Archive for the ‘Libertarian’ Category

Defeats and disputations | WORLD News Group – WORLD News Group

Editors Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas, in their introduction to Losers: Dispatches From the Other Side of the Scoreboard (Penguin Random House, 2020), write: The locker rooms of winners are crowded. The locker rooms of losers are desolate and awkward. The players are somber, quiet; some shrink into the stalls. People ... keep their distance, as if losing is a contagious infection. So true. The worst sporting event I ever covered was a 2007 basketball game in Madison Square Garden where the crowd started in the first quarter chanting, Fire Isiah. Isiah Thomas was the Hall of Fame point guard who failed as the trade-making president of the New York Knicks.

Losers includes an article by Gay Talese on a heavyweight champion who lost, Floyd Patterson. Twice knocked out in the first round by mob-connected Sonny Liston in 1962 and 1963, the thoughtful boxer told Talese, Its easy to do anything in victory. Its in defeat that a man reveals himself. Other wisdom from Patterson: When you have millions of dollars, you have millions of friends. Not in Taleses article but worth mentioning: Patterson was a Christian. After he defeated Archie Moore to win the World Heavyweight Championship in 1956 he said, I just hit him again and the Lord did the rest.

MORE DIFFICULT THAN DEFEATS in sports, though, are defeats in war. C. Bradley Thompsons Americas Revolutionary Mind (Encounter, 2019) shows how great a document our Declaration of Independence is, and how terrible the decision 160 years ago of many Southerners: They had to make a choice between slavery and the Declaration, and they chose slavery. Pro-slavery writers challenged the Declarations four substantive truth claims about equality, rights, consent, and revolution, and they also turned against the political, social, and economic institutions of a free society.

MICHAEL LINDS The New Class War (Portfolio, 2020) points out differences between members of the managerial and high-tech overclass, who have prestigious occupations and see themselves as citizens of the world, and average Americans who live within 18 miles of their mothers. Our synthesis of the economic liberalism of the libertarian right and the cultural liberalism of the bohemian/academic left doesnt thrill working class Americans who have little bargaining power: For them the jobs of the future are mostly low-wage jobs, many of them in health care. Plus, within technocratic neoliberalism, some employers are vilifying the theology of the workers church as a firing offense.

JAMES COPLANDSThe Unelected (Encounter, 2020) shows we lose when we abandon the Constitution and embrace (these are chapter titles) Legislating Without Congress, Administering Without the Executive, Judging Without the Judiciary, Regulating Without Rulemaking. He includes good stories: Race car driver Bobby Unser gained a criminal record when during a blizzard he snowmobiled into a protected national wilderness area.

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Defeats and disputations | WORLD News Group - WORLD News Group

Taking The Ideology Out Of Quarantines And Herd Immunity – Worldcrunch

-OpEd-

There is a tendency to take a polar view of the strategies undertaken against COVID-19, and for some, that means seeing and politicizing quarantines as a Marxist-style experiment in social control. Sweden, in the meantime, is hailed as the libertarian alternative in resisting the pandemic.

But quarantines existed long before Karl Marx. They even predate Christ. In the Old Testament's Book of Leviticus, the leper is ordered to separate from others. The word itself, quarantine, was coined in 14th century Italy, ravaged at the time by the Black Death. Even New York City, global capitalism's financial capital, has implemented several quarantines since the 19th century, and it's from those experiences that we know about the kinds of social tensions a drawn-out quarantine can provoke.

This is where the Swedish model becomes relevant, although frankly, attributing the Nordic country's freestyle coronavirus response to libertarian principles is a stretch. First, the country is governed by a former trade unionist with socialist affiliations. Second, Sweden has one of the world's best welfare systems (it ranks seventh in the world in terms of social spending in proportion to GDP).

Until even a few weeks ago, the Swedish model didn't seem particularly promising.

More generally, the Swedish objective is not to safeguard freedom at any cost, as a supreme value. Nor is that country specifically aiming for herd immunity. So far, 20% of Swedes have likely caught the coronavirus less than in Peru, which implemented a particularly strict lockdown.

The fundamental aim in Sweden, rather, was that the response strategy assuming the pandemic would last a long time had to be sustainable over an indefinite period. And that is why its efficacy can only be evaluated retrospectively.

