After a truly surreal 36 hours, British politics has some clarity: The prime minister, Boris Johnson, will resign, thus triggering the third Conservative leadership contest in six years. His successor (due to be picked from a field of hopeful Tory parliamentarians which could easily stretch to a dozen people) is expected to take office this autumn. The race begins now.

For British libertarians, the end of the Johnson premiership is a bittersweet moment. For all his association with liberty-crushing lockdowns, many of us still remember when Johnson was a darling of the freedom-loving right. He used to be the politician who made his career rallying against the excesses of the nanny state while thumbing his nose at bores and bureaucrats alike.

It was this penchant for freedom and optimism that made Johnson such an effective campaigner for Brexit. Unlike the nativist grievance peddling from the likes of Nigel Farage, Johnson painted Brexit as a chance to build a more outward-looking and ambitious Britain. All we had to do first was "take back control"and end the supremacy of European Union regulation. It was a theme that went on to power both his leadership and general election campaign of 2019.

But shortly after the newly-crowned prime minister broke the political deadlock around Brexit, there came a new crisis: COVID-19. At first, Johnson's much-heralded libertarian instincts held up nicely. In one of his early press conferences about the pandemic (in which he encouraged a nervous public to minimize social contact and keep physical distance), Johnson laughed off a question about calling in the police to enforce common sense. Within weeks, he had been persuaded by his advisers to order a full lockdown.

It was this heavy-handed approach that would go on to shape 18 months of British politics, as the country veered from punitive lockdowns (at one point opting for the most stringent measures in Europe) to equally invasive lockdown-lite measures like the "rule of six." As backbench libertarian members of Parliament raged, Johnson's acolytes sought to assure the public that these measures flew in the face of his political instinctsand would disappear as soon as possible. But many of us weren't convinced.

The truth is that, even as the pandemic faded, Johnson's newfound "big state" instincts did not. One of the first warning signs was when, after Johnson had been hospitalized with COVID-19, he announced an expansive anti-obesity agendapromising to ban multibuy deals on unhealthy food; end television advertising of sweets and crisps; and even make calorie counts compulsory on all restaurant menus (a move that would have placed a disproportionate burden on small businesses).

Downing Street didn't just come after our diets. One of the government's flagship legislative proposals was the much-criticized Online Safety Bill: a sprawling manifesto on internet regulation that would see web hosts fined vast sums for failing to remove "legal but harmful" content (the exact meaning of which would be subject to the judgment of government ministers). Free speech advocates saw it for what it was: a censor's charter.

His supposed libertarianism didn't add up to much when it came to taxation and spending, either. Having used his leadership campaign to define himself against the austerity measures of previous Tory governments, Johnson spent his time on Downing Street going even furtherdriving up state spending in pursuit of lofty policy goals (including using taxpayer cash to protect the assets of millionaire pensioners by introducing a socialized cap on privately-provided elder care).

Under big-spending Boris, tax levels reached the highest level since WWII. A sneaky decision not to inflation-proof tax thresholds meant that 2 million people just got pushed into a higher tax bracket, even though their real-terms earnings have not necessarily increased. Businesses didn't fare much better eitherjust look at the recent decision to levy a short-notice "windfall tax" on the increased profits of energy firms (which comes on top of the planned hike in corporation tax).

Inevitably, this profligate attitude was going to bring trouble for a maverick like Johnson. And so it did last month when a mooted plan to ignore World Trade Organization rules in order to unfairly subsidize British steel (a move designed to appeal to Johnson's protectionist "Red Wall" voters) led to the resignation of Christopher Geidt, the prime minister's ethics adviser. Although, of course, none of those scandals came close to Partygatethe lockdown-breaking spree that hastened Johnson's downfall.

For all his promise, the truth is that Johnsonthe supposed savior of the Tory rightwill end up leaving behind a Britain considerably less free than the one he inherited. Many will continue to praise him for delivering Brexit, but this misses the point. While the U.K. may be out of the E.U. legal orbit, we've done almost nothing to take advantage of it, retaining the vast majority of the regulations that Johnson used to rail against so persuasively.

If there's one positive, it's thatas the Johnson premiership goes down in flamesperhaps the Conservative Party will finally rediscover its commitment to liberty. There are already signs that at least one serious candidate (the current foreign secretary, Liz Truss) plans to run on a more libertarian-oriented platform in the upcoming contest. Others are likely to follow in the coming weeks.

If Conservative voters have paid attention during the Johnson premiershiprather than remaining blinded by party or Brexit loyaltythey will have observed the folly of "big state" conservatism. Let's hope this summer they vote in a way that reflects that.

Link:

Boris Johnson Leaves Behind a Bigger, Bloated State - Reason

The Statue of Liberty.

The revised version of my new article on "Immigration and the Economic Freedom of Natives" is now up on SSRN. This revision addresses a number of issues and potential criticisms more fully than the original version. Here is the abstract:

Much of the debate over the justice of immigration restrictions properly focuses on their impact on would-be migrants. For their part, restrictionists often focus on the potentially harmful effects of immigration on residents of receiving countries. This article cuts across this longstanding debate by focusing on ways in which immigration restrictions inflict harm on natives, specifically by undermining their economic liberty. The idea that such effects exist is far from a new one. But this article examines them in greater detail, and illustrates their truly massive scale. It covers both the libertarian "negative" view of economic freedom, and the more "positive" version advanced by left-liberal political theorists.

Part I focuses on libertarian approaches to economic freedom. It shows that migration restrictions severely restrict the negative economic liberty of natives, probably more than any other government policy enacted by liberal democracies. That is true both on libertarian views that value such freedom for its own sake, and those that assign value to it for more instrumental reasons, such as promoting human autonomy and enabling individuals to realize their personal goals and projects.

In Part II, I take up left-liberal "positive" theories of economic freedom, which primarily focus on enhancing individuals' access to important goods and services, and enabling them to have the resources necessary to live an autonomous life. Some also focus on expanding human capacities generally, or give special emphasis to enhancing the economic prospects of the poor. Here too, migration restrictions impose severe costs on natives.

Finally, Part III describes how to address situations where potentially harmful side effects of migration might undermine either negative or positive economic liberty of natives, without actually restricting migration. I have addressed such issues in greater detail in previous work, and here provide only a short summary of my approach and its relevance for economic liberty issues.

Read more here:

Revised Version of My New Article on "Immigration and the Economic Liberty of Natives" - Reason

A Google Deep Mind project (Democratic AI) ended up redistributing virtual wealth in ways that were voted as the most popular methods, according to a vote taken by human players participating in an online game-based experiment.

The research was based on an algorithm that learned from different models of human behavior via an online investment game. Participants (biological and silicon) had to decide whether to keep or give away monetary gains from a communal pot. The AI ended up gradually redistributing the wealth it won and redressing some of the imbalances in economic fortunes among the players. But it achieved this in a way considered by participants to be the fairest way possible.

The reason for the research was not, as our clickbait headline suggests, to prove that computers, software, or AI researchers are inherently socialists but instead to develop better value alignment between self-learning computer models and their human bosses. Because theres a wide range of behaviors exhibited by humans, an AI should be able to align its behavior in such a way that it appeals, on balance, to a majority of the population.

The researchers aimed to maximize a democratic objective: to design policies that humans prefer and thus will vote to implement in an [] election.

The study measured human monetary contributions during the game under three redistribution principles: strict egalitarian, libertarian and liberal egalitarian. In political; terms, these might translate into socialism, free market-ism, and social democracy hard left, hard right, and somewhere in between.

The egalitarian model divided funds equally between players regardless of their contribution, while the libertarian returned a payout proportional to the monetary contribution those with the most gained the most. The liberal egalitarian measured contributions proportional to any inherent imbalance in wealth that players entered the game with.

It was found that generally, humans disliked the extremes of each model. The pure egalitarian model was seen as aggressively taxing the wealthiest and supporting freeloaders. The libertarian model saw money flow to the wealthiest disproportionately. Researchers wanted to know whether an AI system could design a mechanism that humans preferred over these alternatives and that would be more acceptable than the liberal egalitarian modeling that one might think was the natural middle ground.

The AI was trained to imitate behavior during the game, voting the same way as human players over the course of many rounds. The model was optimized using deep RL (reinforcement learning) and then took redistribution decisions with a new group of human players. Players voted on the AIs suggestions for redistribution. Iterating on these processes obtained a mechanism that we call the Human Centred Redistribution Mechanism, the papers authors state.

Throughout the experiments, radical redistribution of wealth from the top down was found to be unpopular as it eventually led to the wealthiest players not wishing to contribute collectively at all. Nor were those at the bottom of the virtual economic pile happy with seeing just a few players gain disproportionally.

The report states, the redistribution policy that humans prefer is neither one that shares out public funds equally, nor one that tries to speak only to the interests of a majority of less well-endowed players.

Smart AI systems learning from the full gamut of human behaviors mean systems can be trained to satisfy what researchers called a democratic objective, that is, to find the most popular way forward. The AIs winning model was voted the best by a few percentage points, beating the liberal egalitarian, pure egalitarian, and pure libertarian. In brief, the AI found a better compromise than any humans could devise by simply learning to imitate all available human behavior.

AIs learning from human behavior is a fiercely complex area of study, and some of the more public experiments have ended in, at best, derision. Earlier experiments, like the very public disgrace of the Microsoft Twitter personality, ended badly. Given a cross-section of the cauldron of human opinion expressed by an opaque algorithm, Tay learned to be racist, sexist, and generally unhinged after a few hours. As a Microsoft spokesperson told CNN at the time, [Tay] is as much a social and cultural experiment, as it is technical.

When biased learning materials are given to an AI, it simply recreates that bias and, in some notable cases, exaggerates by being given similar input often. However, improving methods of machine learning are helping matters, as is the awareness of inherent human bias in just about every expression and utterance. Economics is one area where the nuances of human behavior can literally be quantified and, therefore, are a fertile ground for research.

In 50 years, will we refer to AIs decision-making abilities to decide human affairs? Having AIs making decisions over human conduct is a standard trope in science fiction, where silicon rulers can be fully benign (The Polity series of books, by Neal Asher, for example) or something very much more malevolent (Terminator et al.). If there is a better way that pleases most of the people most of the time, it may have just germinated.

