Watch: Building a Statue of Liberty out of Legos – USA Today – USA TODAY

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This Statue of Liberty is made of more than 25,000 LEGOs. See how it was built. USA TODAY

Lego's 9-and-a-half-foot model of the Statue of Liberty in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.(Photo: LEGO Systems, Inc.)

A team of Lego enthusiasts finally finished their replica of the Statue of Liberty. It only took them a mere 292 hours, five colorsand 125 pounds of Legos to do the job.

The 9-and-a-half-foot statue now stands in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., as part of"The Nation We Build Together" exhibit.

The structureis 1/32nd the size of the 111-foot, 6-inch original on Ellis Island. Lego master builder Erik Varszegi,49, spent 70 hours to design the statue, which was the second time he's builta Lego Lady Liberty.

"We had discussed using the same model here but thought the scale wasn't right," he said. "We wanted to make a bigger impact this time around."

Altogether, an estimated 25,375 Lego bricks were used to build the statue from toes to torch. With a task so big, we needed more answers from Varszegi, who has spent 22 years as a professionalLego builder. Here's what he said:

What was the most difficult part of designing the model?

If I had to pick a most difficult part of the model, Id have to say the whole backside of her. Very little in the way of photographs exist online of Lady Liberty. Seems like people only like shooting her from the front. I tried my best to get the flow of her robes just right when viewed from the back.

A replica of the Statue of Liberty built out of Legos.(Photo: LEGO Systems, Inc.)

How long did it take to design and build?

We actually had a comfortable lead time with this one compared to some of our other builds starting around the first of the year and putting the last bricks on around late February/early March.

Now that it's finished, what would you do differently?

I had actually starteddesigning the full pedestal underneath her as well, but unfortunately we didnt have the ceiling height for the full thing.

Is this your most ambitious Lego build?

As far as complexity goes this one was pretty standard. The statues robes lent a nice stable base for the build. Characters with exposed legs and skinny ankles pose more of a challenge. Then we have to start thinking about internal steel armatures just so they survive shipping from our shop to the display site.

A Lego version of the Statue of Liberty.(Photo: LEGO Systems, Inc.)

How many people helped you on this project?

Three other master builders helped build the model.

What do you want to build next? Or, what is the Lego build you most want to do?Is there a "white whale" out there for you?

Ha, Ive actually already built a white whale! A number of years ago I designed Moby Dick breaching out of the water for an aquarium in Australia. The model was some 15 or 16 feet tall. As far as future projects go? I enjoy building detailed architectural type models. I havent built one of those in a while. Its nice to switch it up every now and again.

Any advice for young Lego builders?

The most often asked question for Lego master builders. I always tell kids just to keep building. I had a few LEGO sets when I was younger but not a whole lot. Im guessing todays kids will have a huge head start over me in terms of LEGO experience when they get to be my age. Im looking forward to see what crazy things they will build.

The model is on the museum's first floor and will be on display through the end of 2017.

Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman

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Watch: Building a Statue of Liberty out of Legos - USA Today - USA TODAY

SCOTUS delivers win for religious liberty but punts on school choice – American Enterprise Institute

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On Monday, the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, delivering a potent victory for religious libertybut one with murkier implications for school choice than many had anticipated. In a 72 ruling, the Court held that Missouri violated the First Amendments free-exercise clause when it prohibited a church from receiving public funds for playground improvement solely because of their religious character.

The dispute dates to 2012, when Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Mo., was excluded from a state grant competition created to assist nonprofits in the installation of rubber playground surfaces. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources rejected the churchs application, despite having determined that it deserved funding on the merits. Missouri argued it had to reject Trinity Lutherans bid because its state constitution bars distributing public funds to religious organizations.

In its ruling, the Court majority held that the Departments policy violated the rights of Trinity Lutheran under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by denying the Church an otherwise available public benefit on account of its religious status. The verdicts import, however, is clear only when the assemblage of that 72 majority comes into focus. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, which was joined in full by Justices Kennedy, Alito, and Kagan. Those four were joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch in all but one crucial footnote, while Justice Breyer issued a concurring opinion. Only Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented.

A police officer stands outside the U.S. Supreme Court building after the Court sided with Trinity Lutheran Church, which objected to being denied public money in Missouri, in Washington, U.S., June 26, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Trinity Lutheran had been avidly awaited by school-choice advocates. As we noted on NRO back in April, the issue is Missouris so-called Blaine amendment a provision added to many state constitutions in the late 1800s as part of an anti-Catholic crusade intended to stymie the nations then-fledgling parochial-school system. Today, some 39 states still have some version of a Blaine amendment in their constitution. These are routinely used by teacher unions and their allies to attack school-choice policies that permit students to use public funds to attend religious schools. In the past two years alone, for example, Blaine amendments have been used to challenge the constitutionality of school-choice programs in Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Colorado.

While Trinity Lutheran could have yielded a sweeping decision, the Courts majority shied away from anything so decisive. Instead, in holding that Missouris policy expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients by disqualifying them from a public benefit solely because of their religious character, the justices chose to rule narrowly. The majority pointed out that the playground was publicly accessible, and not for use solely by students or members of Trinity Lutheran. Breyers concurrence cautioned that the decision ought not be broadly read.

Roberts narrow language left unsettled whether states are still free to discriminate against religious schools when it comes to publicly available benefits that arent related to playground surfaces. This question crucial for school choice efforts going forward rests on the significance of that aforementioned footnote. Footnote 3 of Roberts opinion reads, This case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination. Though concurring that this ruling need not go further than the public benefit provided by the playground grant program specifically, Justice Breyer opted not to join in the salient footnote. As Justices Thomas and Gorsuch also refused to concur with footnote 3, it was endorsed by just four justices Roberts, Kagan, Alito, and Kennedy and thus does not register as the opinion of the Court.

Trinity Lutheran strengthens the protections accorded to free exercise, but punts on the question of whether states can prohibit religious schools from participating in publicly funded school-choice programs. Deciphering the import of that mixed message requires discerning what Roberts sought to accomplish with this ruling. Did he seek a narrow decision by design, hoping to avoid a controversial free-exercise ruling that would invalidate century-old clauses in dozens of state constitutions? Or did he seek a precedent to provide firmer footing for a more dramatic ruling in a future term?

The answer, and the significance of footnote 3, will matter much for efforts to expand tax credits, vouchers, and education savings accounts. We may not have to wait too long for more clarity. Just yesterday, the Court vacated state-supreme-court rulings in Colorado and New Mexico, in cases in which the courts had invoked Blaine amendment language to rule against including religious options in private school-choice programs. The Supreme Court directed the respective state courts to revisit their rulings in light of Trinity Lutheran. Given the narrowness of the High Courts decision, of course, its not clear whether those courts will feel obliged to revise their rulings. In any event, these developments mean that the Supreme Court may be issuing a more clear-cut determination sooner rather than later.

