Mustafa Akyol joins us this week to talk about Islam. Is there a Muslim case for liberty? How has Islam traditionally treated the principles of political liberalism? Show Notes and Further Reading Akyol’s book is Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (2013). He also mentions this op-ed he wrote in the Feb. 13th, 2017 edition of the New York Times , “ What Jesus Can Teach Today’s Muslims .” Listeners may also be interested in this episode of Free Thoughts on libertarianism and Christi...
Feb 24, 2017•46 min
Wolf von Laer joins us this week to talk about the movement for liberty on college campuses around the world. What are the biggest challenges to liberty for today’s university students? How difficult is it to communicate ideas on college campuses? Show Notes and Further Reading Listeners may be interested in our Free Thoughts episodes with Robby Soave and Greg Lukianoff on First Amendment rights on college campuses. The 10th International Students for Liberty Conference is February 17th-19th, 20...
Feb 17, 2017•54 min
Jeremy McLellan joins us this week to talk about his brand of politics and comedy. Does humor have a place in changing people’s political beliefs? You can find McLellan’s comedy on Twitter and Facebook . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Feb 10, 2017•49 min
Alex Nowrasteh joins us this week to talk about immigration in the wake of Donald Trump’s contentious executive order on the subject. Is immigration always good for a country? In this episode, we discuss economic arguments for and against immigration, the rate at which immigrants culturally and politically assimilate in the United States, and the real odds of a successful terrorist attack carried out by immigrants or refugees. Show Notes and Further Reading For a deeper understanding of Trump’s ...
Feb 03, 2017•56 min
Brink Lindsey joins us this week to talk about his idea for an alliance between liberals and libertarians in the age of Trump-style conservative populism. Where did the idea for liberaltarianism come from? How will Donald Trump’s presidency affect libertarians’ relationship with liberals and progressives? Show Notes and Further Reading Here’s Brink Lindsey’s Vox article, “ Liberals and libertarians should unite to block Trump’s extremism .” See also this article by Lindsey that appeared in the N...
Jan 27, 2017•48 min
Gene Healy joins us for a special Inauguration Day episode of Free Thoughts. We assess Barack Obama’s legacy as President of the United States and think about what we might expect in the coming years from President Trump. What will Obama’s presidential legacy be? How will recent expansions of executive power under Obama affect the actions of a Donald Trump administration? How hawkish has Obama’s foreign policy been? What happened to the anti-war movement during Obama’s presidency? Can we expect ...
Jan 20, 2017•55 min
Peter Van Doren joins us this week for a discussion on how wages are determined in a market economy. Is there a correlation between a worker’s productivity and the value they provide for society? Why has CEO pay increased so much lately? Should the government have a role in fixing unequal or unfair wages? Show Notes and Further Reading Van Doren mentions this blog post by Robert Lawrence on the gap between real wages and labor productivity . See also this link for the same discussion (only with ...
Jan 13, 2017•50 min
Jason Kuznicki joins us to discuss his chapter on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant in our newest book, Arguments for Liberty. What’s Kant’s conception of the good, and what kind of government follows from that? Who was Immanuel Kant and what were his moral and political theories? What does Kant’s categorical imperative tell us about how to live a good life? How do we get from the categorical imperative to a form of government? And why are some libertarians seemingly anti-Kant? Show Notes and Furt...
Jan 06, 2017•51 min
David Boaz joins us to recap 2016. Did we just have the worst year ever in American politics? Show Notes and Further Reading Here’s our Free Thoughts episode on Donald Trump with Ben Domenech, recorded after Trump won the Republican primary but before he won the general election. Boaz mentions the current issue of Cato Policy Report, which features an article by Tom Palmer on the new resurgence of three threats: identity politics, populist authoritarianism, and radical political Islam. Boaz also...
Dec 30, 2016•52 min
George Selgin joins us for a discussion about the gold standard. How did America get off the gold standard, and is there any chance of the country returning to it? Would it be a good idea to revive the standard? Why gold in particular and not any other commodity? Is gold less valuable as money than in other applications, like electronics manufacturing? Show Notes and Further Reading Trevor asks whether people in Venezuela have started switching to Bitcoin, since Venezuela’s own currency is falli...
Dec 23, 2016•53 min
Timothy Sandefur joins us this week to talk about his new book, The Permission Society: How the Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms into Privileges and What We Can Do About It . What’s the difference between a society where people are free to do whatever they please and one where they must first get permission from the government to do things like owning land, building a house, or starting a business? What’s wrong with these systems of permitting? Show Notes and Further Reading Sandefur’s book is Th...