More here:

The AI algorithms that believe in equality, from Google's Deep Mind - TechHQ

I used to line up an article every month for Econlib, from 2008 to 2019. My favorite was one by Jeff Hummel in 2018. Its titled Benefits of the American Revolution: An Exploration of Positive Externalities.

Here are the opening two paragraphs:

It has become de rigueur, even among libertarians and classical liberals, to denigrate the benefits of the American Revolution. Thus, libertarian Bryan Caplan writes: Can anyone tell me why American independence was worth fighting for? [W]hen you ask aboutspecificlibertarian policy changes that came about because of the Revolution, its hard to get a decent answer. In fact, with 20/20 hindsight, independence had two massive anti-libertarian consequences: It removed the last real check onAmerican aggression against the Indians, and allowed American slavery to avoid earlierand peacefulabolition. One can also find such challenges reflected in recent mainstream writing, both popular and scholarly.

In fact, the American Revolution, despite all its obvious costs and excesses, brought about enormous net benefits not just for citizens of the newly independent United States but also, over the long run, for people across the globe. Speculations that, without the American Revolution, the treatment of the indigenous population would have been more just or that slavery would have been abolished earlier display extreme historical naivety. Indeed, a far stronger case can be made that without the American Revolution, the condition of Native Americans would have been no better, the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies would have been significantly delayed, and the condition of European colonists throughout the British empire, not just those in what became the United States, would have been worse than otherwise.

Another excerpt:

[Historian Gordon] Wood concludes that Americans had become, almost overnight, the most liberal, the most democratic, the most commercially minded, and the most modern people in the world. The Revolution not only radically changed the personal and social relations of people but also destroyed aristocracy as it had been understood in the Western world for at least two millennia. The Revolution brought respectability and even dominance to ordinary people long held in contempt and gave dignity to their menial labor in a manner unprecedented in history and to a degree not equaled elsewhere in the world. The Revolution did not just eliminate monarchy and create republics; it actually reconstituted what Americans meant by public or state power.

Heres a comment Jeff made in 2018 in response to some commenters:

Even after military conflict broke out in April 1775, a majority of the Continental Congress did not favor independence until February 1776, and it was a slim majority. The first colony to actually instruct its delegates to vote for independence was North Carolina the following April. Thus we have nearly a year of hard fighting during which a majority of Patriots favored and expected to achieve reconciliationwithinthe British Empire. It was Thomas Paines Common Sense, published in January 1776, that ultimately tipped the scales in favor of secession.

Also the difference between the French and American Revolutions can be overdrawn. The American Revolution admittedly had no reign of terror, but the treatment of Loyalists could be quite appalling, with disturbing instances of brutality and killing. Given that many Loyalists fought for the British, some historians have started referring to the Revolution as a civil war, a term neither of you [the two people hes responding to] consider. At the end of the War for Independence, an estimated 50,000 Loyalists left the United States, out of total population of 2.5 million. The French Revolution generated as many as 130,000 migrs and deportees, out of a total population of 25 million. Thus the American Revolution produced refugees at almost four times the rate of the French Revolution. And while many migrs eventually returned to France, very few Loyalists returned to the U.S.

I still maintain that the American Revolution brought momentous benefits, but let us not overlook its costs and excesses.

The picture above is of me with my Betsy Ross flag in front our house. I will be carrying it in the July 4 parade in Monterey later today.

Happy, happy July 4.

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The Positive Externalities of the American Revolution - Econlib

Data from the N.C. State Board of Elections show that 41,795 N.C. voters have changed their party affiliation since the beginning of 2022. More than half of those, 23,374, are now unaffiliated voters, instead of a Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian.

Republicans are the only N.C. party to gain more voters than theyve lost so far this year, with nearly 5,000 Democrats becoming Republicans.

Of political parties, Democrats have lost the most voters since January 2022 with nearly 20,000 registered Democrats leaving the party and only 6,253 joining. The data show that of those who left, one quarter (4,999) became Republicans, 14,447 became unaffiliated, and 207 switched to the Libertarian Party.

About 9,830 voters have left Republican affiliation, and 11,341 switched to it. Of the Republican voters who changed their affiliation, most (8,348) became unaffiliated, 1,211 became Democrats, and 271 switched to Libertarian.

Libertarians lost 936 affiliated voters. Of those, 579 became unaffiliated, 220 became Republicans, and 137 became Democrats.

This year seems to have a slight uptick in registration changes when comparing it to the election years of the last decade, said Jim Stirling, research fellow at the John Locke Foundations Civitas Center for Public Integrity. 2020 had a massive number of registration changes, totaling 237,611 changes.This includes the now removed Green and Constitutional parties only having received 2,477 registrant changes.While we may not reach 2020 registration changes, we will likely see a large uptick in registrations as we get closer to November.

There has been speculation that voters are switching parties to manipulate another groups primary race and might switch back in time for the general election.

Short-term party switching is often talked about but is pretty rare in practice, said Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity. It was popularized by Rush Limbaughs Operation Chaos in 2008, when he encouraged Republicans to change registration to vote in Democratic presidential primaries. More recently, there was an effort by progressives to change party registration to vote in the Republican 11th Congregssional District primary against Madison Cawthorn.

Only an estimated 2,000 Democrats made the switch in that race, likely not enough to have swayed the outcome.

North Carolina has more than 7 million registered voters, with about 2.5 million Democrats, 2.2 million Republicans, and 50,000 Libertarians. There is a meeting at the State Board of Elections scheduled for Thursday June 28, that would consider adding the Green Party to N.C. ballots. Controversy has erupted lately, though, that citizens whove signed the Greens petition are being contacted by a group associated with national Democrat operative Marc Elias. The group is encouraging them to remove their names from the petition. If the Green Party is allowed on N.C. ballots for November, it could erode Democrat affiliations even further.

The data illustrate a national trend with more voters switching to the Republican Party ahead of 2022 general elections. Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that 1 million voters in 43 states have switched to Republican affiliation this year, while only 63,000 switched to become Democrats. AP cited Raleigh as one of the key cities in the study where Republicans are gaining ground.

Democrats are hoping that last weeks U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wades constitutional right to an abortion will change the voter exodus from their party and force Democrats focus onto the state legislative races, where abortion law would now be set.

I think this is an earthquake in the midterms, said N.C. Democrat political strategist Morgan Jackson on Front Row with Marc Rotterman over the weekend, calling it a base motivator.

Both sides of the aisle think the Roe decision from the U.S. Supreme Court could benefit Democrats, with a recent Civitas Poll of likely N.C. voters finding that 40% of respondents identified as pro-life, while 43% of respondents said they are pro-choice. Among women 18-34 years old, 22% say they are pro-life, while 63% say they are pro-choice.

One of the reasons Democrats are having trouble in polls right now is because Democrats are not motivated, Jackson said. This changes all of that.

Republicans are working to wrest control of Congress from Democrats after losing majority power in 2020. They say that historic inflation in food, housing, energy, and gasoline costs combined with dropping wages will set the pace for November elections, giving Republicans the wind at their back. In Junes Civitas poll, only 41% of respondents say they plan on voting for Democrats at the national level and 39% at the state level.

Unaffiliated voters were the second-largest group to change parties, behind Democrats. Of the 11,376 unaffiliated voters to change, 6,122 became Republicans, 4,905 became Democrats, and 349 became Libertarians.

The general election is scheduled for Nov. 8. Voters must be registered by Oct. 14.

Follow this link:

More than 40000 NC voters have changed their political party this year - Carolina Journal

I respectfully disagree with the lady who claims Republican state Senate nominee Eric Brakey will stand up for Mainers rights as he did for the Maine Sportsmens Alliances purported right to carry a concealed weapon without permit or background check.

Brakey is a professionally-trained actor who came to Maine in 2012 to direct the failed presidential campaign of libertarian Ron Paul.

Two years later, Brakey, an out-of-state political opportunist with lots of out-of-state money, ran and won a seat on the Maine state Senate.

In the past 10 years, Brakey has run for state Senate in 2014 , U.S. Senate in 2018, U.S House Representatives in 2020 and later that year, Maine secretary of state. And here we are in 2022, and he is once again running for state Senate.

During his time as the co-chair of the Legislatures Health and Human Services Committee, Brakey demonstrated little or no concern for the rights of abused and neglected children, and supported former Gov. Paul LePages efforts to cut funding for Child Protective Services and Public Health Services. Not a peep came out of his mouth when Riverview Psychiatric Center lost its accreditation because of poor management and mistreatment of patients, including tasing.

The Maine Sportsmens Alliance gave Brakey an A+ for supporting the rights of a minority of people who want to carry concealed weapons, but he gets an F+ from me for disregarding the rights to health and welfare of Mainers he failed to represent.

Patrick EisenhartLewiston

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Letter to the editor: Eric Brakey won't stand up for his constituents - Press Herald

A broken clock is right twice a doomsday, I suppose.

After a ground-breaking Supreme Court Term eviscerating precedent and cementing novel legal theories invented from whole cloth in my own lifetime, many see the conservative legal movement triumphant. But Harvard Law Schools arch-conservative Adrian Vermeule took to the Washington Post to throw some water on that opinion.

Rather than the triumph of conservative legal thought, Vermeule is left wondering what the conservative legal movement even means:

But that framing rests on an error: In reality, as this case [West Virginia v. EPA] makes clear, there is no conservative legal movement, at least if legal conservatism is defined by jurisprudential methods rather than a collection of results.

Yeah well, thats not wrong.

Hes just pointing out what everyone (a) not in on the grift or (b) possessed of two working brain cells has said since at least the 1980s. But Vermeule is now starting to actually question the course of the movement hes danced with for decades. Its cute the same way you enjoy watching a child say, Hey, I dont think any of those three cards are the one I picked!

The conservative legal movement distinguishes itself from other approaches by declaring itself united not around results-oriented jurisprudence but rather around a set of supposedly neutral methods for interpreting legal texts. Conservative jurisprudence again, as advertised has four pillars: originalism, textualism, traditionalism and judicial restraint. Although different conservatives emphasize one or the other approach, all are staples of Federalist Society events and lauded in the opinions of conservative justices.