As Justice Gorsuch wrote in his rejoinder to the pivotal footnote, The general principles here do not permit discrimination against religious exercise whether on the playground or anywhere else. Court watchers had thought there might be five justices, or more, willing to embrace that principle this time around. But this weeks ruling stops at the playgrounds edge.

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Renovated amphitheater in Erie’s Liberty Park unveiled – GoErie.com

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The $570,000 project features a new, permanent roof made of a hard plastic called thermoplastic polyolefin that is supported by glue-laminated wood beams.

The sun's rays glistened on Presque Isle Bay's choppy waters early Tuesday evening as concertgoersparked lawn chairs at Liberty Park and awaited aribbon-cutting ceremony andafree concert celebrating Erie's newly renovated Highmark Amphitheater.

A stiff breeze from Lake Erie made it feel like spring or fall, but a couple thousand music aficionados didn't seem to mind the chilly temperatures.

About a dozen Erie County and Highmark Health officials unveiled the renovated structure, which is located on Erie's west bayfront,in a ceremony at 6:30 p.m. Then, it was time to rock to the sounds of Erie band Money Shot 2.0, and the music of Steve Augeri, a former frontman for the rock band Journey.

The $570,000 project features a new, permanent roof made of a hard plastic called thermoplastic polyolefin that is supported by glue-laminated wood beams.

A June 2015 thunderstorm destroyed the fabric canopy that had covered the amphitheater's stage for nearly 20 years.

"This roof isweather resistant,and the materialit is made out of is actually used to build bridges in Alaska,'' said Brenda Sandberg, the Erie-Western Pennsylvania Port Authority's executive director. "It's the same type of wood that was used at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center, so it's very, very sturdy and able to withstand the elements.''

Work crews from Erie-based E.E. Austin & Son Inc., handled foundation work and construction of the roof, according to Sandberg.

"This is a great, new facility,'' Erie Mayor Joe Sinnott said. "This amphitheater is very popular and very widely used, and the old structure had some limitations, as we saw in that storm. Something like this is a better functioning cover for this stage. It allows us to do more with it, and, obviously, we don't have to worry about this one failing. I think it's a logical addition to this park because of how the park is utilized.''

Work on the roofbegan in mid-April and was completed about two weeks ago, Sandberg said.

"We had all the foundations go in last fall,'' she said. "In order to be economical, we reused the previous stage that thecanopy structure sat on top of. The structure is larger than that previous tent. There was no additional space addedto the stage, which is still 40 (feet)by 60 (feet). From a maintenance standpoint,the new roof issomething we don't have to put up, take down, and we don't have to do repairs to it. There will be some maintenance, as there is with every building, but it will be much less significant than it was before.''

Ron Leonardi can be reached at 870-1680 or by email. Follow him on twitter at twitter.com/ETNleonardi.

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Liberty Quartet, Valley Shepherd to host free Stars and Stripes concert – Meridian Press

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Liberty Quartet, a Meridian-based Southern Gospel group, will perform a free Stars and Stripes concert at Valley Shepherd Church of the Nazarene this Sunday.

The quartet, founded in 1995, performs roughly 170 shows each year in the United States and Canada. The original founder, Royce Mitchell, is still with the group singing bass. He started the quartet as a music minister in Boise, and Liberty eventually became so popular that Mitchell quit his job to perform full time.

Libertys baritone vocalist, Derek Simonis, said the the group is excited to come together with Valley Shepherd a pillar in the Treasure Valley that has been around for more than 100 years to celebrate the Fourth of July through music. The audience will also get to join in on some songs.

The concert will be a special time for Simonis, he said. He served in the Army for nine years including in special operations and did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was an honor to do it, he said. We want to reflect on and appreciate and remember the price thats been paid for our freedom.

Simonis has been out of the military for a year and a half and joined Liberty Quartet six months ago.

Paul W. Ellis, who has a background in music and youth ministry, is the groups lead singer.

During Sundays concert, Liberty will announce its new, fourth member.

We have a great time traveling together, Simonis said. We all love to have a good time and joke around.

Simonis, 30, has been known to play a prank or two on his fellow singers, who are both about 20 years his senior.

Theyve warned me theres payback, he said. When you play jokes on somebody, you have to be careful because its always going to come back full circle.

Beyond the pranks and the concerts and the tours, the groups real mission is to share faith and joy with people, Simonis said.

Were just trying to be real and connect with people and help them, encourage them and be a blessing to them to where theyre at, he said.

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Liberty Quartet, Valley Shepherd to host free Stars and Stripes concert - Meridian Press

Silver out as Liberty superintendent – Times Herald-Record

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Pauline Liu Times Herald-Record @PaulineLiu845

LIBERTY Superintendent Bill Silver had about a year left on his contract, but the Liberty School Board voted 6-3 on Tuesday night to oust him from the job that he has held for more than four years.

The three dissenting votes were cast by Daniel Parkhurst, board Vice President Jennifer Desrochers and Philip Olsen, who was away on business but participated via Skype.

Parkhurst called the board's actions "destructive to our district." Both he and Desrochers raised the question of whether the board's decision would discourage highly qualified candidates from applying for the job. "We're not going to get the caliber of superintendent if we do not honor our contract," said Desrochers.

Meanwhile, Olsen repeatedly voiced protests.

"I object 1,000 times. I object to the way it's being done. I think Dr. Silver has been a fine leader for this district and he's been treated as a villain," Olsen said.

The actual wording used in the vote was whether the board members would agree to accept Silver's "resignation." Silver, 66, has a current annual salary of $164,655. Under the terms of the agreement, he will receive a buyout totaling about $200,000 including benefits.

The board then voted to hire former Assistant Superintendent Carol Napolitano as interim superintendent. School Board President John Nichols said she would be paid an annual salary just shy of $159,000. But according to members of the administration, Napolitano's package including benefits will likely cost about as much as Silver's buyout.

Sixteen people stood up to address board members before the vote. Most protested the idea of the district paying for two superintendent salaries. They urged the board to reconsider, citing the district's improved graduation rate and its fiscal health under Silver's leadership. Liberty High was also recently recognized as a bronze medal high school by U.S. News & World Report.

While Nichols told the crowd of more than 60 gathered in the high school media center that he could not discuss the board's reasons for wanting to let Silver go, some members of the community and some teachers pointed to incidents that occurred in the middle school, including a bomb threat, a girl who brought a pocket knife to school and a boy who showed up with a BB gun.

Two middle school teachers, Stacey Feasel and Melissa Murphy, called the school unsafe. "The students are afraid and we are afraid," said Murphy.

But high school art director Kathy Johansen and music director Tim Hamblin said the district of about 1,700 students flourished under Silver. Hamblin suggested the board consider hiring a separate principal for the middle school, which drew applause from the crowd.

Silver didn't address the crowd, but numerous supporters including students, teachers and board members lined up after the meeting to shake his hand and wish him well.

