eligibility to a family of four earning $145,000 annually in 2022. Its worth noting that contributions to a tax-preferred account can also be used for a childs private school education up to $10,000 per year, further benefiting high-income households.

One argument Rep. Lauer gives to justify his support of this bill is that it will expand school choice for more families.

I have to askhow probable is this statement?

A quick survey of the private schools in Bartholomew County indicates there are roughly 1,500 elementary school students attending private schools. Most of these schools give enrollment priority to households who already have family members enrolled.

So, who will benefit from an expansion of the state subsidy? Will these schools undertake building projects to expand facilities to accommodate all students who wish to enroll? Probably not. It seems that this is purely a deeper subsidy to the families who already have students attending the school.

HB 1005 passed in the House last week and will move to the Senate for consideration next. Lets hope our state senators will see this bill for what it truly is: a welfare program for the wealthy.

Its interesting that Rep. Lauer began his political career as a Libertarian. Primary ideas in the Libertarian platforms are less government and minimal taxes. My, how he has drifted.

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Letter: School voucher programs benefit the wealthy - The Republic

The talk-radio host died on February 17th, aged 70

IN 1987, AMERICAS Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the airwaves, repealed the Fairness Doctrine, a policy that required broadcasters to present balanced views of controversial subjects. One year later, a former executive at ABC radio gave an opinionated but little-known talk-radio host from Sacramento a nationally syndicated show. This contravened accepted practice; most nationally known radio hosts were bland and inoffensive interviewers, the better not to alienate a range of listeners.

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Rush Limbaugh was the opposite. His shows rarely had guests or more than a few brief pre-screened callersthe better to let him expound, for hours on end, on the ills of modern American society, most of which were the fault of liberals and the left. His political view was Manichean: easy to understand and engagingly delivered. He made no effort to credit opposing views; heand by extension his listenerswere defenders of all that was good about America, while the liberalism of Democrats, as he put it, is a scourge. It destroys the human spirit. It destroys prosperity. He built this simple format into one of the most popular radio programmes in America, attracting millions of listeners and inspiring scores of imitators.

Like Donald Trump, whose presidency he championed, he styled himself a tribune of the common man, willing to say things that no one dared but everyone thought. Indeed, much as William F. Buckleys libertarian-inflected traditionalism prefigured the conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, Mr Limbaughs cocksure derisiveness, and the glee he took in angering the left, provided the stylistic underpinnings of the contemporary, Trumpist Republican Party.

And like Mr Trump, he inspired a quasi-cultic following, with fans who called themselves Dittoheads, for the propensity to agree with everything he said, even thoughor, perhaps, especially becausethe things he said could be repellent. Feminism, he maintained, was established so that unattractive women could have easier access to the mainstream of society. He called gay men perverts, mocked people dying of AIDS and treated the rare phone-in guest who disagreed with him to a caller abortionhanging up after playing the sound of a vacuum motor. He told an African-American caller to take that bone out of your nose and call me back, remarked that all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson, and said that the National Basketball Association should be renamed the Thug Basketball Association.

His first book, released in 1992, championed standard conservative views: small government, anti-environmentalism and a belief that racial relations will not be enhanced or prejudice eliminated by governmental edict. But few tuned in to hear what he was for. People wanted to hear him hate who they hated. He had particular scorn for Hillary Clinton, who he said kept her trophies in a testicle lockbox, and Barack Obama, who he mused may not have been an American citizen (he played a song on his programme called Barack the Magic Negro). He survived some embarrassing scrapes with the law, including getting stopped with Viagra prescribed for someone else in his luggage, and an oxycodone addiction. Being married four times did not seem to dent his traditionalist bona fides any more than did Mr Trumps being thrice married.

Mr Limbaugh continued broadcasting until February 2nd, though by then he was something of an elder statesman. The day after he announced that he had advanced lung cancer, Mr Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Americas highest civilian honour, previously awarded to, among others, Jonas Salk, Felix Frankfurter and Martin Luther King junior. Yet that just testifies to how deeply Limbaughism had been absorbed into the conservative mainstreamits influences discernible in Trumpist Republicans demand for complete fealty, and their casting of political opponents, not as fellow Americans with whom they disagree but as evil. Those attributes make for entertaining radio. But they make governing impossible.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Tower of babble"

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Rush Limbaugh galvanised and embodied the modern American right - The Economist

Political paternalism the belief that those in government possess more knowledge, wisdom, and ability to plan, guide, and direct various aspects of peoples lives better than those people themselves comes in many forms. The American progressive movement is euphoric with being, once again, close to power with the new Biden Administration in the hope of intensifying and extending their version of political paternalism on the country.