Dec 16, 2016•49 min
Kevin Currie-Knight joins us this week to discuss why we can’t seem to change the way we educate schoolchildren. Is there one best way to educate kids? Where did our current system—splitting kids up by age, dividing knowledge up into subjects, having teachers stand at the front of the room and give lectures, testing knowledge with exams, summer holidays, etc.—come from? Why does education still look pretty much like it did hundreds of years ago when everything else in our modern world has change...
Dec 09, 2016•53 min
Johan Norberg joins Trevor this week to talk about the notion of progress and gives us all a few reasons to look forward to the future. Why is there a systemic bias towards pessimism when hard data shows the world is getting better and better every day? Show Notes and Further Reading Norberg’s newest book is Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future (2016). Listeners may also enjoy Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2011). To find more statistics that show how...
Dec 02, 2016•53 min
Richard Vedder joins us this week to discuss what he’s identified as three major problems with the way today’s American higher education system works. Why is higher education so expensive, and how did it become so expensive so quickly? If student aid and loans only aggravate the problem, can anything be done to remedy this? Is going to college more of a status symbol than a necessity these days? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 25, 2016•52 min
Dr. Ryan Neuhofel joins us this week to talk about his practice, NeuCare, which is a very different way to approach primary care medicine in the United States. What is direct primary care? How should health insurance work, and how is it broken in our health care system today? How do primary care doctors currently get paid? Why is managed health care so expensive? Is direct primary care part of what a free market in medicine might look like? Show Notes and Further Reading You can find more inform...
Nov 18, 2016•53 min
American Indians currently have the highest rates of poverty of any racial group; some reservations have unemployment rates upward of 80 percent. Suicide is the leading cause of death among Indian men, Native American women are two and a half times more likely to be raped than the national average, and gang violence affects Indian youth more than any other group. Why? Naomi Schaefer Riley says the American government’s current Indian policies are at fault as much as any historic injustice done t...
Nov 11, 2016•36 min
The bleak prospect of living in a country governed by one of the major-party presidential candidates seems to bolster arguments against voting. Declining to participate in this year’s deeply unsatisfactory election may signal a preference for “none of the above” while denying personal sanction to the many wrongs and injustices governments mete out in our names. Not voting is a time-saver, too. But non-participation in the vote may be an unwise option. Voting doesn’t just elect a candidate: it ma...
Nov 08, 2016•1 hr 8 min
What are some of the geographical factors throughout history that lead to unequal outcomes? Can we tease out a causal direction for something like cultural dishonesty? Is isolation—cultural, geographic, and otherwise—always bad for a society? How does all of this relate to the ongoing income inequality debate in America? Show Notes and Further Reading Thomas Sowell’s newest book is Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: Revised and Enlarged Edition (2016). Sowell mentions J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: ...
Nov 04, 2016•41 min
Why have people been so fixated on income inequality lately? Is it really a matter of “the 1%” versus “the 99%”? How do things like occupational licensing, energy use, and regulation tie in to this? How do these things stack the deck against poor people? Show Notes and Further Reading Here are Ryan Young’s two most recent papers on the inequality, which he coauthored along with Iain Murray. “People, Not Ratios: Why the Debate over Income Inequality Asks the Wrong Questions” and “The Rising Tide:...
Oct 28, 2016•46 min
Why does the left seem better at making non-cringeworthy political videos? Does that necessarily have to be the case? John Papola joins us this week to share his background at MTV, Nickelodeon, and Spike TV; his thoughts on the filmmaking process; and why it’s essential to tell character-driven stories. We also discuss Libertarianism.org’s new series, Freedom on Trial , which was produced by Emergent Order and directed by Papola. Show Notes and Further Reading Here’s our Freedom on Trial landing...
Oct 21, 2016•49 min
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 Reading Here’s Domenech in 2015, predicting the path of Donald Trump’s candidacy ...
Oct 14, 2016•44 min
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 Reading Long’s new book is Rituals of Freedom: Libertarian Themes in Early Confucianism (2016). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mo...
Oct 07, 2016•43 min
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 ...
Sep 30, 2016•51 min
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 Reading Jonathan 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 ...
Sep 23, 2016•49 min
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 Reading Jason Brennan’s newest book is Against Democracy (2016). Brennan is also the l...
Sep 16, 2016•58 min
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 Reading McDonald’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 . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...
Sep 09, 2016•59 min
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 Reading Cass 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...
Sep 02, 2016•53 min
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 Reading Here is Barnett’s latest book, Our Repub...
Aug 26, 2016•54 min
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...
Aug 19, 2016•1 hr 3 min
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 Reading William Irwin’s book,...
Aug 12, 2016•46 min