"I'm more sad and disappointed than angry," said Silver. "I wanted to be able to see what we would be doing and continue to move forward."

Instead he will officially resign on June 30. At 66, and with 44 years of education experience, Silver said he plans to retire.

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Silver out as Liberty superintendent - Times Herald-Record

Libertarianism – Simple English Wikipedia, the free …

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This page is about free-market individualism. Some people (especially in Europe and Latin America) use the word libertarianism to refer to "libertarian socialism" (see anarchism)

Libertarianism is an idea in ethics and politics. The word comes from the word "liberty". Simply put, libertarians believe that people should be able to do whatever they desire as long as their actions do not harm others. As a result, Libertarians want to limit the government's power so people can have as much freedom as possible.

Libertarianism grew out of liberalism as a movement in the 1800s. Many of the beliefs of libertarianism are similar to the beliefs in classical liberalism. It also has roots in anarchism and the Austrian School of economics.

Like other people, libertarians oppose slavery, rape, theft, murder, and all other examples of initiated violence.

Libertarians believe that no person can justly own or control the body of another person, what they call "self-ownership" or "individual sovereignty." In simple words, every person has a right to control her or his own body.

In the 19th century, United States libertarians like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Lysander Spooner were all abolitionists. Abolitionists were people who wanted to end slavery right away.

Garrison based his opposition to slavery on the idea of self-ownership. Since you have a natural right to control your own body, no one else has any right to steal that control from you. Garrison and Douglass both called slave masters "man stealers."

If you have a right to control your own body, then no one has a right to start violence (or force) against you.

Some libertarians believe that all violence is unjust. These libertarians are often called "anarcho-pacifists". Robert LeFevre was a libertarian who rejected all violence. However, most libertarians believe that there are some ways violence can be justified.

One thing that justifies violence is self defense. If someone is violent towards you, you have a right to defend yourself with equal force.

The libertarian Murray N. Rothbard said that it would be wrong to kill someone for stealing a pack of gum. If you steal gum, this is an act of violence against the property owner. The owner has a right to use defensive violence to get the gum back, but killing the thief goes too far. That is too much force because it is not equal to the force used by the thief. Punishment must be equal to the crime. A student and colleague of his, Walter Block, said that a punishment shouldn't be equal to the crime, but rather enough to make up for the damage the crime caused plus how much it cost to catch the criminal.

Some libertarians believe that it is your moral duty to defend yourself and your property if you can. This belief is usually held by Objectivists. These people believe that pacifism is immoral. Most libertarians reject this view.

All libertarians believe that it is wrong to start violence against any person or against what he or she owns. They call this the "non-aggression principle."

Ownership is the right to control something. Property is the thing that you control.

Libertarians believe that property rights come from self-ownership. This means that because you have a right to control your own body, you also have a right to control what you make with it.

The English philosopher John Locke said that a person comes to own something by using it. So, if you turn an area that no-one else owns into a farm and use it, that area becomes your property. This is called the "homestead principle."

Libertarians also say that you can become a legitimate owner by receiving something as a gift or by trading it with someone for something they own. You do not become a legitimate owner by stealing. You also do not become a legitimate owner by simply saying you own something. If you have not "homesteaded" the thing or received it through trade or gift, you do not own it.

Libertarians are opposed to states (or governments) creating any "laws" that tell people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. The only legitimate laws are laws that say a person may not start violence against other people or their legitimate property. All "laws" stopping people from doing nonviolent things should be repealed, according to libertarians. (These "laws" are usually called "victimless crimes" because there is no victim if there is no theft.)

In most countries, the state (or government) takes tax money from the people. All libertarians support cutting taxes back, and some libertarians believe the state should not take tax money at all. Libertarians think people can take care of the poor without the government. They believe that people should pay for the things that they want to use, but not have to pay for other things that they do not want. Tax evasion (refusal to pay taxes to the state) is a victimless crime. Libertarians would prefer to see taxation replaced with lotteries, user fees, and endowments.

Libertarians think everyone should be allowed to decide what is good or bad for her/his own body. Libertarians think if people want to drive cars without wearing seat belts, it is their own choice. They should not be forcibly stopped from doing that, not even by the state. If a person wants to donate all of her/his money to a charity, or waste it all gambling, that is also something she/he should decide for herself/himself. No one should be forcibly stopped from doing that, not even by the state. Libertarians even say that if adults want to use harmful drugs, they should be allowed to do that, even if it spoils their lives. It is the drug user's own choice because it is the drug user's own body. As long as the drug user does not start using violence against other people or their legitimate property, no one should use violence against the drug user or the drug user's legitimate property, not even the government.

Many libertarians also believe that families and friends should look after people so that they will not use drugs, drive without seat belts, or do other things that are dangerous for them. But no one can force others to do things that they do not want to do, or to stop them from doing nonviolent things that they want to do.

There are two basic types of libertarians. All libertarians fall into one of these two broad types.

Minarchists are libertarians who believe that society should have a state with very limited power. They typically believe that the only things the state should have are police and judges to make sure that people obey the laws. Some also believe in having a military to make sure that no one attacks the country. Some minarchists believe in having a small amount of taxation.

Two famous minarchist libertarians are Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand. Nozick believed that the only legitimate thing a state can do is have a police force. He called his legitimate state a "night-watchman state." Rand believed that the state should have a police force and a court system.

Libertarian anarchists usually call themselves anarcho-capitalists, free-market anarchists, individualist anarchists, or just anarchists.

Libertarian anarchists do not believe the state is needed. They believe that people can organise their own lives and businesses. They want to replace the state with voluntary organisations, including charities, private companies, voluntary unions, and mutual aid societies. They also want to end all forced taxation.

They say that state police can be replaced with "DROs" (Dispute Resolution Organisations) or "private protection agencies." They also say that state judges can be replaced with "private arbitration."

The most famous libertarian anarchist was Murray N. Rothbard. Others include Lysander Spooner, Benjamin R. Tucker, and Linda & Morris Tannehill.

Most libertarians fall under one of the two types of libertarians listed above. But there are other types, too.

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Response to 10 Ways Not to Make Your Friends Libertarian … – Being Libertarian

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Its easy for an individual that has been cringeworthy himself on many occasions even on a national stage (also, it seems you may be lacking some self-awareness with that egotistical prick comment, Mr. Ive Read 100 Books On This Ideology) to separate himself from any of the blame when it comes to how cringeworthy some libertarians are.

Aside from that, Charles Peralos assertion that libertarians are [] the cringe lords of Facebook stood out to me as a poor generalization. For example, in a world where regressive leftists showcase their poor understanding of economics, their abysmal critical thinking skills, and their hatred of the freedom of speech on social media (ironic, right?), its simply absurd to say that libertarians are the worst. All sides of the political spectrum have their cringeworthy members; libertarians arent unique in that regard.

