ReImagining Liberty

My guest today is Kevin J. Elliott , Assistant Professor of Political Science at Murray State University. He's the author of the upcoming book, Democracy for Busy People , and that's the jumping off point for today's conversation, which digs into what it means to be a good democratic citizen, and what democracy demands of us. Read a transcript of this episode. ReImagining Liberty is a project of T...

This is a show about liberalism, but liberalism is a bit of a contested term, slippery, evolving, and claimed by lots of people with rather diverse views about what it means. My guest offers a helpful framework for clarifying what liberalism is by dividing it in what she's called "The Four Corners of Liberalism": related and overlaping, but still distinct, approaches to the the liberal idea. Emily...

Welcome to the first episode of  ReImagining Liberty  at its new home with  The UnPopulist . This is a show about the emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical social, political and economic freedom. With every episode, host Aaron Ross Powell explores and defends liberalism by talking with scholars, activists and others working to build a freer world. For this first episode at  The UnPopulist...

I sometimes hear market anarchists say that "Anarcho-capitalism isn't anarchism." This claim, and the disagreements about the nature and values of a free society underpinning it, raises a lot of fascinating questions about liberty, radical liberalism, the characteristics of capitalism, how you even define that term, and the broader movement for liberty. My guest today is William Gillis ( @rechelon...

Years ago, a then colleague and I pitched the idea of a book called "The Reasonableness of Radicalism," which would've set out the case for an unapologetically radical political liberty and defended it against calls for moderation. The project never went anywhere, though, because we were told by the people making decisions that they didn't like to use the word "radical," because it might turn peop...

I've spent my entire career as what you might call a professional liberty advocate. But the last six or seven years have forced a lot of re-thinking on my part about how best to discuss these ideas in the evolving political landscape. The fundamental case for freedom, grounded in shared dignity and mutual respect, remains strong, but it feels like Americas, and much of the world, have proven more...

We all want to alleviate poverty, and help those living with it. The hard question is how. The left has a set of ideas, focused on redistribution and the welfare state. The right tends instead to view poverty as the result of moral and cultural failings. Libertarians have their own set of answers, but have often been pretty bad at talking about them in persuasive ways, developing a reputation for...

Few terms in our contemporary political scene provoke stronger reactions than “critical race theory.” If you listen to much of the right, CRT is a Marxist plot to literally destroy America by teaching children to hate the country, its founding principles, and even themselves. The resulting moral panic has led to anti-CRT legislation, and acted as a precursor to the growing anti-trans and anti-gay...

Chances are, you've never heard of Don Lavoie. I certainly didn't run across him when I was getting into libertarianism in college, and it wasn't until years into my time working for the Cato Institute that I learned about him from my boss, David Boaz. But Lavoie is arguably the North Star for what the liberty movement needs to become if it wants to reestablish itself in America's shifting politic...

Across nearly a decade, and over four hundred episodes, of the  Free Thoughts  podcast, Trevor Burrus and I talked a lot about liberty. Today I invited him on ReImagining Liberty to continue that conversation. At issue is the question of how to approach being an advocate for radical liberalism in a political environment that seems to have lost its taste for it. We range, as we often do, rather bro...

What's the relationship between libertarianism or radical liberalism and the ideas of the left? Most place them in clear and direct opposition, and argue that liberty advocates should have more affinity for conservatism, at least in its American variety. My guest today argues otherwise. Akiva Malamet ( @akiva_malamet ), a writer and philosopher, and contributor to my old website, Libertarianism.or...

We can argue at length about the proper role of government. But if we're to have any state at all, one of its clear jobs is to protect us from crime, and to punish criminals. And yet the American criminal justice system is anything but just, and a full accounting of just how bad it is can be pretty harrowing. The criminal justice system is the most direct application of violence by government on i...

