Archive | Libertarianism

Ian Milhiser at ThinkProgress has written an article on the recently concluded Federalist Society National Convention, where he claims it shows that conservatives have embraced wideranging “judicial activism.” He also includes a summary of a discussion he had with me, at the convention. The summary is accurate in so far as it goes, but omits crucial context:

My sparring partner during much of this closing reception for the Federalist Society’s annual lawyer’s convention, is Ilya Somin, who is a law professor and writer for the Volokh Conspiracy, a popular legal blog that thousands of lawyers, law clerks and judges read every day. As Ilya lays out Social Security’s supposed vices, I wonder if his readers are aware of the breadth of his agenda. I also chide him that voters would have an easy time making up their minds if Republicans campaigned openly on promises to abolish child labor laws and kill Medicare, but he is completely unapologetic for his beliefs. This is not a man who pretends to care about the poor and the middle class in order to sell policies that will lower his own taxes. I leave the reception convinced that he sincerely believes that America’s poor would be better off if they only embraced his vision for a libertarian utopia.

Ilya’s views are not universal, but they are hardly unusual at this gathering of what is arguably the most powerful legal organization in the country.

I did indeed say that I oppose Social Security. This is hardly an unusual position for free market advocates. Milton Friedman and most other leading libertarian economists have advocated the same view, as have many pro-free market conservatives, from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan. Even a big government conservative, such as George W. Bush, proposed a plan to privatize large parts of […]

Co-blogger Eugene Volokh’s excellent post on the sometimes confusing multiple meanings of the word “Jew” call to mind similar confusions in political terminology. For example, the term “conservative” is routinely used to refer to 1) people who are in some sense on the political right, 2) people who oppose changes in the status quo, 3) people who are willing to accept gradual change but not rapid change (e.g. – Burkean conservatives), and 4) people who want to return to the government policies or moral values of a bygone age. The fourth group might be more precisely referred to as “reactionary,” but the word “conservative” is often used to describe them instead, in part because “reactionary” has a pejorative connotation. Because of these multiple meanings, we get situations such as the Western media referring to communists who opposed Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms as “conservatives.” These people were conservative in the sense of meaning 2, but obviously not in the sense of meaning 1.

In many cases, it’s possible to tell which sense of the word “conservative” is meant by context. But sometimes, pundits, politicans, and activists deliberately exploit the ambiguities, as when they act as if people who are conservatives in the sense of 2 are basically the same as those in who are conservative in the sense of 1 or 4. Alternatively, people sometimes try to score debating points by claiming, for example, that people who want to cut back or restructure long-established entitlement programs can’t be “real” conservatives, because what they advocate requires major changes to the status quo. They can still be conservatives in the sense of 1 or 3 (if they advocate gradual rather than immediate restructuring of the programs in question).

There is a similar, but less severe, confusion in the use of the term “libertarian.” The […]

Reason TV has an interesting interview with famous Washington Post columnist George Will. Among other things, Will describes how and why he has become more libertarian over the years. […]