But there are conservative brands of political paternalism, as well. Now in the aftermath of Donald Trumps defeat in the presidential election, visions of a new conservative paternalism are being offered to save the conservative movement from both the collectivism of the progressives and from the free market libertarians who are accused of ignoring that there is more to life than liberty and material wealth. An example of such a call for a new conservative political paternalism may be found in an article by Oren Cass,A New Conservatism: Freeing the Right from Free Market Orthodoxy(Foreign Affairs, March/April 2021).

Mr. Cass served as a domestic policy director for Mitt Romneys presidential bid in 2012, and in 2020 founded American Compass, a think-tank focused on post-Trump conservative politics, after having worked for a time as a research fellow with the Manhattan Institute. He never uses the term political paternalism in this article; it nonetheless remains a fact that what he advocates is a conservative agenda for activist government that can bring about a coalition of social and economic interest groups in ways different from that of the progressives in the Democratic Party to assure Republican successes in future elections.

It is not that Mr. Cass is against free market ideas and policies, per se; indeed he thinks they were useful and even necessary back in the 1980s, when social conservatives, foreign policy interventionists, and free market libertarians needed to help win the Cold War being fought with the Soviet Union, and defeat a variety of misguided domestic policies. But that was then, and this is now.

Times have changed, as they always do. Mr. Cass says that in the post-Cold War world conservative economic thinking atrophied, and libertarian ideas ossified into market fundamentalism in the controlling hands of an unnamed clique of market fundamentalists who have become wrongly identified with conservatism. Then came along Donald Trump who lacked any discernible ideology or capacity for governing. Trumpism simply has been a cult of personality, which now that he is off the presidential stage of history, leaves the future direction of a conservatism reborn up for grabs.

So, what are the sins of those who advocate this market fundamentalism, Mr. Casss opposition to which is not much different from its rejection by the broad coalition of those on the political left? It seems that libertarians, which is just another name for market fundamentalists in his political lexicon, are obsessed with liberty to the exclusion of other values. We are told:

Markets reduce people to their material interests, and reduce relationships to transactions. They prioritize efficiency to the exclusion of resilience, sentiment, and tradition. Shorn of constraints, they often reward the most socially corrosive behaviors and can quickly undermine the foundations of a stable community for instance, pushing families to commit both parents to full-time market labor or to strip-mining talent from across the nation and consolidating it in a narrow set of cosmopolitan hubs.

Alas, Mr. Cass declares, Libertarians have no time for such nuance. Being unable to distinguish between what markets can and cannot do and unwilling to acknowledge the harm that they can cause, they, instead, blindly pursue the unquestioned priorities of personal freedom and consumption.

What markets, free and uncontrolled by political constraints, tend to do, he warns, is undermine traditions and morals,Co weaken communities, and leave no sense of the common tasks for national betterment. In a list of concerns not much different from those of the progressives, Mr. Cass insists that libertarian market fundamentalists give no consideration to the deleterious effects of income inequality, concentration of community-impacting decision-making in large corporate hands, and place seemingly no importance on the cultivating and fostering of the right values in society as a whole and the educational system in particular.

So, what does he propose as his activist political agenda for a new conservatism? Well, it really comes down to pretty much the same conservative paternalism of times in the past. The national interest comes before the individuals own interest, as reflected in his calling for more of the same Mercantilist directing of economic affairs to assure that America does not lose out to a rising China. Industries, clearly, need to be protected, sectors of the economy must be supported, as well as directed as to where businesses are to be located, especially since Mr. Cass wants to decentralize where people live and work in a more balanced pattern away from large metropolitan areas.

In other words, this would be his own form of central planning of foreign trade and domestic industry, along with some type of national zoning designed to create the population distributions between town and country that he considers to be better than at present. No doubt, Mr. Cass would loudly object that he is not a socialist wanting to plan the economy. But, in fact, this would simply be a form of government direction of economic affairs that in the France of the 1950s was called indicative planning. The government does not directly control and command the countrys economic affairs; instead, it uses fiscal and regulatory tools to nudge private enterprises into those directions and activities the government social engineers want, while seeming to leave it all up to private sector businessmen within a tamed market economy. Nevertheless, a planning mindset and mechanism by any other name still remains political paternalism and social engineering.