In my opinion, Charless points were undoubtedly sloppy and this is not just because his articles are typically a poor read, both structurally and contextually. His article proves that he simply had an ax to grind, and instead of coming up with 10 compelling reasons not to make your friends libertarian, he just compiled a list of things he doesnt like about some libertarians.

So, heres a different list of 10 ways not to make your friends libertarian.

In America, liberals may have stolen the term for our political ideology, but that doesnt mean we are what they are; this is why I refer to leftists as such rather than liberals, and also because most leftists arent liberal they dont believe in things like the freedom of speech like they used to.

I dont want to focus too much on Charles and look like I myself have an ax to grind, since this isnt the time or place, but his content proves exactly my point on this particular issue.

Wanting to save social security, attack possible opportunities for secession, partner with a radical and violent leftist group like Black Lives Matter, support government paying off student loan debt rather than simply repudiating said debt, and advocate for universal healthcare are all ideas that swing left to varying degrees.

Moving away from the author at hand, there are plenty of other people that have done the same, from Gary Johnsons I agree with Bernie 73% of the time comments, to other liberty advocates pushing leftist ideals.

Lets stop making libertarianism about leftism. Theyre not compatible. As long as universal healthcare, universal basic income, and maintaining social security and the rest of the welfare state are on the table, libertarianism loses.

Part of the problem I have with the liberty movement these days is that many people have abandoned principle over party in favor of party over principle.

Sure, political strategy often simply revolves around winning. But attacking the wrong people is the worst idea for an up-and-coming party. I see libertarians within the Libertarian Party attacking Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie simply for being Republicans, without realizing that most of us would vote for these people if they were on our ticket in a heartbeat.

These people may be Republicans, but theyre an ally to liberty and libertarianism. Lets not forget that the Libertarian Party isnt the only mechanism for advancing liberty.

I could write an entire book revolved around the idea that libertarians shouldnt hate veterans just because they also hate that the government funds the military through taxation.

Whether or not you think our country should have such an expansive nanny state as it does, or whether you think the country should exist at all, military people havent done anything to you.

Attacking these people, who likely will be the easiest to pitch libertarianism, is a poor choice to make. These people have seen the disastrous effects of interventionist foreign policy, these people have seen why an expansive military doesnt need to exist.

These people also are just people, and theyre not baby killers. Theyre ordinary people, and most of them are reservists who never see combat deployment. Generalizing all the people who have served our country as killers, savages, and awful humans who want to steal your tax money to fund failed wars is not only an awfully poor and incorrect generalization, but also not a way to expand the libertarian base.

Anarcho-capitalists are the purists of the libertarian ideology. This one should go without saying: attacking the most devoted liberty minds doesnt do libertarianism any good. Theyre an important part of the ideology, and whether or not you agree with them, they have a lot of good things to say, if youll just listen.

If youre worried about the public image of libertarianism, and believe that people will generalize libertarianism as anarchism or anarcho-capitalism, then simply make it your mission to explain how thats not the case when youre pitching someone.

Life, liberty, and property; its clich, I know.

But that, in short, is libertarianism. The right to life, absolute liberty, and property, so long as you dont harm anyone else. The Johnson campaign was guilty of this, as well as many other libertarians. Property rights are integral to what libertarianism is as an ideology; if we abandon this integral plank, our ideology will fail.

We cant make our friends into libertarians if we dont have a philosophy. We also cant do it if we dont have a solid philosophy to pitch. Property rights are important, lets not forget that.

The abortion debate has always been murky when it comes to libertarianism, with both sides debating which provides more liberty. I tend to fall on the pro-life side, except when rape results in pregnancy since there was no consent and it is essentially self-defense by the mother. I stand firm that life begins at the first heartbeat, which is around six weeks. The debate, in my opinion, should be whether life begins at conception or not. I havent personally heard an argument that convinced me life begins at conception.

Whether we even need to have this debate anymore has recently been taken into question, but since we will for the foreseeable future, it makes its way onto this list.

Pro-life libertarians see the unborn life as exactly what it is a life. They argue that the mother and father had consensual sexual intercourse whilst understanding the possible consequences, and that the termination of said pregnancy is murder because it is the taking of a life; just because the life resides in a womans womb doesnt make it her property, rather she consented to the possibility of pregnancy by taking an action thats meant to begin a pregnancy.

Whether or not you agree with this, pro-life libertarians make good points. Not only can they attract a sizable right-wing electorate that tends to agree with libertarians otherwise, but these pro-life libertarians themselves are key to our cause.

Disagreements on abortion arent worth dividing the house over.

Some people cant get out and be real-world activists for liberty, and thats understandable they work full-time jobs that fill their days, have children, and so on. Not everyone can dedicate time out of their lives to get out and fight for liberty.

I had to turn down the chance to fly across the country and participate in a grassroots activism campaign this summer because I have to work my day job in order to save enough money before I transfer to an out-of-state college in the fall. I dedicate my time to being the news editor here at Being Libertarian, writing opinion pieces when I can, and using social media to spread the ideology. Once I have the ability to be a real-world activist, I will, but we shouldnt punish people who cant get out and be activists. Theyre doing what they can just because its not the medium you prefer doesnt make it bad or ineffective.

Even if someone has the time but doesnt want to be a real-world activist doesnt mean theyre not contributing by posting to social media. If you couldnt tell, social media is alive and well, and its an apt place to be a liberty advocate.

The only way to achieve everything in one fell swoop whether it be minarchism or anarcho-capitalism is to have some sort of civil war or revolutionary war. Thats a pretty drastic situation, and not one thats popular, for obvious reasons.

Anything other than that takes time. Even secession takes time; at least all 50 states would have to secede, and theres absolutely no way that happens all in one shot. Secessionism is one of the quickest ways to get what we want, assuming secession doesnt result in another powerful government, with the only change being territorial size.

Besides those two, we have to realize that as much as we may want it to not everything is going to happen all at once. We cant get everything we want right away, so we should push for every victory we can achieve.

By participating and contributing to a gradual move towards libertarian ideals, we allow our ideas to have exposure on a grander stage.

Its a win-win scenario we shrink government gradually (while not shutting ourselves off to other options to accelerate said shrinkage), and we give libertarianism more exposure.

To be honest, I think its pretty ridiculous that I have to even make this point.

Antifa are not anti-fascist, they are fascist. They are against free-speech and the freedom of association, and use violence to suppress speech and ideas. Libertarians, especially those within the party, have supported or sympathized with these people. Whether its to spite President Trump, or its based on pure ignorance, libertarians that side with Antifa are siding against everything they believe in.

Just because these people are anarchists (actually, theyre anarcho-communists), doesnt mean we should side with them. If anything, thats just going to reinforce the publics growing notion that these people are libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, which is absolutely not the case.

This final, most important point takes a direct shot at Charless point that we shouldnt remind people that taxation is theft, or discuss the non-aggression principle (NAP).