Flu shot in Trelleborg, Sweden Photo: Johan Nilsson/ZUMA

Until even a few weeks ago, the Swedish model didn't seem particularly promising. The country's mortality rate was 58.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, 10 times higher than in neighboring Finland and Norway. Nor was there any kind of compensation (if such things can be quantified) in the form of a flourishing economy. Shrinking 8.3% in the second quarter of 2020, Sweden's GDP drop was greater than those of Denmark, Finland and Norway.

The experience of Volvo, the country's signature auto producer, is telling. In March, the company suspended production in its plants in Belgium, the United States and Sweden itself. That is, it halted work in a country that had a national quarantine, in another that had imposed local lockdowns (in certain states only) and a third with no lockdown at any territorial level, though with restrictions on social gatherings, limits on some education activities and quarantines for the infected and those living with them.

We may not have all the necessary information on which policies worked best until the pandemic ends.

The example shows, on the one hand, that refusing a quarantine makes little difference if the countries where your customers and suppliers are based do impose one. It also shows that if not having a quarantine means more of your workers are infected, that too has an economic cost.

And yet, right now, with much of Europe in a second wave of infections and reimposing quarantines on angry populations, the Swedish strategy suddenly appears to be a more sustainable model. Again, it's a matter of viewing things from a more long-term perspective.

We may not have all the necessary information on which policies worked best until the pandemic ends. But we do know that a century ago, certain social distancing measures effectively fought another pandemic and were comparatively less harmful to the economy. There is, in any case, no such thing as a fixed strategy, replicable under any condition. Even Sweden has adapted its measures to changing circumstances.

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Be Cool Like Kennedy! Donate to Reason, and Help Us Spread #HotFreedom – Reason

It's Webathon Sunday, which means it's time to check in on how Reason staffers have been doing these past 12 months representing libertarian viewpoints in non-Reason media/politics spaces. But first a quick exhortation to all you wonderful readers and listeners and viewers:

PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THIS LINK TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO REASON RIGHT THE HELL NOW!

Thank you.

You know who's killing it this year? Reason's Corey A. DeAngelis, that's who. Not just with his conversation-shaping research about how public school closures correlate much more strongly with union power than COVID-19 spread, not just with his December magazine feature on how the virus is accelerating the demise of the public school monopoly model, but with his tireless advocacy for educational freedom wherever people are talking about school policy and the novel coronavirus. Which, this year, is everywhere.

Here is the Reason Foundation's director of school choice just this week on The Adam Carolla Show, whose eponymous host observed, "This guy Corey knows more than anybody."

Corey over the past year caught Sen. Elizabeth Warren (DMass.) lying about her son's private school education, kept tabs on the latest COVID-19/school developments on his popular Twitter feed, and oh yeah, just made one of those Forbes "30 Under 30" lists. From that write-up:

DeAngelis is one of the nation's leading authorities on school choice and homeschooling. He has authored or co-authored 32 peer-reviewed studies and more than 100 op-eds in outlets like The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. He's done hundreds of speaking engagements and appears regularly on Fox News.

In this big no bueno of a year, where TV greenrooms are closed, presidential politics are suffocating, and the dread virus continues to cloud the judgment of so very many people (especially elected officials), it has been a challenge to fulfill longtime Reason hero Bob Poole's long-ago vision to "engage in the battle of ideas with the whole spectrum of thinking people."

Reason of course loves, nurtures, and constantly expands its own platforms, but as 1980s editor Marty Zupan told Brian Doherty in his must-read oral history of the magazine, "It was obviousthat if Reasonwanted to grow, it needed to do more than have libertarians talking to one another." A key part of our mission to "influence the frameworks and actions of policymakers, journalists, and opinion leaders," is to insert ourselves wherever people are talking about politics, policy, and culture.

In bookstores, browsers come face to face with Reason arguments, most recently in Damon Root's A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution, and Ronald Bailey's Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting (with Marian L. Tupy). When Bari Weiss exited The New York Times, Robby Soave went on cable television's most-watched program to broaden the discussion into how "people with totally mundane views are being canceled before our eyes" by a loud minority of mainstream journalists who are increasingly creating "toxic environment[s] for everyone who disagrees with them." And when yet another Trump voter seeks to blame libertarians for President-elect Joe Biden's coming reign of terror, Nick Gillespie is ready to appear on Fox airwaves to argue that "Virtually any time you look at something that is good that's happening in America, when you get there, libertarians will be opening the door for you, saying 'Come on in.'"