The use of the phrase as advertised is almost tragically on point. Conservative legal theory is and has always been a public relations campaign designed to dupe ordinary folks into thinking radical judicial activism is ordained by some connection to mythologized and infallible Framers. But at all times the movements lodestone remained whatever aligned with the policy preferences of the contemporary Republican Party.

When semantic games got there, its a highly stylized brand of textualism. Failing that, it beckoned to a cherry-picked account of the original public meaning at the Founding. When the history of the Founding proved inconvenient, they started basically only for gun laws reconfiguring originalism around the public meaning four score and seven years after the fact. Consistency is the hobgoblin of honest actors, and the conservative legal movement jettisoned those folks years ago for getting high on their own supply and actually believing this stuff.

But grounding the partisanship in a theory that sounds superficially reasonable bestowed a quasi-apolitical shield.

To Vermeules credit hes been complaining about the conservative legal movement for a while now. Though from his perspective, the big problem is that concepts like originalism arent compatible with his integralist worldview that the United States should junk the Constitution in favor of the eventual formation of the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and ultimately the world government required by natural law. Basically a transnational government of vaguely Catholic authoritarianism.

Which makes this jeremiad kind of rich: a guy who publicly dumps on originalism as an inconvenience on the road to theocracy is suddenly annoyed that conservatives dont seem moored to originalism?

So whats going on here?

If there is no conservative legal movement, what is there? The answer is not mysterious: There is a libertarian legal movement, a consistent opponent of federal regulation, supported and rationalized by an entrenched network of richly funded, quasi-academic and advocacy institutions in essence, a resurrection of the Liberty League of the 1930s.

Ah, the Court hiding beneath all these artificial theories is simply too libertarian!

Frankly, its impossible to watch the Supreme Court write the Establishment Clause out of existence and think thats the result of a libertarian legal movement. Barry Goldwater, Americas proto-libertarian was outspokenly pro-choice and yet we got Dobbs, an opinion so steeped in pre-Founding traditionalism that it cited witch hunters approvingly. These are the opinions that lay the groundwork for Vermeules preferred order.

But originalism and textualism are conceits pliable enough to open the door to religio-fascism, but also invite too much championing the individual to the party to reliably get all the way there.

Unless hes wildly naive, Vermeule isnt really offended that this Court treats established conservative legal theories as playthings as much as he sees an opening to pierce the apolitical veil protecting jurists he considers too libertarian.And if accepted legal theories are a mirage wielded by right-wingers who dont really appreciate a good auto-da-f, maybe this is a chance for conservatives to try his own common-good constitutionalism on for size. Its just as intellectually bankrupt but its just a little harder to be one of those RINOs justifying heliocentrism!

Because Im not buying that the guy who titles his works Beyond Originalism is really shedding tears that the Court isnt appropriately deferential to original public meaning and no one else should either.

But Vermeules specifically writing for the audience that bought into originalism in the first place, so he knows hes got a bunch of easy marks.

There is no conservative legal movement [Washington Post]

Earlier: Hey, Can Someone At Harvard Law School Check In On Adrian Vermeule?

Joe Patriceis a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free toemail any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him onTwitterif youre interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Read more:

Arch-Conservative Law Professor Starting To Suspect Conservative Legal Movement Just A Bunch Of Pseudo-Law Made Up For Partisan Goals - Above the Law

Just as villains can be more compelling than heroes, are dissidents more intriguing than the leaders of history?

Ive been interested, in some ways, in the history of losers, Justus Doenecke tells The American Conservative.

Doenecke, who taught at New College of Florida from 1969 to 2005, made his reputation in the historical profession through an open-minded reappraisal of arguably the most prominent group of American losers in the twentieth century: the pre-World War II anti-interventionists. These were the middle Americans who saw Franklin Roosevelts foreign policy as the path to bankruptcy, chronic overseas war, and presidential dictatorship.

Its a story he was practically born to narrate.

I grew up in Brooklyn. People always think of New York as very liberal, but there are pockets of extreme conservatives, in fact you would call them reactionaries, Doenecke explained. My father was a building estimator, and he hated Roosevelt. He didnt like the regulations of the New Deal, he didnt like trade unions. You know, son of a bitch ruined America. And he had all these conspiracy theories. Every single book that came out trying to prove that Franklin Roosevelt planned the Pearl Harbor attack, my father owned.

Emerging from this heavy dose of Old Right upbringing, where his parents worshiped the newspaper columns of Westbrook Pegler and George Sokolsky, Doenecke sought to prove that the America First movement was not the bund of kooks, knaves, and antisemites theyd been smeared as ever since the Eastern press saw fit to label them isolationists.

In a series of extensively researched and balanced books, starting with Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era (1979) and culminating in Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941 (2000), Doenecke found the anti-interventionists to be astute American patriots, with coherent strategy and cogent criticism of Roosevelts path to war.

In the words of libertarian scholar Ralph Raico, Students of the greatest antiwar movement in American history, revisionists and nonrevisionists alike, are permanently in Justus Doeneckes debt.

Although he hasnt written on them as extensively, Doeneckes interest in losers extends to the Confederacy and the Loyalists of the Revolutionary War. When I first started teaching at New College I taught a course called Dissent in American History. Im also interested in all kinds of socialist and left-wing groups for that reason too. Things that deviate from the vital center, in a way, he said.

This focus on nonconformity is the through-line between his previous work and his newest arrival, More Precious Than Peace: A New History of America in World War I, published in March. Its the anticipated sequel to his 2011 book, Nothing Less than War: A New History of Americas Entry into World War I. The first book covers the years 1914-1917 and the second 1917-1918.

The past decade has seen numerous books related to the First World War published in conjunction with its centennial. What separates Doeneckes from its predecessors is his willingness to give a podium to dissent.

As one who has spent much of his career examining Americans who took a dim view of U.S. foreign policy from 1931 to the early Cold War, I am now continuing to examine foes of U.S. intervention, this time scrutinizing their opposition to the way the nation waged World War I, he writes in the introduction.

Almost every page is interspersed with opinions and objections from a broad cast of characters challenging the Woodrow Wilson administration as either too lenient or too harsh: the newspaper chain of iconoclast tycoon William Randolph Hearst; Socialist and New York City mayoral candidate Morris Hillquit; former president and Wilsons bitter bte noir Theodore Roosevelt; prolific and lifelong Germanophile George Sylvester Viereck; Wisconsin progressive and anti-imperialist Senator Robert La Follette; and magazine editor George Harvey, whose loathing of the German nation crossed into the genocidal.

This uproarious chorus reminds the reader that no public policy is made in a vacuum. From the enforcement of the Espionage and Sedition Acts to the pronouncement of war aims and his Fourteen Points, Woodrow Wilson wasnt having a one-way conversation but was both reacting to and attempting to lead a contentious and discordant body politic.

More than half the book concentrates on the homefront and domestic developments, the most engrossing of which is the American publics shift from being unsure of its participation in the European war to a frothing hysteria that could be satisfied with nothing less than unconditional surrender.

Despite a lopsided vote in favor of waronly fifty congressmen and six senators voted againstthere was uncertainty about how much involvement voters would countenance, and even whether the United States would meet Germany on the field of battle. Three out of every ten army conscripts were illiterate, many having no idea who the Kaiser was. When someone from the War Department appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to request the first appropriations for an American Expeditionary Force, Majority Leader Thomas S. Martin of Virginia (who voted for war) responded, Good Lord! You arent going to send soldiers over there, are you?

But as spring turned to summer, censorship carefully curtailed access to information through propaganda organs like George Creels Committee on Public Information and new laws like the Espionage Act of 1917. As Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler approvingly told his faculty, What had been tolerated before became intolerable now. What had been wrongheadedness is now sedition.

Postmaster General Albert Burleson, universally considered a man of profound ignorance, was given unilateral authority to decide what material constituted obstruction of the war effort and the ability to suspend it from second-class mailing rates; that way, actual publication was not barred but circulation would be impractical beyond a small local area. Thus the Wilson administration successfully shuttered the most popular socialist, Irish-American, and German-language dailies and journals without requiring armed men to smash printing presses.

Public attention was mobilized by semi-private organizations like the American Defense Society and the American Protective League, which Doenecke says have been neglected by historians and secondary sources. These quasi-military structures, led by elite members of business and former politicians, possessed hundreds of thousands of members each. The former was a project of Theodore Roosevelt, the latter nurtured by Wilsons Attorney General Thomas Gregory.

Vigilantism wasnt uncommon. Ordinary citizens rounded up draft dodgers (slacker raids), tapped phones, rifled bank accounts and medical records, and even entered neighbors homes in search of spies and Teutonic agents. In April 1918, when a German-born baker in Illinois was assaulted by a group of drunks who wrapped him in the American flag and hanged him, the Washington Post responded that enemy propaganda must be stopped, even if a few lynchings may occur. More did occur.

In many ways, the domestic repression of World War I was more participatory and grassroots than during any other conflict in American history.

Critical industries were cartelized and economically directed out of Washington, D.C., although in a much more rudimentary way than would occur during World War II. Doenecke relates a decision where, in order to cope with a coal shortage, Harry Garfield, son of the assassinated president and designated fuel administrator, decreed the closure of all non-essential factories east of the Mississippi River for a week in January 1918.

It was a heyday for political demagoguery. Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico, later of Teapot Dome infamy, feared that if the Germans reached Paris, theyaccompanied by 15 million Mexicanswould next reach Chicago and cut your great United States in two. Later on, Senator William S. Kenyon joked that if the Germans captured New York, his fellow Iowans would rejoice.

Even Warren G. Harding, known today as a laissez-faire conservative, said in August 1917, Not only does this country need a dictator, but in my opinion is sure to have one before the war goes much further.

By October 1918, when Wilson was attempting to hammer out an armistice based on his Fourteen Points and a vision of peace without victory, most newspaper editors were clamoring for unconditional surrender even if it meant driving the Boche all the way to Berlin.

On the military side, Doenecke covers all bases in this well-rounded account. General Black Jack Pershing competes with Wilson as the predominant figure in the last third of the book, which details both his determination to keep American doughboys independent of the European command structure and his inability to adapt to mechanized warfare. An early chapter summarizes the war at sea against German U-boats, while two enthralling chapters relate the United States extreme ineptitude and lack of perception toward the Russian Revolution and our subsequent decision to intervene militarily. This was the most difficult section to write, says Doenecke, because Russia is just a tangle of confusion.