These are both key principles, like property rights, that make libertarianism what it is.

Sure, if all you ever say is taxation is theft, youre going to push people to click that ever-so-enticing unfollow button. However, we shouldnt just throw these slogans to the curb.

Make America Great Again and America First were key slogans that captured the attention of an otherwise silent and forgotten demographic. They were clich on the surface, and were great for a bumper sticker. But everyone knew what these things meant: they were essentially shorthand for some of the policies Trump advocated for. If we want to pitch our ideas to people, we can do the same with our slogans. As long as we dont say taxation is theft without expanding upon why its an issue and why we should fix it, these are things we can utilize to expand the libertarian base.

We dont advocate libertarianism for fun, we advocate it because we want to free ourselves from coercion, and seek the most amount of liberty attainable. Remember, we can win this fight. Liberty can win, and it will, as long as we dont forget our mission.

This post was written by Nicholas Amato.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Nicholas Amato is the News Editor at Being Libertarian. Hes an undergraduate student at San Jose State University, majoring in political science and minoring in journalism.

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Some dubious claims in Nancy MacLean’s ‘Democracy in Chains’ – Washington Post

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Duke University historian Nancy MacLean has published a new book, Democracy in Chains, that is getting a great deal of favorable attention from progressive media outlets and is selling quite well online. The theme of the book is that Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan, a founder of public choice economics and a libertarian fellow-traveler, was the intellectual leader of a cabal ultimately supported by Charles Koch intent on replacing American democracy with an oligarchy based on constitutional protections for property rights.

When I first came across this book and interviews with its author, I was immediately skeptical. For one thing, Ive been traveling in libertarian intellectual circles for about three decades, and my strong impression is that Buchanan, while a giant in economics, is something of a marginal figure in the broader libertarian and free-market movements. Sure, public choice theory has provided important intellectual support for libertarian views of government, but Buchanan was hardly the only major figure to work on public choice (which is basically applying economic theory to the study of politics). Many other leading public choice economists were decidedly liberal in their political views; consider, for example, Kenneth Arrow, whose foundational work preceded Buchanans. Even among the more free-market-oriented early public choice scholars, there is my late colleague Gordon Tullock (co-author of the book that won Buchanan the Nobel Prize; Tullock was stiffed because he was not formally trained in economics), George Stigler, Sam Peltzman, among others. Tullocks famous article on what came to be called rent-seeking strikes me as more influential on mainstream libertarian thought than the entire corpus of Buchanans later work.

Buchanans work on constitutional political economy was of great interest to a subset of libertarian-leaning economists, but was sufficiently obscure and idiosyncratic to have had relatively little influence on the broader movement. Ive met many libertarians who were brought to libertarianism by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, Charles Murray, Julian Simon, Randy Barnett and others; Ive yet to meet anyone who has cited Buchanan as their gateway to libertarianism. Brian Dohertys Radicals for Capitalism, the best extant history of the libertarian movement, gives Buchanan approximately the attention Id think he deserves, several very brief cameos, all relating to Buchanans foundational work in public choice.

The other reason I was immediately skeptical of MacLeans take on Buchanan was because her portrayal of Buchanan did not mesh with my personal experience. I only met Buchanan once, at an Institute for Humane Studies gathering for young libertarian academics around 20 years ago. The devil himself (Charles Koch) was there. Buchanan gave the keynote address. What did this arch defender of inequality and wealth talk about? He gave a lengthy defense of high inheritance taxes, necessary, in his view, to prevent the emergence of a permanent oligarchy. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Democracy in Chains fails to note Buchanans strong support of inheritance taxes. [Update: He in fact publicly supported a 100% inheritance tax.]

My confidence in the book did not increase when I saw that MacLean tied the rise of the early libertarian movement to hostility to Brown v. Board of Education, and libertarian ideology in general and public choice theory to the work of John Calhoun, which did not jibe with my own research and experience.

When the book arrived, I eagerly looked for her sources supporting the notion that modern libertarianism owes a massive debt to Calhoun, a theme on which she spends her entire prologue; later in the book, she claims that the libertarian cause traces its lineage to Calhoun. It turns out that she cites two articles noting similarities between Calhouns theories of political economy and modern public choice theory, and also cites to two pages of Murray Rothbards 1970 book, Power and Market. To put the two pages from Rothbard in perspective, I have in front of me a volume with the entire run of the New Individualist Review, a pioneering libertarian academic journal published at the University of Chicago in the 1960s. The index has multiple citations to Mill, Friedman, Hayek, Hobbes, Montesquieu, von Humboldt, Smith, Rand and other classical liberal and libertarian luminaries. Calhoun, meanwhile, does not appear in the index. Not once.

Meanwhile, in Chapter 3, MacLean claims that contemporary libertarians eschewing overt racial appeals, but not at all concerned with the impact on black citizens, framed the Souths fight as resistance to federal coercion in a noble quest to preserve states right and economic liberty. Nothing energized this backwater movement like Brown. MacLean identifies only two such libertarians, Frank Chodorov and and Robert LeFevre. I cant check her citation to LeFevre, because its from private correspondence that I dont have access to. But her citation to Chodorov fails to support her assertion.

The article she cites by Chodorov can be found here. In it, Chodorovpraises Brown: The ultimate validation of the Court decision,which undoubtedly ranks among the most important in American history, lies in the fact that it is in line with what is deepest and strongest and most generous in our historical tradition. Chodorov goes on to point out that merely prohibiting segregated schools wont lead to integration because of residential segregation, and concludes that hostility to integration may lead some southern states to open up publicly-funded education to competitive private schools, which would mean what began as an attempt to evade an unavoidable change in an obsolete system of racial segregation might turn into an interesting educational experiment. Chodorov does note that among opponents to Brown there is a very genuine feeling that education is a matter reserved for the states, but again this is in the context of him praisingBrown.There is nothing in this piece remotely celebrating southern resistance to federal coercion in a noble quest to preserve states right and economic liberty. And there are more subtle errors as well. MacLean portrays Chodorov as being excited that Brown presented the opportunity to do away with the public school system, when in fact he specifically envisioned a larger network of private schools, denominational and non-denominational, side by side with the general public school system.

More to come.

[I wrote this post before I saw co-blogger Jonathan Adlers post detailing various other controversies over Democracy in Chains." I recommend that post, which anticipated a future post I planned.]

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Some dubious claims in Nancy MacLean's 'Democracy in Chains' - Washington Post

Anarcho-Capitalists: A Threat Within the Libertarian Movement – Being Libertarian

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Having begun my life in the libertarian movement as a bit of purist myself, I have become more pragmatic over time.

For example, I have come to a greater appreciation that the libertarian movement needs to be careful and prudent. However, in recent months, it has struck me that this call for pragmatism for an emphasis on gradual changes that will not alienate the masses is being undermined by a particular group: the anarcho-capitalists.