That last clip, of course, comes from Reason's great friend (and former correspondent!) Kennedy, whose eponymous Fox Business Network program is the single most welcoming televisual home for us waving the banner of "Free Minds and Free Markets." I had the great honor of working alongside the former MTV veejay in developing and executing the precursor show to Kennedy, called The Independents (along with some bum named Kmele Foster), and I will forever be in her debt for completing the job (as much as such things can be completed) that our own John Stossel started: teaching a poorly dressed, California-talking, write-first slouch like me to do a reasonable facsimile of television.

Oh yeah, Kennedy's also a Webathon donor!

DON'T YOU WANT TO BE AS COOL AS KENNEDY??

The fun part about doing broadcast is that you never know whether a stray word or sentence will ruin your career, land with a deafening thud, or improbably strike a chord with people. I experienced the latter recently after delivering an uncharacteristically profane rant on the great Compound Media program, Mornin'!!! w/ Bill Schulz and Joanne Nosuchinsky, as Reason contributor Nancy Rommelmann looks around for the exits:

Sorry/not sorry! Long story short, going out into the non-Reason world and making principled libertarian arguments is a key part of our mission, as is encouraging the proliferation of Reason-friendly programming. Your donations make that all possible.

WON'T YOU PLEASE DONATE TO REASON RIGHT THE HELL NOW?

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There Is No Battle Between Classical Liberalism and Faith – The Shepherd of the Hills Gazette

Since at least as early as the 1960s, pundits and intellectuals of the conservative movement have employed a caricature of classical liberals as amoral hedonists who make an idol of freedom.

Modern observers might be forgiven for thinking that this critique has only been leveled against the people we now call libertarianssome of whom are the sorts of people who strip down to their underwear at Libertarian Party political conventions.

But those people arent the (only) ones being targeted here. Rather, it has long been the position of many conservative authors and pundits that the entire liberal traditionincluding all those laissez-faireclassical liberals like Frederic Bastiat and Lord Actonembraces a political ideology utterly incompatible with the notion of a higher moral order.

Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen, for example, makes this claim in a 2018 bookappropriately criticized by Allen Mendenhall here.

But this position ismost succinctly summed up in an essay by conservative M. Stanton Evans from 1964:

The libertarian, or classical liberal, characteristically denies the existence of a God-centered moral order, to which man should subordinate his will and reason. Alleging human freedom as the single moral imperative, he otherwise is a thoroughgoing relativist, pragmatist, and materialist. [Emphasis added]

Again, this isnt just a bunch ofpot-smoking anarchistswere talking about here. Evans is explicitly attacking classical liberals in general, and thisnaturally includes libertarians of all types.

Presumably, then, we must apply Evans critique to the entire range of classical liberals including the Jeffersonians, the Jacksonians, the British Liberals, the French liberals, and numerous other groups that have historically embraced laissez-faire on liberal grounds.

[Read More: LibertarianIs Just Another Word for (Classical) Liberal by RyanMcMaken]

Thegeneral narrative embraced by Evans here is largely unchanged over the decades in some conservative circles: all types of liberalism are immoral and dangerous, were told, andfrom John Locke to John Stuart Mill, the classical liberal tradition is one that leads to the destruction of Western civilization. This is becauseto use Evanss words it characteristically denies the existence of a God-centered moral order.

Mendenhall addresses thisin his critique of Deneen, demonstrating that on a theoretical level, there is nothing characteristic about classical liberalism that makes it materialistic or opposed to Evanss notion of a proper moral order.

Historian Ralph Raico has also addressed this at the theoretical level, specifically addressing Evanss charge in the New Individualist Review in 1964.

But it should also be emphasized that this position exonerating liberalism of its alleged anti-religious bias is not merely idiosyncratic revisionism after the fact, or the position of a few eccentrics.

Rather, we can find numerous examples of leading liberal theorists and practitioners who were not justvaguely religious, but wereexplicitly Christian.

The apparent compatability between liberalism and religionwhich in practice here usually means Christianityis not merelytheoretical,but is apparently a fact accepted by liberals themselves. That is, historical case studies help to illustrate the error of Evanss thesis as well.

In response to the charge that consistent classical liberals cant be religious, Raico contends:

This is false, of course, in regard to the many liberals who were Christians (e.g., Ricardo, Cobden, Bright, Bastiat, Madame de Stael, Acton, Macaulay, etc.).Indeed, many classical liberals (including present-day ones) have felt that the connection between their political and their religious and ethical views has been a very intimate one. Frederic Bastiat, for instance, who, because of his superficiality and glib optimism is sometimes taken to be the very paradigm example of a classical liberal, expressed himself as follows towards the end of one of his more important works:

There is a leading idea which runs through the whole of this work, which pervades and animates every page and every line of it; and that idea is embodied in the opening words of the Christian CreedI BELIEVE IN GOD.