The book concludes with the armistice on the Western front in November 1918. Although the negotiations at Versailles and Wilsons final pitch for the League of Nations are left up to other authors, the closing tone leaves no ambiguity of what direction the peace will take.

It has become a meme among portions of the political right, particularly libertarians, to label Woodrow Wilson the worst president, the man responsible for every ill of the twentieth century. Contemporaries both left and right, militarist and pacifist, expose this conclusion as simplistic and exaggerated.

I would say of people who would have a chance of being elected president, who would get enough mass support, I think Wilson far and away stands above the others, Doenecke tells TAC, eliminating non-viable alternatives he personally admires such as Robert La Follette and Frank Cobb, chief editorial writer for the New York World.

Its difficult to argue with his assessment. Charles Evans Hughes, the bearded iceberg and Wilsons 1916 opponent, had no experience or interest in diplomatic matters; Theodore Roosevelt favored outright martial law and would have gone much farther than Wilson toward a presidential despotism; Henry Cabot Lodge, the cornerstone of Republican foreign policy in the U.S. Senate, favored a Carthaginian peace as harshly as Lloyd George or Clemenceau.

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The reality of these circumstances is something any serious libertarian or conservative critic must address when reassessing the Wilson presidency.

Like in all his past work, Doeneckes method of historiography leans heavily toward the descriptive, eschewing any attempt to psychoanalyze or mentally deconstruct people nearly a century after their deaths. Ive never been taken with psychohistory at all. There are too many variables, too many things we dont know. What do we know about a person between the ages of three to five, for example? he asks. You can only go so far with this kind of stuff.

Most of my work is sheer narrative. And in that sense Im somewhat old-fashioned. I think narrative history is the only way were going to recover the discipline of history from the maelstrom it seems to be in now. And the most popular history, the history that the lay-person reads, is narrative history, he concludes. They want the story.

Read more from the original source:

The Dean of Non-Interventionism - The American Conservative

Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson responded to a question on whether he will run for president in 2024 in a Thursday interview.

Semafor co-founder and editor-in-chief Ben Smith questioned Carlson on his ambitions to launch a presidential run during an interview hosted by the Knight Foundation and Semafor News.

Im curious about your ambitions, Smith said. There are friends of yours, to the extent youve still got them in Washington, who are talking about your running for president in 2024 and Im curious what your thought process is around that.

I have zero ambition, not just politically, but in life, Carlson said. My ambition is to write my script by 8 p.m. And Im not just saying that, as anyone who works with me or knows me, I dont think that way. I dont want power. Ive never wanted power. Im annoyed by things, I want them to change, but Ive never been motivated by the desire to control people.

Carlson described his instincts as libertarian, though he does not associate himself with the Libertarian Party.

So, thats a youre not running?' Smith pressed.

Im not running, I mean come on, Carlson replied. Im a talk show host, and I enjoy my job, by the way. And what a blessing it is to say what you really think like, only women can get pregnant. I dare you to say that. Can you say that? No, you cant say that. I can. (RELATED: Tucker 2024? Heres Where Carlson Stacks Up Against The Competition)

Smith asked Carlson about his concerns with the political civil conflict arising throughout the country and whether he has the ability to faith in institutions. The host said he can by telling the truth, correcting his mistakes and urged the country needs to de-racialize the nation.

Yes, Im trying my very hardest to tell the truth, and when I screw it up, I correct it immediately if its a factual error. When my views on things change, I say so, I dont pretend I didnt used to think that, he said. I admit it.

The scariest thing that could happen to America is to wind up in a country that cleaves along racial lines, he continued later. Identity politics is the route there so the most important thing we can do and we should do people who have an audience is to de-racialize the conversation. The Democratic Party is like, Its white people, white men versus everybody else. I hate that. Thats not true.

Smith claimed Carlsons audience enjoys when he pours gasoline on those fires, asking if ratings had any involvement in his reaction to these issues. The Daily Caller co-founder said he does not read ratings charts and doesnt know what his shows ratings are.

Read more:

Tucker Responds To Question On Whether He Will Run For President - Daily Caller

Described by Rolling Stone as the point man for drug policy reform efforts and the real drug czar, Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad. After receiving his PhD in Political Science from Harvard University, Ethan went on to teach at Princeton University from 1987 to 1994. He went on to found and direct The Lindesmith Center (1994-2000) and the Drug Policy Alliance (2000-2017), during which time he and his colleagues were at the forefront of dozens of successful campaigns to legalize marijuana and advance other alternatives to the war on drugs. His 2014 TED Talk on ending the drug war has over two million views, with translations into 28 languages. Ethan currently hosts the leading podcast on all things drugs: PSYCHOACTIVE.

Elise Curtin and Alex Fasseas: In a recent episode on your podcast PSYCHOACTIVE, you discussed cannabis reform with House Republican Nancy Mace. Despite Maces pro-legalization stance, Republican support remains scarce. First, why is it that legalization is a partisan issue? And second, what in your opinion is the best argument to convince someone with conservative views to support legalization?

Ethan Nadelmann: On the one hand, theres always been a partisan divide between the Democrats and the Republicans on legalizing marijuana, which in large part had to do with marijuanas association with rebellion and cultural opposition in the 1960-70s. So you always had that divide. On the other hand, among my most passionate allies were the Republicans with a libertarian leaninggranted most of the base of my support was still on the left. For instance, when former governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson became one of the first governors to boldly step out in favor of marijuana legalization, he became my great ally on the issue.

Another one of my allies, believe it or not, was Grover Norquist, the founder of Americans for Tax Reform. His famous line was, I want to make government so small, you can strangle it in a bathtub. So this is a guy who I politically disagree with on the large majority of issues, and yet hes my close ally on drug policy reform. He arranged for me to speak in plenary sessions at multiple Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPACs), where I would always debate someone from the right-wing. And there would always be people in the audience yelling things like, Get him off the stage! or He works for Soros! But by the end of the debate, I would always receive more applause, because all the young conservatives showing up to CPACs were sympathetic to legalizing marijuana, and even some of the older, more libertarian-minded folks were, too.

Over the last decade or so weve started to see a majority of young Republicans and representatives like Nancy Mace come out in favor of marijuana legalization. When you look at red and purple statesSouth Dakota, Montana, Arizonavoting for marijuana legalization, youre seeing the divide between the Democrats and the Republicans become less substantial. Another example is support for legalizing medical marijuana, which used to be overwhelmingly Democrat with only a handful of Republicans. And then as Democrat support grew from 60 percent to 90 percent, Republican support blossomed to about 60 percent in the last few years.

In terms of convincing Republicans, I think it really comes down to two arguments: decreasing police overreach and potential tax revenue. More specifically, wed rather have the cops focusing on real crime instead of busting young people for weed. And second, wed rather have the government taxing and regulating marajuana instead of letting the gangsters make all the money. In almost every state, these poll-tested messages have appealed to both Democrat and Republican swing voters.

EC & AF: What are some often-overlooked positive or negative externalities that accompany the legalization of marajuana? For instance, how might it function as a substitute for other psychoactive substances?

EN: There are two interesting areas of study that look at substitutability with marijuana. One is vis--vis alcohol; some studies show that legalization results in a reduction in alcohol usehow significant it is is hard to say. The second area is with opioids; there are now at least 10 studies that suggest that the first few states that legalized medical marijuana have had lower rates of opioid overdose fatalities. That is likely due to two factors: first, people experiment with substituting cannabis for opioids in order to deal with certain types of pain. The other factor has to do with the fact that cannabis is an enhancer, so patients can take a lower dose of opioids when combined with cannabis and still get the same pain relief effect.

In terms of negative externalities, one of the principal arguments used against marijuana legalization is that it can lead to an increase in use among adolescents. But what critics fail to account for is the fact that adolescents are the ones who already have the best access to marijuana. So even when we started legalizing the stuff, adolescent use did not go up. In fact, some places even saw a decrease in adolescent and college-age users.

Where use did go up was among people between their 40s and their 90s; theres been a fourfold increase in my generations use of cannabis over the last 10 years, and its because people are substituting it out for alcohol, prescription drugs, sleeping pills, etc. I know a lot of couples who have been in a monogamous relationship for 20, 30, 40 years where cannabis plays a central role in their ongoing sexual relationship. It can act not so much as a Viagra, but as a way for people to stay connected, to shift their context. So I think thats where weve seen some real positive susceptibility.

Obviously, the advocatesmyself includedwant to emphasize the upsides and the safety of marijuana, but I always felt that our credibility was greatest when we acknowledged right at the outset that cannabis is a psychoactive drug that can be harmful to people. On the other hand, one could point to the fact that for many people, the worst thing that ever happened to them from their marijuana use was getting busted for it. The governmentspecifically the National Institute on Drug Abusespends billions of dollars to show the negative harms of marijuana, but they never spend the money to show the negative harms of being arrested and incarcerated, even for just a few days, for possession.

EC & AF: What do you consider to be the most significant political accomplishment of your career thus far?

EN: I think the most obvious success was ending marijuana prohibition. I was speaking and publishing in both left- and right-wing policy journals about why we needed to legalize marijuana more than 20 years ago. I took a lot of pride in building a broader drug policy reform movement, in weaving together disparate strands of peoplefrom conservatives, to psychedelics users, to sobriety advocates, to law enforcers, to ex-inmates.

My role on marijuana legalization started off with spearheading the first California medical marijuana initiative in 1996, and then taking it to Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada and Maine from 1998 to 2000. That arc from the early 90s through 2016 for me was, I think, the greatest and most conspicuous success. From there I helped build out the movement, pushing ballot initiatives to reduce arrests and incarceration, which, as a result, have allowed over 100,000 people to stay out of prison or serve shorter sentences. Additionally, back in 2000, we organized the first international conference on preventing overdose fatalities, making naloxone more readily available and passing 911 Good Samaritan laws, which allow drug users to access emergency services without fear of arrest.

EC & AF: Looking to the future, what upcoming or current project are you most enthusiastic about?