I do not mean all anarcho-capitalists of course, but there are a considerable number committed to opposing any move towards pragmatism, seeing it as a betrayal of liberty.

This refusal to be pragmatic is deeply harmful to the cause of freedom since it pushes people away from the libertarian movement and reduces the electability of libertarian candidates without such support and such candidates, there will be fewer pro-liberty advocates in the legislatures.

The main example of how the anarcho-capitalists often alienate people is through a refusal to allow any form of taxation.

For many of this political persuasion, reducing taxation is not enough; it must be abolished outright, and for more radical advocates it must be done immediately.

Now, I sympathize with this. Given taxation is theft; it would seem moral to do away with it outright and immediately. However, to the vast majority of people, the outright abolition of taxation is an obvious absurd decision and they are not wrong.

This is not something to view in the abstract; it would trigger an economic crisis worse than the Great Depression. This is not a controversial view among economists. Iceland provides an insightful case study from recent times, though the effect on the US would be magnified due to size.

If the US were to default, there would be a nearly $20 trillion black hole in the global economy (to put that into perspective, that is more than the GDP of the whole of the European Union), this would trigger inflation (likely hyper-inflation) as the dollar would quickly depreciate, unemployment would surge, investors would flee, and a major global knock-on would occur, because the US economy is an internationalist economy.

Likewise, it would default on its public spending.

The army would cease to be, courts would shut down, police officers would be laid off, schools would close, the millions dependent on welfare would become homeless, and so on. This is inevitable because there would be no finances to pay for them. Again, the general public know this which is why they see the anarcho-capitalist proposal of the outright abolition of taxation as absurd.

No-one wants to experience a default of either kind since it would put the US on par with the Venezuela for quality of life. Couple that with other absurd ideas often entertained by anarcho-capitalists, like the abolition of drivers licenses, and you have a cocktail of ideas that will keep libertarian candidates out of political office and out of legislatures where they can make real changes. I appreciate anarcho-capitalists dislike of government, but it is the only way that one is likely to make gains for freedom at this time.

Anarcho-capitalists often retort that, after this initial devastation (which, in fact, would likely never recover to pre-crash levels under their system), a freer society could be built without tax and government. However, the public likewise see this as a delusion.

If you have no government, and you need tax for that, natural rights are in peril. You cannot have your property rights upheld because there are no police to do so. You cannot have your court case heard as there are no judges. Indeed, even if you had judges, you would have no laws for them to enforce, for in the absence of government there would be no legal codification of natural rights.

The solution often proposed is that you could privatize these functions in a free market but again, this idea is utterly unconvincing to most.

Unless a court holds power over you, it can do nothing. How would the courts get power over you in an anarcho-capitalist system?

Are they chosen by the mutual consent of the population?

If they are, you just have established government; a system whereby a majority consensus empowers certain individuals to use force against others.

If not, then they rely on the use of coercion, of force, without individual consent. As such, the existence of a fair judiciary is incompatible with anarcho-capitalism.

This is no small problem: without a fair judiciary (to which everyone is held to account) there is effectively no law, and our natural rights and liberty are at risk. There is no legal redress for the violation of those rights.

It is not my intention to write in great detail here, but the central point is clear: anarcho-capitalist purism is as idealistic as Marxist utopianism. This utopian purism completely undermines the libertarian movement.

I, as well as other libertarians, constantly find ourselves having to say Im a libertarian, but not that kind of libertarian.

The motto taxation is theft, while true, is far outside the Overton window as it is. The last thing the libertarian movement needs is for radical anarcho-capitalists to push the cause of liberty further away from it.

I have for a long time now tried a more conciliatory tone with anarcho-capitalists because I do understand where they are coming from (philosophically speaking), but there is a real need for the libertarian movement to demarcate itself from those anarcho-capitalists who refuse to unify around a pragmatic, pro-liberty agenda.

The libertarian movement is increasingly being identified with this group, and we must break away from that equivocation. If the movement cannot do that, it will be perpetually regarded as a band of lunatics, committed to ideas that most people know would never work in reality and which would if implemented cause tremendous harm and risk huge losses to liberty.

I acknowledge I will be vilified for taking this view, Statist, Commie, Sell-out, and so on, will no doubt be terms of abuse hurled at me. However, ask yourself, have I said anything unreasonable?

All I have said is that the libertarian movement needs to unify around a pragmatic, pro-liberty agenda and demarcate itself from radical anarcho-capitalists who are increasingly bringing the movement into ill-repute.

Does that make me a statist, a communist, or a sell-out? No in fact, Im following in the footsteps of most great libertarian thinkers here.

Im all for free markets, for civil liberties, and so on, but government has a (small) role, and that necessitates low taxation.

Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman supported the existence of small government. Must we call them commies too? Anarcho-capitalists need to either get on board with a pragmatic and moderate agenda that introduces pro-liberty changes at a pace that does not undermine the movement, or get off the libertarian train; because as it is, they are pulling the movement in a separate path.

Libertarianism should be about fiscally responsible government with great respect for rights and freedom thats an idea people can get behind, that can help make real gains for freedom, and we cannot let that be hijacked.

* Matthew James Norris is a history and philosophy graduate. He is currently undertaking historical research on Henry III and early modern social history.

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Anarcho-Capitalists: A Threat Within the Libertarian Movement - Being Libertarian

My Libertarian Transformation – HuffPost

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My Libertarian Transformation

When it comes to politics in the United States, the clearly defined parties are undoubtedly the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. With that said, these are not the only two parties around and given the recent political turmoil, many people are growing more and more curious about other political options. Next to the democratic and republican parties, the most well-known party is probably the Libertarian Party. With that said, while the party is known by name it is often not very well understood. Lets take a look at the Libertarian Party and what it stands for.

One of the most important ideals in America, and perhaps the one most staunchly defended, is that of freedom. This freedom can take many forms freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press being among them but one thing is invariable: the United States of America stands for freedom, and this is something its citizens expect. This idea is one of the core in the Libertarian Party, which emphasizes the importance of maintaining individual freedom. The party believes that individuals should have the right to pursue success and freedom in any way they so choose as long as doing so does not hurt anyone else.

Much like their beliefs regarding personal liberties, libertarians also hold various social ideals that tend to place them on the leftist part of the political spectrum. They believe that the government should not be able to restrict or define personal relationships. Before you believe that this is a clear endorsement of any particular sexuality, however, keep in mind that this belief stems mostly from the idea that the government should not be allowed to interfere in citizens lives. This includes personal relationships, and libertarians tend to believe that consenting adults should be free to pursue relationships that make them happy. They hold the same to be true of things like drug use, which they believe to be a victimless crime.

Finally, another important libertarian ideal is that of a smaller government. To put the issue as simply as possible, libertarians tend to believe that the government should have a smaller reach than it currently does. The government today has too much control and ability to control and interfere in the lives of citizens as well as the countrys business practices and norms. The party often advocates a smaller government that, most notably, does not collect income tax or fund a welfare state.

