So, at an Unfogged party this weekend, there was a charming young academic who seemed positively giddy at the prospect of encountering real live libertarians; we even let her check for horns. Apparently she knew a few people who self-describe this way because they’re “suspicious of state power,” but also all support Canadian-style healthcare. So […]

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A new spurt of commentary on the proposed alliance has erupted, much of it prompted by Jon Chait’s dismissive response to Brink Lindsey’s original essay. Brink himself hits back at The New Republic, as does his colleague David Boaz at Cato at Liberty. At The Corner there are reactions from Jonah Goldberg (who also has […]

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If there’s one thing liberals and libertarians can agree on, it’s Texas Hold-Em, and since the “liberaltarian” meme hit just before Tuesday’s poker night with an assortment of professional lefty types, it inevitably came up around the table. I can’t say I’m any more optimistic about the prospects for collaboration—there’s nothing like six years of […]

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James Poulos is always a pleasure to read, but he has come up with what is probably the silliest response to the “liberaltarian” meme: To wit, it’s all about casual fucking. Given the inordinate amount of thought he’s devoted to the torrid version of my sex life he’s conjured up, I almost hate to disabuse […]

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My passing mention below of the “line running through Mill and Rawls” gets me, along with Will Wilkinson and Brink Lindsey, called out by Ezra for going on about lots of abstruse philosomaphy in the course of the ongoing “liberaltarian” discussion. We’ve adverted to certain theoretical shared ground as a reason for thinking some kind […]

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Brink Lindsey’s essay on the possibility of a liberal/libertarian alliance, which I noted yesterday, has elicited a flurry of discussion. Kevind Drum is skeptical, and his comments section provides ample reason to think he’s right to be—while also, incidentally, providing some evidence for my other contention yesterday that lots of us seem content to understand […]

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Like awkward teenagers on a couch, libertarians and liberals continue edging closer on the sofa in nervous anticipation of a kiss. Brink Lindsey makes his move in a New Republic essay on “Liberaltarians,” which has the healthy distinction of gesturing toward actual compromises, whereas Markos “Kos” Moulistas’ overtures had consisted largely of explaining why libertarians […]

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I was just thinking about a short exchange I had a few weeks back with my friend Ben Adler over whether libertarians “have it in for” the handicapped. (It says something about D.C.—whether good or bad, I’m not sure—that his apparent belief that I hate the handicapped is not an obstacle to our describing each […]

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Blog ping pong may not be the ideal way to hash out the fundamental differences between conservative and libertarian approaches to tradition and fallibilism, so let me just restrict myself to a couple quick comments on Jonah Goldberg’s response to my post of last Friday . (Jonah’s original review is now online, by the way.) […]

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Ben Adler at TAPped writes: I’ve long been of the opinion, in all seriousness, that Republicans have it in for the disabled. First there is their positioning regarding discrimination against people with disabiilties in the workplace (President Bush, for instance, has repeatedly appointed judges who are extraordinarily hostile to discrimination claims). Then there is their […]

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