EN: The issue that has really galvanized me in the last few years since I stopped running the Drug Policy Alliance have been the debates surrounding e-cigarettes and harm reduction. Evidence shows that if you take an adult smoker whos addicted to cigarettes and has been unable to quit, and transition them over to e-cigarettes, you cut the risk to their health by roughly 95 percent. And thats because most of the harm of tobacco comes not from the nicotine, but from the burnt particle matter and the carcinogenic tars which can lead to heart and lung disease, and eventually death.

On the other hand, nicotine consumed in an e-cigarette has relatively little harm to your health. You can be on nicotine for the rest of your life, and maybe theres a cardiovascular risk as you get older, but overall its not that dangerous as a substance. What that means is that if all 40 million Americans who are currently addicted to cigarettes switched to e-cigarettes, it would represent one of the greatest advances in public health in American history. Ultimately, however, the reason we cant have tobacco harm reduction is because most people and policymakers view it as a big child protection act.

So this is the issue on which Ive become most animated. And I think theres a possibility that a generation from now, the war on drugs is not going to be about marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. Its going to be about tobacco.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Read this article:

The Politics of Marajuana and the War on Drugs: An Interview with Ethan Nadelmann - Brown Political Review

Editor's Note: this article is a part ofGoverning's Inside Politics newsletter.Sign up here.

Democrats Are Playing With Fire: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has a healthy seven-point lead, according to the first poll of his re-election race taken following last weeks primary. He should be pretty happy with the result. After all, he helped pick his own opponent.

Pritzker and the Democratic Governors Association spent in the neighborhood of $30 million boosting the chances of state Sen. Darren Bailey in the GOP primary. Pritzker believes that Bailey, who secured the endorsement of former President Donald Trump just ahead of the primary, is an extremist who will be soundly rejected by Illinois voters.

Perhaps the most famous recent example of this came in 2012. Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill spent more money during the last couple of weeks of the GOP primary season than her preferred opponent, U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, spent on his entire campaign to that point. Akins track record made him my ideal opponent, McCaskill later wrote. I had successfully manipulated the Republican primary so that in the general election I would face the candidate I was most likely to beat.

McCaskill got lucky. It was only after he became the nominee that Akin made the ultimately disqualifying comment that it wasnt necessary to allow abortions for rape victims because if its a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. McCaskill said she would have felt terrible if Todd Akin had become a United States senator, but rationalized her ploy by arguing his primary opponents would have ended up voting the same way once in office.

Thats the real risk Democrats are taking this year. By encouraging voters to pick candidates they believe are the most outside the mainstream, they increase the odds more offices will be held by the type of Republicans they hate the most. This is shaping up to be a strongly Republican year, so Democrats could be ushering their own worst future enemies into power.

On the other hand, Democrats may prevail in a few races by propping up future failures on the other side. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, helped promote the candidacy of state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Trumpist election denier, in the GOP primary. On Wednesday, Shapiro got to announce the endorsements of 10 Republicans who are backing him over Mastriano, including two former members of Congress, a former lieutenant governor and a former state House speaker. Another group of Republicans have formed a super PAC to support Shapiro, calling Mastriano extreme and unacceptable.

In response to the Democratic Governors Association boosting Trump-endorsed state Rep. Dan Cox over state Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz his own preferred candidate Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan recently tweeted, The whack job being propped up by the DGA would ensure that our state goes back to a Democratic monopoly.

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney (TNS)

President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man, but he has yet been unable to break through our national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust, Romney wrote in The Atlantic. A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable.

The danger, Romney warns, could be cataclysmic. Complacency and wishful thinking are putting the country and its political traditions at risk. When entire countries fail to confront serious challenges, it doesnt end well, he wrote.

Granted, Romney is the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump at the end of both his impeachment trials. But Romney was also the Republican Partys last presidential nominee before Trump. That the 2012 standard-bearer falls so far outside the mainstream of his own party shows how much that party has changed over the past decade.

Abortion Will Be on the Ballot: Given the Supreme Courts recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion has emerged as one of the top political issues of the year. It remains to be seen whether Democrats get their wish that it motivates their voters and turns independents against Republican candidates. Only 5 percent of voters named abortion as their top concern in a Monmouth University poll released Tuesday, far fewer than inflation, gas prices and other economic issues.

But abortion will be an issue that voters will decide directly in at least five states this year. Kansas and Kentucky voters could approve state constitutional amendments that would block abortion rights a question that will have real consequences in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. Voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and West Virginia have approved similar amendments in recent years. In November, Montana voters will decide on a measure that would create criminal penalties when infants born alive are denied medical care.

Conversely, Vermont voters will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Last week, Californias Legislature also put an abortion rights amendment on the November ballot. And it looks like Michigan voters will consider a similar measure.

Theres a 1931 law on the books in Michigan that bans abortion, except to save the life of the mother, but a state court in May blocked its enforcement. Supporters for an abortion rights amendment say theyve collected nearly 800,000 signatures nearly double the 425,059 needed to qualify for the ballot.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul will face no minor party challengers this fall. (TNS)

For decades, New Yorks ballots have been filled with candidates from numerous minor parties Liberal, Conservative, Working Families, Libertarian and so on. Often, major-party candidates have run as the nominee of two or more parties, but generally theyve found it annoying having to compete against larger-than-average fields.

In 2020, the Legislature raised the threshold for minor parties to qualify for the ballot. Previously, their candidates only had to receive 50,000 votes every four years. Now, they have to receive 130,000 votes, or 2 percent of the total, every two years, in both presidential and gubernatorial elections. Last week, the state board of elections rejected applications from seven different parties seeking to qualify for this years election for governor.

A federal court will hear a challenge from the Green and Libertarian parties later this month. But right now, it looks like New Yorkers this fall will only be choosing between two parties for governor for the first time since 1946.

Read the original:

Democrats Are Playing With Fire - Governing

On 9 August 2022, Kenyans will vote for their fifth president. It will be the countrys seventh general election since the resumption of multiparty electoral democracy 30 years ago.

This year will see the lowest number of presidential candidates on the ballot since 1992. The countrys Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has cleared four contenders. They are Deputy President William Ruto of the Kenya Kwanza coalition, former prime minister Raila Odinga of the Azimio la Umoja coalition, law professor George Wajackoyah of the Roots Party and lawyer David Waihiga of the Agano Party.

While Ruto and Odinga are the frontrunners, Wajackoyah and Waihiga are fringe presidential aspirants. Generally, fringe candidates are aspirants whose chances of passing a frontrunner are slim to none.

They play a significant role, however, in testing democratic spaces for maturity. They also accrue personal benefits, such as grooming for future political careers.

A look at fringe candidacy in established democracies shows that marginal aspirants are more significant than we might think. In the United States, for example, the 2020 elections had Jo Jorgensen (Libertarian Party) and Howie Hawkins (Green Party) as fringe candidates. The 2016 elections had four such contenders: Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party), Jill Stein (Green Party), Evan McMullin (Independent) and Darrell Castle (Constitution Party).

While Kenyas 2022 general election will have just two fringe candidates, previous elections have had between three (in 2002) and 13 (in 1997).

Read more: Money, influence and heroism: the allure of political power in Kenya

Kenyas 2010 constitution changed the outcome for presidential candidates after an election. Under the old constitution, the president had to be a member of parliament. This meant presidential candidates also vied for a parliamentary seat, raising their chances of being in government even if they failed to clinch the top seat.

The 2010 constitution changed this requirement. Presidential candidates cannot vie for any other seat, drastically reducing their political options should they not get elected.

Despite this change, fringe candidates continue to throw their hats in the ring. This means there are other motivations.

Read more: Odinga is running his fifth presidential race. Why the outcome means so much for Kenya

Fringe candidates serve four main functions. First, their presence in an election offers proof of a stable or steadying democracy. Political systems, institutions and politicians learn to accommodate alternative candidates as equal players with the right to contest elections.

Second, fringe candidates give the media a break from horserace journalism. This is the kind of reporting that focuses on powerful, influential and popular political players.

Third, fringe candidacy can serve as a political nursery for politicians. They gain name recognition from media coverage of presidential aspirants, and showcase their political ambitions through campaigns, interviews and debates. This builds their political profile.

They also go down in history as having contested the presidency, regardless of their performance in the elections.

For presidential candidate Wajackoyah, a peculiar manifesto that includes popularising marijuana and snake farming to offset Kenyas public debt seems to be working for him. His campaign speeches are often a trending social media topic in Kenya and his manifesto launch got prime news coverage.

There was similar excitement among voters in 2013 and 2017 when Mohammed Abduba Dida appeared in presidential debates with unusual ideas on how to better govern Kenya.

Fringe candidates often atypical ideologies and beliefs give democracies a break from regular political themes.

Fourth, fringe candidates can front a third force that unseats a powerful regime. This played out in Kenyas 2002 elections when fringe candidates from the 1992 and 1997 polls formed a coalition that nominated Mwai Kibaki as their flagbearer. He won the election against Daniel Mois preferred successor, Uhuru Kenyatta who is Kenyas current president.

There are aspirants who hope to one day replicate the luck Kibaki and Kenyatta had, and are happy enough to seek the presidency as fringe candidates.

Read more: William Ruto, the presidential candidate taking on Kenya's political dynasties

Waihigas presidential campaign seeks to infuse a moralist voice into Kenyan politics. He has hit out at Wajackoyahs plan to legalise marijuana and accused him of insulting church leaders. He is running a campaign that revolves around easing taxes, lowering the prices of basic foods and bringing back to Kenya money illegally obtained and stashed abroad.

Not all fringe candidates play a positive role in elections. Some have been accused of using their candidacy to split votes and give a frontrunner the advantage. This can be viewed as a well-orchestrated political move.

For instance, in 2007, former vice-president Kalonzo Musyokas bid for the presidency split the 2.4 million votes in the countrys eastern region. At the time, Kenya had just over 14 million registered voters. The eastern region is a significant constituency in elections and has traditionally supported Odingas presidential candidacy.

When Musyoka set out on his own, he ended up with 8.91% of the total votes cast. Odinga obtained 44.07% of the votes against a victorious Kibakis 46.42%. Had Odinga and Kalonzo remained united, the presidential poll results might have been different.