John Bright was the man who, with Cobden, and for twenty years after Cobdens death, was the leader of the Manchester School in British politics and political and economic thoughtsurely a typical liberal, if there is such a thing. Yet the following characterization of Bright, by his most authoritative biographer, hardly seems compatible with [Evanss]description:

Religious feeling, in its simplest form, was the very basis of his life. He was always a Friend [i.e., Quaker] before everything else; and a servant of God; a man of deep, though ever more silent devotion.

Although Christians were probably, and theists certainly, in the majority, it is true that a certain number of liberalswereatheists or (much more frequently) agnostics: J. S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, John Morley, etc. Nevertheless, the following points ought to be made: (a) the denial of a God-centered moral order has been no more characteristic of classical liberalism than its affirmation; (b) even if a majority of liberals had been atheists and agnostics, the connection is so far accidental and historically-conditioned, and not logical; (c) supposing the majority of liberals to have been tainted with unbelief in one form or another, Evans still presents no reasons for dismissing the liberalism of Christian writers like Bastiat.

Raico doesnt mention the American counterparts of Cobden and Bright: the Jacksonians and the Democrats under Samuel Tilden and Grover Cleveland. As noted by Murray Rothbard, the Democrats of this period were the proponents of laissez-faire and the heirs to the Jeffersonian tradition. But by no means were the American liberal Democrats of the nineteenth century animated by atheism, moral relativism, or materialism, except in a few corners of the movement. Indeed, the Democrats of that era attracted in large numbers Lutheran and Catholic immigrants andlater in the centuryIrish Catholic immigrants as well.

Far from trashing a God-centered moral order the American liberals of the nineteenth century were deeply moralistic while promoting a social order that was Christian, middle class, and in many ways Victorian.

The same was true of the British liberals under Cobden and Bright.

Nor do we find much helpfor Evanss thesis when we look to France.

It is true that giants of French liberalism like Alexis de Tocqueville and Benjamin Constant were not especially devout men. But it is also true that both Tocqueville and Constant, in the words of Raico,looked to religious faith to aid the cause of liberty. To these men,religious faith appeared as a welcomeindeed, an indispensableally. They apparently failed to find any inherent conflict between liberalism and the Christian faith they promoted as a bulwark against despotism.

But this alliance between liberalism and religion was not limited to using religion asa mere tool one might use against the state. The school of Catholic liberalsnot to be confused with the liberal Catholics of todaysought to make it quite clear that there was no conflict between practicing Christianity and promoting liberalism.

Chief among these liberals we find the influential editor and legislatorCharles de Montalembertdescribed by Gustave de Molinari as the Cobden of religious libertywho denied there is an necessary connection between liberalism and moral relativism. Indeed, Montalembert was not at all a relativist when it came todoctrinal religious controversies and heexplicitly rejected what he called the ridiculous and culpable doctrines that all religions are equally true and good.

As part of their crusade for religious freedom, the Catholic liberals in Franceincluding Montalembert, but also the Dominican friar Henri Lacordaire and the Catholic blessed Frederic Ozanamsought to separate French liberalism from the fanatical anti-clericalsm still held by some liberalsunder the influence of the French revolutionaries.

So why has Evanss caricature of the classical liberals endured?

Some of the misunderstanding may stem from the fact that many theorists of the so-called Enlightenment period haveoften wrongly been called liberals. Indeed, in the nineteenth century, it seemed virtually anyone radically opposed to the status quo was labeled a liberal. But this opposition could take many forms. It might manifest itself in utopian notions of the democratic general will or in attacks on the clergy. But such notions do not make one a liberal. Thisbecame much more clear by the nineteenth century associalist parties began to bring into focus the difference between being positively in favor ofpolitical freedom, and merely being against the prevailingsocial order.The classical liberaland practicing CatholicLord Acton alluded to this problem when he wrote:

all these factions of opinion (in pre-Revolutionary France) were called Liberal: Montesquieu, because he was an intelligent Tory; Voltaire, because he attacked the clergy; Turgot, as a reformer; Rousseau, as a democrat; Diderot, as a freethinker. The one thing in common to them all is the disregard for liberty.