A lot of people seem to be pretty down on freedom right now. Some take it so far as to blame liberty, and political liberalism, for not just our economic woes, but also for allowing our culture to drift away from some kind of socially conservative, right-leaning, often religious imagined ideal. These “post-liberals” have found intellectual purchase, writing talked-about books, headlining conferenc...

What's the best economic system for achieving prosperity, while maximizing liberty and autonomy? Capitalists give one answer, socialists another. Capitalists say that free markets not only produce wealth, but that wealth then empowers workers to have more say over their conditions and more freedom to exit from bad working situations, as well as experiment with different workplace organizational st...

Cory Massimino ( @corymassimino ) is back on  (Re)Imagining Liberty  to talk about the politics of radical freedom at their most radical. Namely, anarchism. I get asked every so often whether I'm an anarchist. My honest answer is I'm not sure. I believe anarchism as a moral claim is clearly correct. State power is illegitimate. No one has a right to rule, and no one has an obligation to be ruled j...

Today's episode is about transgender rights, and the growing cultural backlash among conservatives against the very idea of transgender identities. My guest is Kelly Wright ( @anarchakelly ), a Brooklyn-based writer and activist and an affiliate of the Center for a Stateless Society. We explore the myths and objections that conservatives have about transgender people, gender affirming healthcare,...

When I was a scholar at the Cato Institute, interns frequently asked me for reading recommendations. My advice was typically to read books outside of the libertarian canon. This was for a couple of reasons. First, because understanding the ideas of those who disagree with us helps us be better advocates for our own ideas. But, second, because thinkers who aren't necessarily aligned with our politi...

Today's episode begins with a discussion of how border militarization and foreign intervention create a feedback loop of increasing violence and restrictions on freedom. We then take those lessons and apply them to the broader question of how we should approach politics and public policy, and the ways our thinking can get tripped up by over-investment in narrow paths to change. My guest is Nathan...

Today we're looking at Robert Nozick's classic work of libertarian philosophy,  Anarchy, State, and Utopia . Released in 1974, it's the book that put libertarianism on the map within contemporary academic philosophy.  Nozick argued for a strong conception of rights and then traced out what that means for government, including whether rights allow for any government at all.  Anarchy, State, and Uto...

Postmodernism, like Marxism and Critical Race Theory, has become a catch-all term for whatever upsets the right in the culture war. But what if, instead of destroying libs with logic and reason, the American right has become itself deeply postmodernist, rejecting ideas of objective truth in favor of satisfying, but false, narratives? Joining me today is professor Matthew McManus ( @MattPolProf ),...

Does American conservatism still provide a home for liberty-minded ideas? Looking at the state of the modern, post-Trump Republican Party, as well as the intellectual centers of gravity among the American right, the picture's rather discouraging. To get a better sense of where the right is now, and how liberalism fits (or doesn't) within it, it's important to look backwards. What has the American...

For years, I've proudly called myself a libertarian, because “libertarianism” best describes my commitment to robust freedom, as well as my understanding of the threat government poses to it. But lately I found myself less willing to use the label when talking to new people. Not because “libertarian” no longer accurately describes my political views, but because certain groups claiming the label h...

I've long argued that it's important for everyone engaged in political debate to understand the ideas, theories, and philosophies they're arguing with. That understanding begins with taking them on their own terms, trying to appreciate them the way those who hold them do. In other words, you shouldn't just read what your side says about the other guys, but instead look to how the other guys talk a...

One of the difficult, and interesting, questions a system of political liberty needs to deal with is how to approach differing conceptions of what the good life looks like and how people ought to behave. We can say that the government shouldn't interfere in people's lifestyle choices, but does that mean we should also say that being pro-liberty means being pro- every choice people might make, as l...

Welcome to the inaugural episode of ReImagining Liberty . My goal for today's conversation was to set the direction and tone of the whole (Re)Imaginging Liberty podcast going forward. And to do that, I brought on my friend Cory Massimino ( @corymassimino ), a philosophy student and a fellow at the  Center for a Stateless Society . He's also one of the smartest young scholars I know, and our talks...