Another former vice-president, Musalia Mudavadi, fell out with Odinga in 2013 and decided to launch his own campaign. Mudavadis presidential candidacy split the votes in the western region which includes vote-rich counties like Vihiga, Kakamega and Bungoma.

Western Kenya is Mudavadis ethnic base and has often supported Odinga. In the 2013 election, however, Kenyatta won with 50.51% of the votes against Odingas 43.7%. Mudavadi came in third with just under 4% of the vote.

In developed and developing democracies, fringe candidates have a constitutional right to contest. Since their presence can often be a sign of a maturing democracy, the media and allied cultural institutions need to give them attention.

Additionally, its possible that those who vote for these candidates might not have exercised their right of suffrage had they not had the option on the ballot. For this reason, fringe contenders can help entrench a culture of voting and counteract voter apathy.

Follow this link:

Kenyas fringe presidential candidates: what they offer in elections - The Conversation

Responding to Ms. Fahrigs letter (Daily Bee, June 23). In no way did I intend to denigrate those that voted. I was addressing the 50% of age-eligible Idahoans who arent even registered to vote. Apparently they dont feel the need to participate in our democracy and that really disappoints me.

Another disappointment was that only 44% of those registered Bonner County voters even bothered to vote. As a result of this, 18% of those that voted decided who would represent the GOP in the November election. That translates out to approximately 10% of the age-eligible population decided our senator. That is a very disappointing commentary on involvement in our republic.

The disgusting portion of events was the manner in which the senatorial election was decided. Through misinformation, disinformation and lies over months prior, a majority of the voters were lead to believe that the incumbent needed to be ousted. Stooping that low to win is disgusting.

It doesnt matter if one is a Constitutionalist, Republican, Libertarian, Democrat or independent, we need to vote. Only through the ballot box can anyone make a difference. If you dont vote you dont have a voice. Do yourself and Idaho a favor and vote.

GIL BEYER

Sandpoint

Read this article:

Regardless of party affiliation, we all need to vote - Bonner County Daily Bee

Two years ago, the Green Party didnt receive 2% in either the North Carolina presidential or governors race. That meant it lost a place on the ballot.

To get back on in 2022, the Greens needed 13,865 signatures of registered voters. The party said it collected 22,500 and that local county elections boards verified 15,953 of them.

But when the North Carolina Board of Elections met last week, executive director Karen Brinson Bell said there were problems.

There are numerous pages with obvious signs of fraud or irregularities, she said. These include the same hand-writing throughout and similar signatures.

She said the problems with the signatures might not raise a question but when you look at these cumulatively, we feel like there is a cloud over how many signatures are valid.

The elections board later voted 3-2 along party lines not to certify the Green Party petition, likely keeping it from the 2022 ballot. The decision could boost Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cheri Beasley by giving progressive voters fewer choices in November.

But the boards decision touched off accusations from the Green Party that national Democrats were undermining their efforts. A prominent Democratic law firm The Elias Law Group said the Green Party misled voters when getting them to sign their petition.

Mathew Hoh, the Greens North Carolina U.S. Senate candidate, acknowledged there were small problems with the more than 22,000 signatures submitted. He said 95% were collected by Green Party volunteers.

But 5% were gathered by contractors, he said. And two of those people seemed to have tried to run a scam and submit false signatures. That was around 200 signatures (in question).

He said leading up to Thursdays hearing, he said the state hadnt given the party any indication that there was a larger concern.

And none of it as far as we were told amounted to systemic fraud that we were up not to no good, Hoh said. This is going to happen when you collect signatures. Someone will write Mickey Mouse and think its funny.

He added: This idea that because there was this fraud, there could be more. And because there could be more, there needs to be more investigation.

Hoh said he believes the Green Party is the victim of an effort by national Democrats to have their signatures rejected.

The Elias Law Group represented Michael Abucewicz of Raleigh, who has worked as a deputy get-out-the-vote director for the North Carolina Democratic Party.

He and the Elias Law Group sent the Board of Elections a letter stating that people leading the signature drive for the Greens worked to hide the partys ideology and misled people who signed. North Carolina law says that parties must inform people who sign of the general purpose and intent of their party.

But Hoh it was Democrats who were misleading people.

About two weeks ago we started hearing from folk who signed the petition saying hey someone just contacted me asking to take my name off the petition, he said.

Hoh released a recording of a phone call between Tony Ndedge, who is the co-chair of the states Green Party, with someone who tried to get them to take their name off the petition. The caller said they were a member of the Green Party.

On the recording, Ndedge asks the caller if he is representing the Green Party. The caller said yes.

The caller then asks if Ndedge signed a petition to have the Green Party on the ballot. He said yes.

The caller then appeared to read from a script, saying the Green Partys presence on the ballot will take votes away from Democrats giving Republicans a huge advantage. That will help them win North Carolina in 2022 and 2024. Are you interested in having your name removed from the petition?

Ndedge then said: Im confused. So, if you are with the Green Party, why are you asking me to remove it?

Then the phone call ended.

Abucewicz and an attorney with the Elias Law Group did not return phone calls or e-mails from WFAE.

Hoh said the Democrats went too far.

It would be one thing if their argument was we are checking the integrity of the petitions, he said. But as soon as you confirm that you signed the petition, then there was a message and on the calls, there was a script how the Green Party helps Republicans.

Many Democrats blame Green Party candidates Ralph Nader in 2000 and Jill Stein in 2016 for siphoning votes from Democratic presidential candidates. And for Republicans, Libertarian Gary Johnson received 3.3 percent of the vote in 2016and may have taken votes from Donald Trump.

And there is a LibertarianShannon Brayon this years U.S. Senate ballot.

The Board of Elections' three Democratic members voted not to certify the Greens. The two Republicans voted yes.

Board of Elections member Tommy Tucker, a Republican, said national Democrats were undermining North Carolina voters.

So there must be something advantageous for the Democrat Party not having the green party on the ballot, Tucker said. Thats my observation.

During the meeting last week, an attorney for the Green Party, Oliver Hall, protested the boards decision.

Is there any question as to the validity of the 15,953 signatures that have been validated by state and county boards? he asked.

The board chair, Damon Circosta, a Democrat, responded, saying that he had questions, sufficient in number, to be not willing to vote for certification today.

Hall pushed back.

The presumption ought to be that validated signatures are valid, he said. So again the question is: Is there any basis for considering or questioning the validity of any of those 15,000 signatures?

Hall then raised his voice at Circosta, saying Mr. Chairman, you have not answered the question.

Circosta said that Hall was out of order and told staff on the virtual meeting to mute Mr. Hall.

Elias Law Group's and the Green Party's letters to North Carolina BOE:

Read more:

NC Green Party rejection sparks claims of unfair undermining by national Democrats - WFAE

Good morning everybody,

Today is the 5th of July, and this is The Tuesday Pillar Post.

Todays the feast of St. Zoe of Rome, a third-century noblewoman whose husband maintained the Roman jail in which was imprisoned St. Sebastian, a prophet who would become a martyr.

Zoe couldnt speak; she apparently suffered an illness that left her unable to talk for more than six years until Sebastian, the holy prisoner overseen by her husband, prayed over her.

After Sebastians blessing, Zoe began to speak and soon found herself praising Sebastians God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Zoe and her husband were converted, baptized, and - for that - Zoe was soon martyred. She was apparently suffocated by smoke in 286, after she was suspended over a fire pit amid the Christian persecution of Diocletian.

May the Lord give us healing, may he open our lips, and may we praise God no matter the cost.

St. Zoe of Rome, pray for us.

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Pope Francis on Monday appointed Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Bishop of London, to become apostolic visitor for the Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Ireland.

Why? Well, because nearly 40,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in the Emerald Isle in recent months war-weary and often in poverty and the sole Ukrainian Catholic parish in Dublin faces a daunting task to provide pastoral care for them.

Nowakowski told The Pillar yesterday that hell look into the prospect of establishing new Ukrainian Greek Catholic missions in Ireland, while he takes care of his growing flock at home more than 65,000 Ukrainian refugees have already arrived in the U.K., where the bishop already exercises pastoral care.

I think the Church always has to be seen as a lighthouse, where those beacons of hope are there, and that its not just an electronically manned lighthouse, but theres actually a human being there able to provide a compassionate ear, prayers, and the ability for people to know that God loves them, the bishop told The Pillar.

The big thing - and I emphasize that time and again - is to keep us in prayer, to remember Ukraine, dont let it slip off the horizon because its become, perhaps, old news. Its very important, he said.

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Albanys Bishop Edward Scharfenberger on Friday proposed a plan to settle outside the courtroom more than 400 claims of sexual abuse in his New York diocese.

The bishop told The Pillar that mediated settlements would ensure more fair compensations for abuse victims, and help the diocese avoid filing for bankruptcy.

Albany is the not only diocese to propose mediation with victims; some dioceses have established large victims compensation funds administered by third parties.

But Scharfenberger talked openly last week about the real challenge of providing monetary compensation to victims in a diocese with a declining population and limited cash:

The thing, I think, that's not been understood is that there is a limited amount of money, the bishop told The Pillar.

I dont want any hidden corners whereby we say we've got this pot over there saving for a rainy dayIll throw everything out there, but the thing is, the pot is limited.

Scharfenberger said he believes mediation would provide settlements for a higher number of victims than would litigation. He said he thinks thats just. But the bishop said he knows victims will find it difficult to trust him:

I understand that my efforts are naturally difficult to trust. It will be hard for many to believe that I am acting or speaking from my heart, or that what I do or say is credible, he told The Pillar.

Its not yet clear that the attorney leading lawsuits against the Albany diocese has actually brought the offer to his clients - or whether he intends to.

But Scharfenberger spoke strongly for serious ecclesial accountability during the 2018 McCarrick scandals he was a leader among bishops pushing for serious reforms - and transparency. And as the Church continues to address a just resolution to clerical sexual abuse, one victims advocate told The Pillar that Scharfenbergers views are worth discussion.

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The Catholic Church in Liechtenstein is going through a moment of serious upheaval the tiny countrys archbishop has declined to participate in the synod on synodality, and is under fire for his handling of a priest accused of sexual assault. And Liechtensteins Church leaders have had some tangles with both prince and parliament in the small country.