In todays society, there is often much conversation regarding the future and what our collective societal ideals might look like in a few decades. There is much debate as to whether a liberal or conservative view might be more beneficial moving forward, where the views in question seem to be associated with the Democratic Party and the Republican party, respectively. There seems to be relatively little talk, however, regarding the viability of ideas and concepts related to other political parties. It might surprise you, then, to hear that libertarian ideals seem to already be making a big impact upon modern business.

The Libertarian Party tends to emphasize the importance of civil liberties and capitalism as they relate to the government and interventionism. The basic idea is that the government should take a step back when it comes to regulating and controlling citizens in both the private and public/business spheres. But how exactly do these values fit into todays modern businesses?

One aspect of current business endeavors that clearly reflects libertarian ideals is that of the sharing economy. Partially spurred on by the increasing reliance on technology, particularly mobile apps that are designed to facilitate easy communication, a new wave of businesses has taken over the modern workplace over the past few years. Exploring the possibility of collaboration and sharing, these businesses have created an economy that is essentially based upon the decisions and possessions of individuals. Someone with a vehicle and some extra time, for example, could decide to become a taxi of sorts and earn money from someone without the ability or desire to drive themselves. The same holds true with hospitality options like Airbnb.

Epitomized by businesses like Lyft and Uber, this new wave of businesses seems to be firmly based upon perceived leftist ideas of decentralization and sustainability. It is important to note, however, that libertarian ideals are often at the very heart of this kind of business model. To the free-market libertarian, for example, an economy based between individuals rather than the state or government and an individual is appealing. It seems to promote the idea that the government could and should take a step back and allow individuals to thrive on their own. The sharing economy is a great way to promote civil liberties and emphasize the self-reliance that the Libertarian Party promotes.

What do you think about the sharing economy and the wave of businesses that have sprung up as it has developed? Do you think that the libertarian values present in these businesses are sustainable? For the time being, it appears as though modern businesses will continue to grow in this direction.

The Libertarian Party and Taxes

With all of the attention focused on the two main parties in the United States the Democratic Party and the Republican Party it can be easy to forget that there are other options available. Another party in the United Stats is known as the Libertarian Party, and it has some pretty strong ideas regarding the place of taxes in our economy as well as how much money should be collected.

First and foremost, the Libertarian Party believes that forcing people to give part of their income to the government in the form of taxes is wrong. Instead, they emphasize the importance of ensuring that citizens of the United States have autonomy over their money, their lives, their bodies, and their time. That means that a libertarian government is one that would do away with much of the tax system as we currently know it. But while the Libertarian Party would certainly lower taxes, does that mean that we wouldnt end up paying any at all? Lets take a closer look.

In order to determine what the United States economy would look like under the control of the Libertarian Party as well as how taxes would be affected, it might be most helpful to look at Gary Johnsons recent proposals. A libertarian hopeful for the presidency in 2016, Johnson has many ideas regarding how taxes should and should not be conducted in the U.S. First and foremost, he would have abolished the IRS along with both income and corporate tax. In its place, Johnson advocated the use of FairTax, a proposal that would see services and goods for personal consumption receive a flat tax of 23%.

In order to help offset the regressive nature of FairTax, Johnson would include a prebate used to allow households to consume aforementioned services and items tax-free up until the poverty line. This would help ensure that the family in lower income brackets are not unfairly impacted by the flat tax. In return for this flat tax, income taxes would, as mentioned above, no longer be a thing. Your money would be your own, in other words, aside from paying a higher flat tax on items and services. This kind of tax allocation is touted as being beneficial because it removes economic distortions impacting workplace and professional productivity by forcing individuals to make decisions with their tax status rather than efficiency in mind. This, in turn, would help businesses to flourish as they streamline their processes without worrying about negatively impacting their tax status in the process.

As you can see, the Libertarian Party believes that lower taxes is the best way to ensure economic success for the country and its citizens.

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My Libertarian Transformation - HuffPost

Do Libertarian Voters Actually Exist? Yes, and in Droves [Reason Podcast] – Reason (blog)

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Lee Drutman, Voter Study GroupEveryone nods their heads when pundits and pollsters talk about conservative votes, liberal voters, and populist voters. But do libertarian-leaning voters actually dwell among the American electorate? A new analysis of the 2016 election concludes that libertarians are as mythical as the hippogruff. Using a variety of survey questions about cultural and "identity" issues and economic policy, New America's Lee Drutman basically says no.

Dividing voters into one of four groups, he finds 44.6 percent are liberal ("liberal on both economic and identity issues"), 29 percent are populist (liberal on economic issues, conservative on identity issues), 23 percent are conservative (conservative on both economic and identity issues), and less than 4 percent are libertarian (conservative on economics, liberal on identity issues). According to Drutman, Donald Trump won by picking up virtually all conservatives and a good chunk of populists, while Hillary Clinton only pulled liberals. What few libertarians there are just don't amount to any sort of force in Drutman's take (see that empty lower-right-hand quadrant in figure). Drutman's piece gave rise to a number of pieces, almost all from the left side of the political spectrum, crowing that "libertarians don't exist" (in Jonathan Chait's triumphalist phrasing at New York magazine).

Not so fast, says Emily Ekins, the director of polling at the Cato Institute (a position she previously held at Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website). Libertarians are real, she documents in a new article, and they're spectacular. Responding to Drutman's elimination of libertarians as a meaningul voting block, she emphasizes that his finding is an outlier in the established research:

It depends on how you measure it and how you define libertarian. The overwhelming body of literature, however, using a variety of different methods and different definitions, suggests that libertarians comprise about 10-20% of the population, but may range from 7-22%. (Emphasis in original.)

In the newest Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Ekins not simply about the errors of Drutman's analysis (he also finds many more liberals than most researchers) but about the sorts of issues that are motivating libertarians and other voters, especially Millennials. In the podcast, Ekins stresses that economic issues and concerns tend to drown out all other factors when it comes to voting patterns. But, she says, there are periods during bread-and-butter issues recede and cultural and symbolic issues come to the fore. We may well be in one of those periods despite weak to stagnant economic growth because most people's standards of living have held up (even if economic anxiety is on the rise). This is, she says, especially true among voters between 18 years old and 35 years old. That's mostly good news for libertarians. Millennials, she tells Gillespie,

libertarian on social issues and civil liberties except for one issue: free speech issues. I think this is something that we're going to need to keep an eye on... [Y]ounger people are more supportive of the idea that some sort of authority, whether it's the college administrator or the government should limit certain speech that is considered offensive or insulting to people.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

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This is a rush transcriptcheck all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Hi I'm Nick Gillespie and this is The Reason podcast. Please subscribe to us at iTunes and rate and review us while you're there.

Today we're talking with Emily Ekins she director of polling at the Cato Institute, a position she also previously held at The Reason Foundation, the non-profit that publishes this podcast. Emily also holds a PhD in political science from UCLA and writes on voter attitudes and millennial sentiments towards politics and culture.

