Free Thoughts

How much of a role did media coverage play in Donald Trump winning the Republican primary? Is Trump’s brand of conservative populism and identity politics here to stay? Would a Trump loss in November be an opportunity for libertarians to reshape the philosophy of the American right?Ben Domenech shares his personal theory that explains Donald Trump’s rise to prominence on the political stage.Show Notes and Further ReadingHere’s Domenech in 2015, predicting the path of Donald Trump’s candidacy and on the emergence of Trump’s brand of identity politics. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How much do we know about Confucius? What type of world were the Taoists and early Confucians living in? Were early Confucians pro free-market and pro individualism as we understand the terms today?Roderick T. Long joins us this week for a discussion on the thought of the early Confucians, who were precursors of modern libertarians.Show Notes and Further ReadingLong’s new book is Rituals of Freedom: Libertarian Themes in Early Confucianism (2016). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Is an economy like a machine or a tropical rainforest? Is it more like a mechanical device that can be maintained by an exogenous force (government), or is it more like a diverse ecology, one that includes government actors?Richard Wagner joins us this week to discuss his new book, Politics As a Peculiar Business: Insights from a Theory of Entangled Political Economy (2016).Wagner concludes that modern governments function much the way a business enterprise does, albeit a strange one. He also theorizes about what happens when government becomes entangled in the same incentive structures it claims regulatory power over. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What’s a pretextual police stop? When do police need your consent to a search, and are these searches unconstitutional? Jonathan Blanks joins us this week to share his findings on how police searches disproportionately affect minorities.Show Notes and Further ReadingJonathan Blanks’s “Thin Blue Lies: How Pretextual Stops Undermine Police Legitimacy” appears in Volume 66, Issue 4 of the Case Western Reserve Law Review.Here’s a previous Free Thoughts episode with Blanks on police misconduct. Listeners may also be interested in this Free Thoughts episode with Adam Bates and Matthew Feeney on how new technologies are changing law enforcement.Blanks mentions this article by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic, which originated the “broken windows” theory of policing.Aaron mentions watching the 1971 Don Siegel film Dirty Harry, starring Clint Eastwood. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Most Americans believe that democracy is the most just, fair, and equal form of government we’ve come up with thus far. Is that overselling it? Does democracy produce the results we need? Can anything be done about voter ignorance?What is the symbolic value of the right to vote? Is political participation good for us as individuals and as a society? What would a better system look like?Show Notes and Further ReadingJason Brennan’s newest book is Against Democracy (2016).Brennan is also the lecturer for one of our Libertarianism.org Guides, An Introduction to Political Philosophy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Why are Americans so fascinated with our third President? What did Jefferson’s contemporaries think of him?Robert McDonald joins us this week to talk about the life and ideas of Thomas Jefferson.Show Notes and Further ReadingMcDonald’s book is Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson’s Image in His Own Time (2016).There is a conception that politics was more civil at the turn of the 19th century; this Reason.tv video proves otherwise. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Was the success of the Star Wars franchise inevitable? What does Star Wars have to teach us about politics, revolution, and constitutional interpretation?Cass R. Sunstein explores the critical and financial success of the Star Wars movies.Show Notes and Further ReadingCass R. Sunstein, The World According to Star Wars (2016)This is a previous Free Thoughts podcast with Ilya Somin on the politics of Star Wars.Cato scholar Michael F. Cannon has written a column for Libertarianism.org on Star Wars and the nature of evil.Trevor mentions a previous episode of Free Thoughts on originalism featuring Randy E. Barnett.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If the Constitution were interpreted according to its original meaning, how libertarian would that Constitution be? How do we decide what the original meaning of the Constitution is?Randy E. Barnett explains why popular sovereignty resides in individuals rather than in any notion of “the will of the people.”What would America look like if judges interpreted the Constitution according to the original intent of the Founders?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere is Barnett’s latest book, Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People (2016).He also mentions his book Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (2013).Here’s an earlier episode of Free Thoughts featuring Randy Barnett, “The Structure of Liberty.”Trevor mentions the previous Free Thoughts episode with Gary Gerstle on his book Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present (2015). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What are historians to make of the paradox of American government? On one hand, Americans claim to value freedom from government interference in their lives, but on the other, Americans have also clamored for government interventions that have done everything from redistributing wealth to imposing a particular set of views on marriage, abortion, and religion.Gary Gerstle gives a chronological history of American governance from the founding of the country to today. How has governance changed in America over the years? What role has the Constitution played in this?Was the Constitution meant to protect liberty, or establish federal power? How did an early reliance on agriculture affect governance in early America?Show Notes and Further ReadingGerstle’s book is Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present (2015). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What is free market existentialism? Why have adherents of existentialism so often chosen Marxism as their political philosophy?William Irwin joins us this week to discuss his book, The Free Market Existentialist: Capitalism without Consumerism (2015).What purpose or meaning can we give life, if we start from a place where we take as a given that there is no inherent or divine purpose to life? Why should libertarians also be existentialists?Show Notes and Further ReadingWilliam Irwin’s book, The Free Market Existentialist: Capitalism without Consumerism (2015) challenges assumptions about morality, natural rights and the role of government using insights from thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Robert Nozick, and F. A. Hayek. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Families seem structured almost entirely opposite to how we think about market economies. Do theories about human behavior in markets hold up when looking at family interactions?Steven Horwitz joins us to talk about his new book, Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions.What did F. A. Hayek have to say about evolving social institutions? What is the definition of a family? How has it changed over time?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere is Horwitz’s new book, Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions (2015).Horwitz mentions this humorous scene depicting a feudal marriage in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was a foundational utilitarian philosopher, as well as one of the foremost thinkers in the classical liberal tradition.John Samples and Matthew Feeney join us for a discussion on the theory of liberty Mill articulates in his book On Liberty. We focus on how Mill thinks of liberty in relation to others and to the state, how utilitarianism influenced his thinking, and Mill’s defense of freedom of thought and free speech, which was quite radical for his time.This episode is part one of a series that will be continued at a later date.Show Notes and Further ReadingThe Liberty Fund’s Library of Economics and Liberty has the full text of On Liberty available for free.When discussing Mill’s views about tolerating divergent opinion, Aaron mentions this previous Free Thoughts podcast with Andrew Jason Cohen on toleration. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How did everything get so crazy in American politics? Are political renegades like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Bernie Sanders the new norm?Are political machines, pork-barrel spending, logrolling, and professional politicians necessary for our democracy to work? Are they necessary for political coordination and cooperation? What does Rauch mean by “political realism”?Show Notes and Further ReadingRauch’s study on this topic, Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy is available as a .pdf or a free ebook.Rauch also wrote the cover article of the July/August 2016 issue of The Atlantic, “How American Politics Went Insane.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There seems to be a movement towards more student censorship on college campuses these days, but the source might be surprising: other students. Trigger warnings? Safe spaces? Microaggressions? Are college students more offended these days than they used to be?Robby Soave joins us for a discussion about the state of free speech in American higher education.Show Notes and Further ReadingYou can read Soave’s articles on this and other topics at Reason.com.For more on campus censorship, listen to this Free Thoughts episode with Greg Lukianoff, “Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What’s the “MIT” approach to economics, and what’s wrong with it? Is economics a hard science? What is an economic model? What are some of the problems with thinking of the world this way?Arnold Kling claims that the economy isn’t like one big machine with a single purpose that can be fine tuned and regulated by experts. In this week’s episode, he presents an alternate way of thinking about economics, one you won’t find being taught in most college classrooms.Show Notes and Further ReadingKling’s new book, Specialization and Trade: A Re-introduction to Economics is available in paperback and as a free .pdf, Kindle, or .epub file.Kling and Burrus mention one of our recent Free Thoughts episodes with Thomas Leonard on his book, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What is a Stingray? How does it work? Is it a good idea to make police wear body cameras? Should officers be able to turn these cameras off? What about the privacy of the civilians being recorded? Should law enforcement agencies have access to drone technology? Where do we have a reasonable expectation of privacy?Matthew Feeney and Adam Bates join us this week to discuss new technologies available to law enforcement agencies in America, and the legal implications of these technologies.Where does a right to privacy apply in these new eras of government data collection? How should we balance police effectiveness and respect for Fourth Amendment privacy rights?Show Notes and Further ReadingFeeney recently authored a policy analysis on police body cameras, “Watching the Watchmen: Best Practices for Police Body Cameras.”Feeney also mentions a project our Cato colleague Patrick Eddington is working on: a timeline chronicling the American government’s surveillance activities over the past century. See acast.com/priv