With all that going on, its possible that the archdiocese in Liechtenstein might well be eventually folded back into the Swiss diocese from which it was carved. Its an unusual situation but one from which the entire Church can draw some lessons.

Luke Coppen reports on Big Trouble in Little Liechtenstein.

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And while hes spending time on small European countries, Luke brings you this profile of Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, one of Europes most influential Churchmen.

You might remember Hollerich from some controversial comments he made a few months ago, which called into question the Churchs doctrine on homosexuality. But you might not know that the cardinal plays a very big role in the universal synod on synodality and in the confederation of European bishops conferences.

Hollerich has a lot of influence over the direction of the Church in much of Europe. So if you want to understand how the business of the Church gets done in Europe and who will be influential in guiding the shape of a future conclave the cardinal is worth reading about.

Check it out.

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Heres some more news that might be of interest:

Cardinal Blase Cupich said yesterday that gun violence is a life issue, after 6 people were killed in an Illinois suburb, and nearly two dozen more were treated in hospitals, most for gunshot wounds. They were shot during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, just north of Chicago.

Whatever one makes of the right to bear arms, there is plenty of room for prudential judgment in interpreting the Second Amendment so as to enact serious, broadly popular gun-safety measures. The Senate finally passed a significant, yet modest, gun-safety bill last month. But clearly more must be done, the cardinal said in a statement.

The right to bear arms does not eclipse the right to life, or the right of all Americans to go about their lives free of the fear that they might be shredded by bullets at any moment.

May the Lord of mercy embrace in love those who have died, bring healing to the wounded, comfort to their loved ones, and courage to all of us, so that we may respond to this tragedy united as Gods children to build a path to safety and peace.

Pope Francis sent a telegram Tuesday morning to Cardinal Cupich, conveying prayers that Almighty God will grant eternal rest to the dead and healing and consolation to the injured and bereaved with unwavering faith that the grace of God is able to convert even the hardest of hearts, making it possible to depart from evil and do good.

For more on what the Church has to say about guns, read my May interview with Bishop Dan Flores, who talked with The Pillar after the Uvalda school shooting about guns, public discourse, and a crisis of hope.

Brazilian Cardinal Cludio Hummes, who encouraged the pope to take the name Francis, has died at the age of 87.

Police in Nigeria have rescued a kidnapped Italian priest, while two other priests were abducted in Nigeria on Saturday.

Myanmars military is reportedly continuing to target churches.

Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes has expressed deep regret after Nicaraguas government ordered the closure of Mother Teresas Missionaries of Charity apostolates in the country. (Spanish report).

Chinese Bishop Paul Lei Shiyin has celebrated the birth of Chinas Communist Party in Leshan cathedral.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx has said that the time is ripe for women deacons (German report).

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Much will be made in the news this week about a long interview Pope Francis gave this month to Reuters Vatican correspondent.

The interview covers a lot of ground, but doesnt offer much new: The pontiff told Reuters that he has no plans to resign, denied rumors he has cancer, and said he hopes the Vaticans deal with China will be renewed in October.

The pope was asked about the prospect of denying pro-abortion Catholic politicians the Eucharist.

When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem, Francis said. That's all I can say.

That comment will be taken in the press mostly as a rebuke of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileones decision to deny Rep. Nancy Pelosi the Eucharist in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Perhaps it was intended that way although the pontiff, in Francis fashion, could be understood differently, since last year he talked about the importance of pastoral ministry before, during, and after a denial of Holy Communion, while affirming that there are times when the Eucharist should be denied.

In short, the pope was cryptic on the question, and much ink will be wasted by pundits aiming to show that Francis meant exactly what theyd like him to have meant.

I suspect most readers of The Pillar know that such exercises are rarely illuminating.

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So while everyone talks about that interview, Id like to draw your attention to another one a fascinating - and precisely formulated - set of reflections on the German synodal path, the nature of heresy, and the life of the Church, from Fr. Karl-Heinz Menke, a German dogmatic theologian who won the prestigious Ratzinger Prize in 2017, and whom Pope Francis appointed to the International Theological Commission back in 2014.

The interview includes this important discussion of freedom:

The teaching of the Church presupposes that God has given man real freedom; for in contrast to the animal he can voluntarily be what he should be. When a person is what his Creator intended him to be, he realizes and develops his freedom. And vice versa: if a person is not what God made him to be, he misses being himself - and becomes unfree - a slave to sin.

Seen in this way, freedom is not freedom of choice, but self-commitment to the good. And what is good is not determined by each individual. Ultimately, the content of freedom is love; and what love is, we recognize in creation, with a look at Jesus Christ and the scriptures and traditions that interpret him.

The libertarian concept of freedomis quite different. Freedom understood in a libertarian way determines its content itself [According to this view], whoever wants to be free contradicts himself if he does not in turn grant every other person the recognition he expects from every fellow human being. But what exactly this recognition means is not determined by any external authority such as nature, Scripture or the Magisterium.

A Catholic who thinks as a libertarian will not let bishops dictate whether or not he may receive the Eucharist as a divorced person who has remarried or as a Christian of different denominations. He decides that himself. And he also decides himself whether his sexual relationships - in or outside of marriage, heterosexual or homosexual - correspond to love and thus to the recognition of the freedom of the other person or not.

A libertarian-minded church knows no decreed unity from above, but only unity based on conviction. A church that thinks in a modern way does not sacrifice diversity for unity, but understands unity as a service to diversity. There are - so the libertarians conclude - many interpretations of the recognition of freedom (of love), different interpretations of gender identity; multi-denominational interpretations of the Christ event; dogmas and norms are historically conditioned and can therefore be revised.

Heres the warning:

The vast majority of Catholics in Germany have not alienated themselves from the Church because they have adapted too little, but because they have adapted too much. She no longer has anything to say to the people because she fits her caritas into the structures prescribed by the state.

And heres Menkes sense of the solution:

The future does not lie in the implementation of libertarian freedom thinking, but - for example in the small communities or movements that exemplify their Christian faith in an unabridged and inviting way. From them one can see that attachment to the truth proclaimed by the Church does not bind, but liberates.

Read the whole thing. Use Google Translate if you need to Its not perfect, but itll give you a sense of the text.

This interview lays out the foundation of challenges the Church is experiencing around the globe and the pernicious challenge of a libertarian, non-Christian vision of what it means to be free.It draws from the documents of the Second Vatican Council, aiming to interpret culture through their lens.

Yesterday, many of us toasted our freedom, and watched fireworks memorialize it in the sky.

Today, lets commit to a vision of freedom that sees Christ at the center of history, and knows that he is the object of our liberty.

Have a good week.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

JD Flynneditor-in-chiefThe Pillar

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Christ: The center of history, and the source of our freedom - The Pillar

My fellow music fans, when this nine-member geriatric group shambles out of its chambers and onto the stage, plopping themselves down to sing for their supper, get ready for these Supremes to rock your world.

Wearing old timey black, ankle-length robes like a band of Colonial fire-and-brim-stoners, the sedentary songsters rip right into their increasingly far-right discography.

Without a doubt the right-wing Supremes are in charge up there, will be for decades to come. Just check out their song choices.

Their new album showcases ten of their docket-topping antediluvian anthems. The collection wont be going viral because its only available on vinyl. Heres a sampling.

Stop! In the Name of Originalism laments that 2022 is not 1788, when almost everything that was fun was illegal, when women couldnt vote or own property in much of America. This tone-deaf nostalgic dirge will make you weep.

The second cut on the album is My World is Empty without the Federalist Society. Six of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices are current or former members of this conservative/libertarian organization, and its a big reason many of them got nominated for the high court. BTW six of the nine also are Catholics. Saints preserve us!

FYI to Supremes fans: the band soon will be recording a cover of Elvis Presleys blues rocker, Thats All Right, Mama, changing the title slightly to: Were All Right, Mamas, Get Over It!

One of their all-time bestselling ballads is next on the album: Love is Here and Youre Under Arrest. Its a throwback to the time when gay marriage and contraceptives were illegal. At least one of the Supremes has mused openly about revisiting the court decisions that made them legal.

What about the other justices, what are they thinking about overturning the 21stCentury? No ones knows even when after they are asked direct questions under oath at their confirmation hearings. Eels are less slippery. Once theyre on the bench, however, the band members totally rock out.

The groups recent 45 (remember them?) is a feisty two-sided polemic that bluntly addresses its approach to long settled case law. River Deep,Stare Decisisa Molehill is a saucy ditty proclaiming the willingness of the current Supremes to go where earlier justices would not tread. Hey, Rock N Roll is all about pushing the limits.

On the flip side youll flip over Baby LoveWhere did Our Precedents go? This sarcastic single mocks left-leaning critics of the slew of recent reversals of established law promulgated by the band.

To the tune of I Hear a Symphony, the 1966 oldie-but-goodie by Diana, Mary and Florence, the new Supremes belt out an exuberant I Smell a Permanent Conservative Super Majority. The meter is all wrong, but the message is clear.

In that same triumphalist vein is Someday Well be Together Again (NOT!).

No review would be complete without mentioning the groups decidedly creepy Love is Like an Itching in Our Robes. Theyre only human, after all. Who knew?

Unless I miss my guess, youre already on your way up to the attic to look for your Victrola.

David Holahan is a freelance writer in East Haddam.

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Opinion: Greatest hits of the far-right Supremes - The Connecticut Mirror

Colorado's Jared Polis might be the most libertarian governor in America, at a time when his big-state Democratic colleagues are getting exposed as hypocrites while presiding over historic population declines or getting kicked out of office for sexual harassment and sending COVID infected patients back to nursing homes and then lying about it. I'm not sure that Polis' 2014 claim in the pages of Reason that "libertarians should vote for Democratic candidates" because they're "more supportive of individual liberty and freedom" has held up, but he's certainly leading by example.

The 46-year-old governor is presiding over one of the fastest-growing states in the country and a place that has one of the lowest death rates during the pandemic. He pushed back against members of his own party to remove mask mandates, and he consistently argued that public health decisions should be made at as local a level as possible. Last fall, at a conference held by the conservative Steamboat Institute, he declared that the state income tax rate "should be zero" and has supported ballot initiatives that reduced the rate. Polis has embraced occupational licensing reform and was an outspoken defender of bitcoin back in 2014 when Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) called on then-head of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen to ban it.