Acton, of course, understood that the fanciful notions of Enlightenment theorists did notdefinethe reality of liberalism as applied in the real world, as or believed byliberals themselves.Given the experiences shared bycountless classical liberals in the United States, Britain and France, its hard to come to the same conclusion as Evans and his conservative ideological descendants. Although some conservatives may insist that the classical liberals are necessarily opposed to a God-centered social order, the historical facts suggest otherwise.

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There Is No Battle Between Classical Liberalism and Faith - The Shepherd of the Hills Gazette

Even some of Washingtons reddest counties were bluer in 2020 – Yakima Herald-Republic

When you look at the Washington state map of the 2020 presidential election results, its nearly unchanged from 2016. The blue counties are all still blue. The red counties with one exception remain red. So it might seem like theres not much of a story here.

But what that map wont tell you is that almost across the board, the state got more Democratic in 2020. President-elect Joe Biden performed better in nearly every county than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

In 35 of Washingtons 39 counties, Biden improved upon Clintons 2016 margins against Donald Trump. This pattern held true both in the states bluest counties, as well as many of its reddest.

The county that moved the most toward the Democrats picturesque San Juan County already ranked among the bluest counties in Washington. In 2016, Clinton easily beat Trump here by 64% to 24%, a whopping 40-point spread.

Tough to improve on a margin like that but thats exactly what Biden did, and by a lot. Trump only did slightly worse this time in San Juan, at a little over 23%. But Biden massively outperformed Clinton by winning almost 74% of the vote. Thats nearly a 51-point spread, meaning Biden did more than 10 points better than Clinton had in 2016.

How did Biden do it?

In San Juan, as in every county across the state, voters abandoned Libertarian, Green and other third parties in 2020. Instead, they picked Trump or Biden. So while it helped both candidates, in most of the state, Biden got the lions share of those votes.

Lets use San Juan as an example. In 2016, third-party and write-in candidates got 11% of the vote in 2016. Remember Green Party candidate Jill Stein? She alone got about 4% of the vote.

But in 2020, all the third-party and write-candidates combined only got 3% in San Juan. This pattern holds true across the state. Third-party and write-in candidates share of the vote dropped by at least five points in all 39 Washington counties.

In 2016, Clinton won 12 Washington counties. In all 12, Biden won by more in 2020. In liberal Jefferson County, where Port Townsend is located, Biden increased the spread of victory by more than nine points. In Kitsap County, which Clinton also won handily, Biden increased the margin by more than seven points.

Here in King County, Clinton beat Trump 70% to 21% in 2016, a 49-point spread. This time around, Trump did slightly better, garnering 22% of the vote. But Biden won 75% of the vote, widening the spread to 53 points. That, by the way, makes King the bluest county in Washington in 2020, edging out San Juan.

Even in the counties that Trump won again this year, his margins got smaller in all but four. In Chelan County, Trump won 53% of the vote in 2020, about the same as he did in 2016. But Biden got 45%, a 7-point improvement over Clintons performance. In Walla Walla and Pacific counties, both won again by Trump, Biden narrowed the spread by about six points.

And Biden even managed to flip one county from red to blue: Clallam, where Port Angeles is located. In 2016, Trump won the county by 46% to Clintons 44%. This time around, Biden got 50% to Trumps 47%.

With Clallam flipping blue, there was only one county in the Puget Sound region that went for Trump in 2020: Mason, which contains most of the Hood Canal, and where Shelton is located. But it, too, moved more Democratic in 2020. Biden narrowed Trumps margin of victory by about 5 points compared with 2016.

It wasnt all bad news for Trump in Washington. His biggest improvement over 2016 was in Cowlitz County, in Southwestern Washington, where Longview is located. He beat Clinton here handily, winning 51% to 38%, a 13-point spread. But against Biden, he won even more decisively (57% to 40%), increasing the spread by four points.

Trump also increased his margin of victory in three Eastern Washington counties, all of which he had easily won in 2016: Garfield, Pend Oreille and Stevens.

Garfield, by the way, is the states reddest county (as well as its least populous, with fewer than 2,500 residents). Trump won Garfield, which is just east of Walla Walla, with a 47-point spread over Biden in 2020. Thats two points better than his margin of victory over Clinton in 2016.

Statewide, Biden won 58% of the more than 4 million votes cast in Washington to Trumps 39%. Trump did about 1 point better than he did in 2016. But Biden bested Clintons 2016 showing by about four points.

Third-party and write-in candidates dropped from nearly 8% of the statewide vote in 2016 to just 3% in 2020.

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Even some of Washingtons reddest counties were bluer in 2020 - Yakima Herald-Republic