After giving a broad overview of the philosophical underpinnings of governments last week, Roger Pilon joins us again to discuss the U.S. Constitution in particular and how the Constitution has been interpreted over the years.Pilon recounts the original signing of the Constitution and the adoption of the Bill of Rights, how post-Civil War constitutional amendments fundamentally altered the structure of American federalism, the Slaughter-House Cases of the late-19th century, Lochner v. New York, the New Deal Era, and how judicial interpretations of the General Welfare and Commerce clauses changed over time.Why was there no Bill of Rights when the Constitution was drafted? Is an originalist view of the constitution a necessarily antiquated one? Shouldn’t government be given enough power to realistically address any new concerns affect the nation as a whole, possibly issues that the Founders couldn’t have thought of? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How are constitutions adopted? Did the Founders get it right? What is originalism and why do constitutional interpretations matter when studying founding texts? By what standards do we judge a theory of constitutional interpretation to be correct?Roger Pilon joins us this week for a discussion about originalism and the U.S. Constitution. This episode is continued in a followup episode about how the Constitution has been interpreted over the years. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What is the “Statrix”? How does government warp our perception of the world around us? How does it disproportionately affect the poor?Trevor Burrus talks about the “Statrix,” a portmanteau of the state and the concept of an artificial world made popular in the 1999 action/sci-fi movie The Matrix. Show Notes and Further ReadingTrevor mentions the recent spate of track problems and fires that have been plaguing Washington D.C.’s metro system, which led to the creation of this website, ismetroonfire.com. He also explains this song by the Kingston Trio, which was meant to a protest fare increases on Boston’s public subway system.Here’s a series of articles by Megan McArdle on Washington D.C.’s streetcar project, written in 2009, 2014, and 2015 (the project was originally slated to be completed in 2006 and is still not fully rolled out today, in 2016).Trevor also mentions our podcast episode with Randal O’Toole, “Transportation, Land Use, and Freedom,” James Tooley’s book “The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey In

How can parents have more say in how their children are educated? What’s the difference between different approaches to school choice, like vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax credits? Do we know these work?Jason Bedrick joins us this week to make the case for school choice.Show Notes and Further ReadingHere’s an earlier episode of Free Thoughts with Neal McCluskey on the history of public schooling in America.Bedrick mentions Dale Russakoff’s recent book, The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools? (2016) and his review of the book at the Library of Law and Liberty.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.