How does Mr. Cass propose to deal with economic inequality and the imbalances between workers and employers? First, it might be pointed out that his despair that market fundamentalism has forced both parents in a household to earn a living in the labor market has a lot to do with the tax burdens on the average American family that create the necessity for there to be more than one breadwinner. Or perhaps he has not noticed the various amounts of income the government siphons off out of peoples paychecks, particularly, in places like California and New York and many other states, before there is any money left to bring home to cover household expenses. The fiscal follies of the federal and state governments in funding the interventionist-welfare state cannot be placed at the door of the free market. This has more to do with government-knows-best fundamentalism.

Furthermore, he seems to have an implied image of the little woman (which in our transgender world can be a him or a her depending upon how they feel that day when they wake up) should be staying at home cooking away at the hearth. Well, as Mr. Cass says himself, times change, and many women, besides any needed family income, would prefer to work outside of the home pursuing a career and having multiple sides to a meaning to their life. Many of them might not appreciate a conservative nudger trying to manipulate how they live and for what values in mind through household-focused indicative planning.

He clearly feels that the degree to which government directly redistributes income undermines a variety of the traditional virtues that he values. But he is uncomfortable with the tried and true market fundamentalist methods of low taxes and deregulated competitive capitalism to foster the physical and human capital investment that over time raises the productivity and wages of those employed to bring about rising incomes across groups and individuals in society as well as reducing government-induced inequalities in income.

Instead, Mr. Cass wants a conservative government to support labor unions. He sees the path to a better America for the average worker through collective bargaining and required labor union participation on the corporate boards of private enterprises. Well, that certainly is more like an older conservative traditionalism; medieval guild memberships and closed shops to assure that the union bosses or excuse me, worker representatives on corporate boards can strong arm excuse me once more, recommend higher wages to their co-managers on how those businesses are operated. (See my article,Free Labor Markets vs. Bidens Push for Compulsory Unionism.)

Perhaps, Mr. Cass should be less quick to castigate the free market economists insights that he pooh-poohs as outdated claims to eternal and universal truth, and turn to the fact that minimum wage laws oftentimes leave out permanently unemployed segments of the unskilled and public school poorly educated young and minority members of society. Time and place do not change the fact that no employer will voluntarily hire and pay someone more than they think to be the value of an individuals work in their enterprise, regardless of what government commands to be the legal minimum wage rate at which employment may be given. (See my articles,Freedom and the Minimum WageandPrice Controls Attack the Freedom of Speech.)

He should also be less impatient with how government regulations and interventions prevent or inhibit the ability to open and expand small businesses that, otherwise, enable greater self-employment and hiring of more people in local communities that suffer from higher degrees of low income and lack of job opportunities. Or how such interventions and regulations limit business competition and protect established and larger firms that Mr. Cass feels too frequently dominate markets. (See my article,Dont Confuse Free Markets with the Interventionist State.)

Mr. Casss mindset is no different in the arena of education. He does not see a path to better schooling and the knowledge and skills that students require through either the conservative emphasis on competitive school choice or the libertarian proposal for simply privatizing schooling altogether and taking the education business completely out of government hands. No, he shows himself to be an educational central planner here just as much as his progressive opponents.

He simply wants government schools to do the teaching and training with a focus that he considers the right ones for the country as a whole, rather than how the social justice warriors see it. High schools would emphasize practical skills and partner with local businesses for on-the-job training before they enter the workplace. As for college and university degrees, they would be focused on preparing graduates for a real world where they could cover the costs of the higher education they had earned. One wonders what has happened to the older conservative appreciation for a liberal arts education, and how it fits into this mix. But what a traditional education means is, obviously, all in the eyes of the conservative central planner holding the reins of political power. After all, as Mr. Cass says, times change. (See my article,Educational Socialism versus the Free Market.)

He says that much of his frustration with and rejection of libertarians and free markets has to do with his presumption that their proponents show neither understanding nor sensitivity to the conservative values of custom, tradition, ordered society, community, and family. Again, like those in the progressive political camp, Mr. Cass criticizes Milton Friedmans argument that the purpose of private corporations is to maximize profits and ignore stakeholders in the surrounding community and society. Instead, they should show a social corporate responsibility, regardless of the financial bottom line.