The openly gay, married father of two recently signed a free-range parenting bill that effectively relegalizes the sort of Colorado childhood he recalls as the son of two ex-hippie parents: "Just because a kid is playing alone outside, it doesn't mean they're in danger," Polis said at the signing ceremony. "It will help decrease false reports sowe can focus on the serious and the real instances of child abuse."

As conservative states pass laws strictly limiting abortions, he signed legislation guaranteeing a woman's right to choose. The founder of two charter schools, he is an outspoken advocate for school choice, saying earlier this year that "public school choice is an asset to improve all public schools." A former tech entrepreneur and five-term congressman, Polis is steadfast against limiting speech rights or treating social media platforms as utilities that can't moderate content or bounce users for transgressing terms of service.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Reason, Polis talks about trying to govern from the middle, takes shots at President Joe Biden's moves on free trade and immigration, and repeats his argument that libertarians should vote for Democrats. Up for re-election in the fall and a heavy favorite to win a second term, Polis also discusses his political ambitions as a rising star in a party that is expected to get blown out in the midterm elections.

Link:

Jared Polis: The Most Libertarian Governor in America? - Reason

Dear Capitolisters,

As Ive mentioned here before, I hail from the right side of the libertarian spectrum and have long worked with conservatives, center-right media, and Republican politicians on various policy issues.Back then, wed surely disagree on specific line itemsIraq or the drug war, for examplebut we always shared a core belief in certain fundamental principles about government, public policy, and life.These principles, not necessarily shared by the left (for better or worse), ensured that wed remain close allies in the political arena, regardless of our disagreements on discrete issues. (I even recall one time scoffing at a former colleagues liberaltarian project in the early 2000s, because the left and libertarians had far more fundamental disagreements about natural rights, limited government, the rule of law, and related issues.)

As readers of The Dispatch are surely aware, this fusionist alliance has, in recent years, frayed, with many self-identified conservatives today accusing us libertarians of not only being turtleneck-wearing, election-losing chart jockeys but actually causing many of the rights (and Americas) problems.But I think the Florida-Disney sagaparticularly many mainstream conservatives reactions theretomay take the schism to a whole new (and bad) level and reveal in the process that, if this is the new conservatism its not very conservative at all.

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What's Conservative About the New Conservatism? - The Dispatch

Jake Hoffman| Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Imagine a corporation granted power over the government to decide its own environmental policy, develop roads and buildings at itsdiscretion, build itsown public services, hire itsown police force, harness itsown energy sources andpay less taxes to do all of this.

This is the libertarian fever dream that Walt Disney World has enjoyed in Florida since 1967. Its the kind of extreme private ownership that would make Ayn Rand tell you to dial it back a bit. Yet today we find Florida Democrats and Democratsacross the country lambasting Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans for dissolvingthe Reedy Creek District, which provides Disney with its own city and basically gives it aself-regulating government.

More: OPINION: The media missed the real story of CPAC 2022

While I generally view myself as a libertarian whoadvocates for deregulation and less government interference in private business, I can only sit back and chuckle over the fact that, first and foremost, the Disney anarcho-capitalist experiment clearly worked.

Florida gave a giant corporation free rein and Disney turned it into the happiest place on Earth; itcreated the most jobs in Florida for decades and was responsible fortens of billions of dollars in economic impact to the state each year. On top of all that, Disney's public transit system is probably the best in the country.

That said, however, Florida has not afforded every corporation the same special treatment that it has given Disney. So what we really have here is crony capitalism at its finest, and it is high time to take back the reins and stop picking winners and losers you know, the very thing that small-government Republicans should have been doing all along.

Of course, I would love to create a special district around my house so that I couldappoint myself president and self-govern my businesses.But thats not the world we live in, so until everyone gets the same autonomy that Disney enjoyed for 50-plus years, dissolving Reedy Creek is a justified move on principle alone.

Yet that reality still hasn't prevented progressives frombending over backwardto become huge advocates for Disney, a cult-like beneficiary of slave labor that has ignored Uyghur genocide in China and is no stranger to beingculturally insensitive.

In fact, there are Democrats across the country pleading for Disney to come to their state! For example, Colorado'sDemocratic Gov, Jared Polis is openly recruitingDisney to relocate to Colorado, and declaring that his state doesn't "meddle in the affairs (of private business)."

First off, that notion is a total lie, unless you adopt the anarcho-capitalist view that Disney should be its own government.But more importantly, is this going to be the hot take from Democrats? That they want to let corporations self-govern? That they want corporations to get special taxing districts and to get to decide their own environmental policies?

The reality is the left is just engaging in its usual virtue-signaling, but this time its not even making an attempt to beideologically consistent. Or maybe its just that in theliberal hierarchy of needs, teaching kindergartners about sexuality, gender identityand personal pronouns is now at the top of the pyramid instead of loudly demandingmore corporate taxation and more central government control.

Ihave so many questions that I'dlove for liberalsto answer, and here are some of them:

What would Disney need to do to lose itsspecial privileges?

What happens if Disney starts to teach Christianity in its childrens programming?

Do you have any idea how many bills Disney has lobbied for or against over the years and how much power it holdsin Tallahassee?

If youre a politician whowants to enable Disney by incentivizing it to come to your state, are you ready to cede power to Disney's CEO and the woke mob that now runs thecompany's public policy decisions?

If youre able todo all of themental gymnastics it takes to genuinely support Disney for getting involved in a culturewar piece of legislation while simultaneously condemning Republicans for removing Disney's special district, then youreally need to get your political philosophy straightened out.

Ifor one think that the more you remove corporate influences on our lawmakers, the better outcomes we will get overall. I believe that we should deregulate businesses as much as possible. Ibelieve thatthe state has a responsibility toprotect people and property. And I believe that our public schools should not be reassigning the genders of first-graders behind the backs of their parents.

All of these beliefs are beliefs I held before this Disney fiasco, and they are beliefs I will continue to hold when this controversy finally fades away.So atleast I know where I stand on the political spectrum, unlike the overly emotional progressives who are now rushing to defend Disney while abandoning any sense of intellectual integrity.

Then again, I suspect that many on the outraged left are actuallyjust coming downwith a new variant of Trump Derangement Syndrome the virulent strain that's also known as DeSantis Derangement Syndrome.

Dont worry: I have no desire to force those who are stricken with DeSantis Derangement Syndrometo take a vaccine shot to treat it. But at the very least, the liberals now feelingtheeffects of this condition should be actively exploring alternative sources of information to counter all of the sickeningmisinformation they'regetting on the Reedy Creek issue.

Jake Hoffmanis executive director of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans. He is a Republican Party candidate in Hillsborough County for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives.

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OPINION: Progressives are hypocritical in defending Disney - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Steve Brawner| Special to the Times Record

Give credit to Attorney General Leslie Rutledge where credit is due: She showed up.

Rutledge participated in one of a series of debates held April 21 by the Arkansas Press Association for four of the states contested constitutional offices. Hers, for lieutenant governor, was the most meaningful of the debates because she, the frontrunner, was there.

Rutledge is the frontrunner because of her statewide office and name recognition, her Rutledge Report and other public service announcements, and her overwhelming fundraising advantage stemming from her aborted run for governor.

A candidate in her position might find a reason to skip the lieutenant governor debate, which was not broadcast.

Two of the other clear frontrunners skipped their debates: Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the governors race and Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin in the attorney generals race. Sanders, the overwhelming favorite, is not making herself available to reporters much, so its not surprising she wouldnt appear in a room full of them. Shes raised more than $14 million, so she doesnt need any media coverage. Sen. John Boozman also recently said he would not debate his three Republican primary opponents.

In the 2020 elections, Sen. Tom Cotton skipped the debates sponsored by Arkansas PBS. These are tame, controlled affairs where the candidates dont question each other, but Cotton didnt think it was worth his time and/or the risk. His libertarian opponent, Ricky Harrington, had the stage to himself. Harrington is running for governor this year.

But there was Rutledge sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with her seven opponents. The Republicans are Surgeon General Greg Bledsoe; former Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb; state Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Conway; Washington County Judge Joseph Wood; and Attorney Chris Bequette. The non-Republicans are Democrat Kelly Krout and Libertarian Frank Gilbert.

The eight are vying for an office that does little. The lieutenant governor presides over the Senate when its in session and becomes governor when the elected governor dies, leaves office or cant serve. Thats pretty much it.

These days, campaigns are based largely on party labels, ads, and endorsements by ideological interest groups and politicians. Theyre highly scripted affairs where candidates relentlessly try to stay on message.

In a debate, its just them on a stage, where they might go off message. They might say something embarrassing. They might say what they really think and get in trouble with their base or with what few undecided voters are left.

Debates are political theater, and they probably dont tell us much about how a candidate would actually govern. But they do give candidates a chance to state their case why they should be elected in a less scripted environment. They also let them say why an opponent shouldnt be elected, and to do it like a real man or real woman: Face-to-face instead of hiding behind an anonymous narrator in a 30-second attack ad funded by other people.

Its unclear what debates will look like in the future. Recently, the Republican National Committee voted to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, the bipartisan entity that organizes the ones featuring Republicans and Democrats (and Ross Perot in 1992). The RNC says the CPD is biased.

Were a long way from the fall of 2024, so who knows what will happen between now and then. Regardless, its an unfortunate decision because it further chips away trust in our elections.

And that trust has been eroded a lot lately. Between denying election results, claiming the whole system is rigged, and impeaching presidents regularly, were less and less willing to accept the will of the voters and less inclined to believe in the democratic process if our side doesnt win.

And thats kind of scary. If you say the whole process is illegitimate, it makes it easier to justify trying to overturn an election. It could happen. There was an attempt to do it a year-and-a-half ago. Soon someone might actually succeed. Eventually wed stop having real elections at all, like a lot of countries.

I guess Ive strayed a bit from the lieutenant governors debate, so lets return to it. Kudos to Rutledge, and also to Bledsoe, Webb, Rapert, Wood, Bequette, Krout and Gilbert, along with the participants in the other debates.

They showed up.

Steve Brawner is a freelance journalist and syndicated columnist. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com or follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.

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At least Rutledge and her opponents showed up | Steve Brawner - SWTImes