In response to my recent post on conservative and libertarian public interest law, various law students and others have e-mailed me to ask whether there is a single comprehensive list of right of center public interest firms. The closest thing I know if the Harvard Law School Guide to Conservative/Libertarian Public Interest Law, available here. […]
Archive | Libertarianism
Addressing the Most Important Weakness of Conservative-Libertarian Public Interest Law
By Ilya Somin on December 10, 2009 7:58 pm in Conservatism, Federalist Society, Libertarianism, Public Interest Law
I recently renewed my membership in the Federalist Society, and got a mailing asking to sign up with the Fed Soc Pro Bono Center. I was only vaguely aware of this organization’s existence, even though it is a potentially important effort to address the most important shortcoming of conservative and libertarian public interest law. Perhaps […]
Was Ayn Rand the Most Influential Russian Immigrant to the United States?
I have previously blogged about the massive impact that Ayn Rand had as the leading modern popularizer of libertarianism and the recent controversy over whether she is an asset or liability for free market advocates today. An interesting question (at least to me) is whether Rand was the most influential Russian immigrant to the United […]
Heather Wilhelm Responds to her Critics
Heather Wilhelm has posted a response to critics of her Wall Street Journal column arguing that Ayn Rand is bad for the free market cause. I was one of those critics, even though I have many reservations about Rand myself. Wilhelm’s response concedes that Rand may have had some value for free market advocates, but […]
Gift-Giving and Government Planning
In a well-known 1993 article and a recent book, economist Joel Waldfogel argues that holiday gift-giving is inefficient. Very often, givers don’t fully understand the recipients’ wants and end up purchasing things that the recipients value at less than their cost. Waldfogel estimates that some 10 to 33% of the value of gifts is “wasted” […]
Is Ayn Rand Bad for Libertarianism?
In this Wall Street Journal article, Heather Wilhelm argues that Ayn Rand is bad for libertarianism because her personal obnoxiousness, emphasis on the “virtue of selfishness,” and celebration of a small entrepreneurial elite tends to alienate potential adherents. I too dislike some aspects of Rand’s personality and disagree with many parts of her philosophy. Nonetheless, […]
Conservatives Discover Criminal Defendants
The NYT reports on increasing involvement by conservative organizations and business groups on behalf of criminal defendants. While libertarians have long complained about “overcriminalization” and excessive federalization of criminal law, such concerns have gained increasing currency in more traditional conservative circles. This is a good thing. [UPDATE: But not according to Media Matters.] QUICK ADDENDUM: […]
The Evil of Leon Trotsky Revisited
Two of Leon Trotsky’s best-known quotes are his statement that “Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation” (made famous, especially among libertarians, in part because it was quoted by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom), and the very next sentence in the same paragraph: “The old principle: who does […]
The Non-Contradiction of Rand’s Capitalism
Adam Kirsch reviews Anne Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made in the NYT. As others have noted, the review contains a curious passage. Nor would Rand, sooner than any other desert prophet, allow her message to be trifled with. When Bennett Cerf, a head of Random House, begged her to cut Galt’s speech, […]
Books I Would Recommend to those Who Disagree With Me
Megan McArdle and Tony Woodlief give their answers to an interesting question: What three books would you recommend to a thoughtful person who disagrees with you politically, in the hopes that reading them will change their mind? My recommendations would depend a lot on whether the person in question disagrees with me from the right […]
Libertarianism and Culture, Round II
Kerry Howley has responded to my post criticizing her essay on libertarianism and culture. I don’t think her response actually answers most of my main points, however. Kerry criticizes me for asking for a “bright line rule” about what cultural values libertarians should care about: The lack of libertarian tolerance for ambiguity is an unfortunate […]
Libertarianism and Culture
Reason has a debate about whether libertarians should “care about cultural values.” Kerry Howley argues that libertarians should place far more emphasis on combating cultures that supposedly undermine freedom, while her critics (Todd Seavey and Daniel McCarthy), are skeptical. To my mind, there is no question that libertarians should care about some cultural values. However, […]
Ayn Rand’s Contributions
Following up on Ilya’s post, I though I’d mention a couple of other contributions Rand made. First, and as is most evident in Atlas Shrugged, Rand turns Marxism on its head. While Marxists argue that “capitalists” make their profits on the backs of the working class, Rand illustrates that the working class, as such, makes […]
Assessing Ayn Rand: “An Utterly Intolerant and Dogmatic Person Who Did a Great Deal of Good”
I was very interested to read historian Jennifer Burns’ important new biography of Ayn Rand in part because Rand and I have a great deal in common. We are both Russian Jews from St. Petersburg, both atheists, and – most important – both of us became libertarians in large part because of our experience with […]
Nineteen Eighty-Fat
… As Mickey Kaus puts it. This kind of thing is enough to remind me why, despite the fact that I consider it a beginning point rather than necessarily always the end point, I am fundamentally a libertarian. We have ways of making you stress-free: Someone should write the fictionalized dystopian nightmare of mandatory “wellness” programs […]