He totally misses, just like the recent host of progressive critics of Friedmans argument, that his point was not that such societal concerns were irrelevant or unimportant. Rather, expecting corporations to take on this role, independent of and possibly in contraction to the wishes of the firms shareholders, threatens not merely the financial health of the enterprise but politicizes business activities in a way that can easily undermine the smooth functioning of the social order and the market economy that is part of it. The funding and the facilitating of solutions to these social problems were best left to the individual and voluntary associative choices of income earners and dividend recipients, who then decide the practical and ethical best ways of spending their own money. (See my articles,Milton Friedman and the New Attack on the Freedom to ChooseandStakeholder Fascism Means More Loss of Liberty.)

Mr. Cass draws upon the ideas of the 18thcentury British conservative philosopher, Edmund Burke (1729-1797), who placed great value on the historical importance and continuity of institutions and traditions that provide security and stability to people within and across generations. But his reading of Burke leads him to think that if such institutions and traditions are important, it is the duty of governments to preserve them, cultivate them, and reform society in cautiously better directions.

Other Burkean conservatives, while seeing a larger role for government in society than classical liberals and libertarians usually do, have emphasized that these intermediary institutions of civil society family, organized religions, community associations and charities, among others need to be kept particularly separate from the government and its controls precisely due to the fact that they serve also as the important buffers and protectors standing between the lone individual and the potentially unlimited power of the State that can absorb and crush the single person.

For instance, the conservative sociologist, Robert Nisbet (1913-1996), highlighted these aspects to his Burkean understanding of society and its institutions, and made it a central element in his exposition of the ideas and principles of his book,Conservatism: Dream and Reality(1986). Nisbet insisted that Laissez-faire and decentralization are sovereign to Burke. In his earlier work,Twilight of Authority(1975), Nisbet explained the importance of the autonomy of such voluntary associative and market-based institutions, and the pressure they were under from the usurping and centralizing powers of government:

Of all the consequences of the steady politicization of our social order, of the unending centralization of political powerthe greatest in many ways is the weakening and disappearance of traditions in which [non-political] authority and liberty alike are anchored

Of all the needs in this age the greatest is, I think, a recovery of the social, with its implication of social membership, that in fact exists in human behavior, and the liberation of the idea of the social from the politicalCrucial are the voluntary groups and associations. It is the element of the spontaneous, of untrammeled, unforced volition, that is undoubtedly vital to creative relationships among individuals

Voluntary associations have an importance well beyond what they do directly for the individual members. Most of the functions which are today lodged either in the state or in great formal organizations came into existence in the first place in the context of larger voluntary associations. This is true of mutual aid in all its forms education, socialization, social security, recreation, and the likeIt is in the context of such [voluntary] association, in short, that most steps in social progress have taken place.

The importance of this is significant enough for me to tax the readers patience with referencing a complementary emphasis on the same point by the noted University of Chicago sociologist, Edward Shils (1910-1995) in The Virtue of Civil Society (Government and Opposition, January 1991). Vital to a free, prosperous, and humane social order, Shils insisted, was a large swath of society that is independent of and separate from political control and domination. Or as he put it:

The idea of civil society is the idea of a part of society which has a life of its own, which is distinctly different from the state, and which is largely in autonomy from itA market economy is the appropriate pattern of economic life of a civil society. There is, however, much more to civil society than the market. The hallmark of a civil society is the autonomy of private associations and institutions, as well as private business firms

The civil societymust possess the institutions that protect it from encroachment of the state and keep it a civil societyThese are the institutions by which the state is kept within substantive and procedural confinement. The confinement, which might be thought to be negative, is sustained on belief of a positive ideal, the ideal of individual and collective freedom.

Yet, this type of a conservatism reborn seems to hold no place in Oren Casss vision of a new conservatism. His is really just progressivism and its confidence and belief in the possibility and power of political paternalism to remake and move society in better directions, only in the context of what Cass conceives as the good, and the right and conservatively desirable. A softer governmental nudge here, a firmer political push there to get society into the collective pattern and shape wanted; just as the social justice warriors wish to do. It is the same political train, with the only difference being the ideological and paternalistic destination to which the government-determined ride takes us all.

