Riffing on the post below, “Postmodern Conservative” James Poulos writes: In a world where libertarians are utterly doomed on the political front and turned loose with glee instead on the culture, the flattening out of local, particular political power — the inevitable result of sovereign individuality — drives prideful, envious democratic souls to the rational […]

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Dave Weigel notes that John McCain has a rather idiosyncratic conception of “the will of the people,” which may turn out to be precisely the opposite of what a significant majority of the actual people wish to do. That’s not to say this idea is without pedigree. In fact, it mirrors quite closely Rousseau’s distinction […]

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Amanda Marcotte exercises her uncanny, quasi-mystical power to peer into the dark, shrouded heart of the libertarian. Among her discoveries: We were all staunch supporters of the war, and think that the rich are morally superior to the poor (who, by the way, they own like chattel). Who knew?

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This BloggingHeads dialog between Will Wilkinson and Robert Wright is quite good.

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I’ve always found irritating the penchant of some on the left for casting policy disputes as centrally questions of “selfishness” or “generosity”—even if it’s too familiar to rankle much at this point. It seemed like a distracting ad hominem, a way of shifting the conversation from substantive arguments to pointless speculation about ultimately unknowable motives. […]

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Kerry links to Will Wilkinson’s unflattering review of the most recent anti-consumerist jeremiad from Ben “Jihad vs. McWorld” Barber: Barber claims that not only is modern capitalism no longer satisfying real needs, but is in some sense making us worse off. The modern consumer, Barber writes, “is less the happy sensualist than the compulsive masturbator, […]

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Todd Seavey has a good post up about the vacuity of many arguments about who is a “real” libertarian/progressive/liberal/conservative/Scientologist/whatever. And I’ll readily agree that many of these arguments quickly grow petty and pointless. If someone wants to stipulate that by “libertarian” they mean “someone who derives all his political positions from an absolute principle of […]

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Gene Healy explains.

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Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s concept of “libertarian paternalism” is generating renewed discussion on the heels of a Wall Street Journal debate between Thaler and my quondam mentor in the occult mysteries of libertarianism, NYU economist Mario Rizzo. For all that I’m a fan of linguistic precision, I think Will Wilkinson’s semantic critique of the […]

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I was scanning Paul Krugman’s column on trade today (evil TimesSelect firewall) and got to wondering: Is there a looming battle between populist opponents of free trade and natalists? Any successful natalist policy, after all, is going to generate a certain number of Surplus Americans relative to the next generation that would have existed absent […]

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