Classical liberalism and libertarianism and the principles and practice of a free market system are all compatible with and complementary to much of the idea of conservatism and civil society that both Robert Nisbet and Edward Shils focused upon. But the difference is that for classical liberals and libertarians, there are no institutions of civil society, there are no protections for the autonomy of the individual and his voluntary associations from threatening infringements by the State unless the philosophical foundations of the social order start with the idea and ideal of those unalienable rights of each and every person to their respective life, liberty, and honestly acquired property, without which there can be no meaningful pursuit of happiness.

Traditions, customs, and noncoercive authorities to which people give recognition and respect and deference only can sustainably emerge and intergenerationally survive when they arise out of the free actions and chosen forms of personal and societal interactive conduct of the human actors themselves. It is what Adam Smith called the system of natural liberty with its evolved institutions of free exchange that generates the workings of the markets invisible hand of mutual gains from trade in all their varied forms inside and outside of the marketplace. (See my article,Adam Smith on Moral Sentiments, Division of Labor, and the Invisible Hand.)

If liberty is given foremost importance by classical liberals and libertarians, it is not due to an ossified dogmatism, as Oren Cass tries to suggest. It is because liberty is and should be considered a good in itself, something that recognizes and tells an individual that their life is their own to live and enjoy and use as they peacefully and honestly find to be best so as to give that life meaning and happiness to them.

What greater sense of respect and recognized dignity in the individual human being, what greater due regard for the uniqueness of each and every person alive than to tell them and assure them that they may not be made the coerced tool in the hands of others, whether they be private agents or government officials. It is classical liberalism that raised this as a universal and moral ideal, and it is the institutions and acceptance of free markets that separated earning a living from the control of political power that made it possible to practice the individual freedom that Mr. Cass sneers at and too easily shunts aside. The libertarians emphasis on consumer choice is not from a crass worship of materialism, but from an appreciation and understanding that such freedom to choose in a market economy enables the individual to express all the higher values that the availability and use of market-provided means make possible in a way that no other economic system has ever allowed. (See my article,The Rise of Capitalism and the Dignity of Labor.)

It is also the only basis and means for humanity to live in peace and cooperative harmony through the competition of the marketplace, which successfully reconciles many, indeed most, of the conflicts and discontinuities in the actions of multitudes of people in a world of limited means that can be used to advance the numerous competing ends that people follow.

At the same time, it cultivates the social attitudes and activities that increase the opportunities of life and improves not only the material but the cultural and intellectual conditions of all. What we need is for the political paternalists and ideological busybodies of every stripe to just leave all of us alone. We can take care of ourselves, thank you very much, even if as imperfect people in an imperfect world we make missteps along the way. We need neither progressives nor conservatives of Oren Casss ilk to manage the world. What we need is for the likes of all of them to mind their own business. (See my articles,Mr. President: Please Mind Your Own Business andHazonys Tradition-Based Society is a Form of Social EngineeringandConservative Nationalism is Not About LibertyandThe Plague of Meddling Political Busybodiesand my book,For a New Liberalism.)

But this is neither a classical liberalism nor a form of conservatism that appeals to Oren Cass when what he really is after is figuring how to outwit the progressives in the game of political plunderhood by devising coalitions in society that will put his side in elected office next time around through a conservative version of handouts of favors, privileges and subsidies. His new conservatism, therefore, is really only the same old political paternalism, just in different rhetorical clothing.

[Originally posted on American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)]

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News - The Bankruptcy of Conservative Political Paternalism - The Heartland Institute

To The Readers Forum:

First, let me say that l am neither a Democrat nor a Republican.

I am a registered Libertarian and l have no love for either of the major parties. Your editorial of Feb. 10 criticizing Rep. Tom Reed for his failure to try to remove another elected member of the House of Representatives seems to me to be extremely misguided. Your stated premise is that Rep. Reed should base his actions on his perceived personal interests.

What about his oath of office to protect and defend the constitution of the United States? Who decides who represents the 14th congressional district of Georgia? I contend that that choice belongs to the people of that district who elected her by a substantial majority. They deserve their representation.

Whatever her opinions, she has a right to them and a right, within legal bounds, to express them. lf the voters in her district decide that they wish to remove her they can do so in the election next year. ln the mean time she should be able to express her fringe right wing views in the same way that many Democrat representatives express comparable fringe left wing views.

Robert Peterson,

Kennedy

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People Of Georgia's 14th Congressional Make Decision Who Will Occupy That Seat - Jamestown Post Journal