Emily Ekins, welcome.

Emily Ekins: Thank you for having me.

Gillespie: A recent analysis of the 2016 election results by the voter study group at the Democracy Fund concluded that there were essentially no libertarian voters. By that they were identifying it as people who were socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Instead the study found that most voters fell into a liberal progressive camp that was liberal on economic and on identity issues. Things like immigration, things like Muslim sentiments towards Muslims, gay marriage, things like that. It found that most voters fell into a liberal progressive camp or populist group that was liberal on economics but conservative on identity politics or conservative on identity issues and conservative on both economic and identity issues.

The conclusion was Trump won because he won conservatives and populist while Hillary Clinton only polled liberals. For me, and I suspect the big point of interest for you also, was that the author, the political scientist Lee Drutman found that just 3.8% of voters fell into the libertarian group. There's a scatter plot, there's a very lonely quadrant there that is supposedly where libertarians don't exist. It led to a lot of people talking about there is no libertarian vote, we've been telling you this all along. Is Drutman right that there are essentially no libertarians in the electorate?

Ekins: Well first I'll say this. That I actually worked with Lee Drutman on this broader project which is part of the Democracy Fund voter study group. We feel that a very large longitudinal survey of 8,000 voters right after the election. Then several of us actually wrote up our own reports analyzing the data. Lee wrote a paper, I wrote a paper and I have a lot of respect for Lee Drutman and his research.

Gillespie: Okay, now stick the knife in. You have a lot of respect for him and so while he's beaming and looking up at the sun.

Ekins: I would say that on this particular aspect of his paper where he says that there's only 3.8% libertarians, I would say that that is inconsistent with most all other academic research I have ever seen on the subject. He also found that about 45% of the public fell into this economically liberal and socially liberal or identity liberal quadrant. Again I've never seen anything that high in the literature and I've surveyed most all of it that's really looked at this question.

I would say that's it's very inconsistent, you want to know what's going on. I think what happens is that people use different methods to try to identify the number of liberals, libertarians, conservatives and populists. They use different methods, they also use different definitions. What does this mean to be a liberal or a libertarian? The method, the question that they used to try to ascertain if you are a libertarian also differ.

In this instance one of the dimensions, you said that, typically when we try to identify libertarians we look at people who are economically, some will call it economically conservative or others will say less government intervention in the economy and then socially liberal. That's not exactly how his methodology worked. That that second dimension wasn't really about what gay marriage and legalization of marijuana, those types of social issues, it was about identity and he used a battery of questions that are very commonly used in academia but they're very controversial. They're used to determine your attitudes towards African Americans and racial minorities. These questions are problematic and I think that's part of the problem.

I could give you one example. One of the questions, it's an annoying question. It should put off most people but the question goes something like this, do you agree or disagree with the following statement: the Irish, the Italians, the Jews overcame prejudice without any special favors, African Americans should do the same. I think most people who hear this think, Ugh, why are we talking about groups? We're individuals. The problem is if someone who, if someone believes that no one should get special favors then they're going to probably agree with that statement. However if you agree with that statement you're coded as racist. Or not in the liberal direction shall we say.

Gillespie: Would you end up as a conservative or a populist?

Ekins: Those people are probably going to get pushed into the conservative or populist buckets. Essentially if you were to be a libertarian with this analysis, you would want less government spending, lower taxes, less government involvement in health care but also want government to, quote, give special favors. It's a very bizarre combination of attitudes that I'm unfamiliar with in the literature.

Gillespie: That reminds me of I know in the old Minnesota multi-phasic personality inventory which is still used in various ways. But back in the 40s and 50s if you were a woman, among the questions they would ask would be like, "Do you like reading Popular Mechanics or do you like working with tools?" If you said yes, she would kicked over into a lesbian category because that was obvious signs that there was something not right with you. What you're saying then is that the actual, more than in many things, you really need to look at the way in which the models are built and executed to figure out because different researchers have different definitions.

I know in your work you've written recently at the Cato website, at cato.org, about how typically libertarians come up as about 10% to 20% of the electorate and that the wider range is 7% to 22%. The fact that somebody comes up with a new and novel finding isn't, it doesn't mean they're wrong, but it means you really pay attention to see what's going on. How do most studies define libertarians and is the 10% to 20% any more accurate than the 3.8%?

Ekins: I looked at the literature, the academic literature on the subject about how do we identify these groups. There's different methods that are used. One simple method that I would say, is not as good of a method is just ask people to identify themselves. A lot of people don't they're libertarian when they are and a lot of people think they're libertarian when maybe they're not. That's not the best method. But if you do that you get about 11% or so who will self identify as libertarian on a survey.

A better method that academics often use is very similar to what Drutman used in his paper which is to ask people a series of public policy questions on a variety of different issues. Now the next step is where you can diverge. I would say the gold standard from there is to do a type of statistical procedure called a cluster analysis where you allow a statistical algorithm to take the inputs of those questions and identify a good solution about how many clusters of people are there in the electorate.

Stanley Feldman and Christopher Johnson did exactly this. I would say this is probably the gold standard. What they found was 15% were libertarian, they defined that as they tended to give conservative answers on economic questions or the role of government and the economy and gave more liberal responses on social and cultural issues. That's a very common way to do it. They found 17% were conservatives so not much different than libertarians. Slightly more were liberal, meaning economically liberal and socially liberal, 23%. They found about 8% were populist.

Now that not 100%. They found two other groups of people as well which it think also speaks to how interesting their analysis was, they found these two groups really didn't have strong opinions on economics but they differed on whether they leaned socially liberal or socially conservative. That actually tells us a lot. It fits well with what we see in American politics is that there are a lot of people out there that really don't know much about how the economy works but they do have an opinion when it comes to social and cultural policy.

Gillespie: How does these typologies of voters, how does it square with somebody like the political scientist Morris Fiorina who has for a couple of decades, at least, has been arguing that when we talk about culture war in America, and by that he means polarized politics and he grants that politics is very polarized and it's getting more polarized partly because the nominating processes for candidates that run for public office are typically in the hands of the most ideologically or dogmatically extreme members of various parties. He says when you look at broad variety of issues, whether it's things like abortion, whether it's drug legalization, whether it is immigration that there's oftentimes there's a broad 60% or more agreement or consensus so that we're actually one of the things he says is that our differences are routinely exaggerated and our agreements are typically ignored. Does that make sense? How does that match up with what you're talking about here because most people who do voter analyses talk about the things that separate voters rather than the commonality.

Ekins: It actually is very consistent with what the data suggests. Also if you're to look at my post at cato.org, the first chart in the post, I graphically display where the people live. Where are the libertarians and the conservatives and the liberals, if you were to plot them in an ideological plane, like the Nolan chart, on economic issues, social issues.

Gillespie: That's the world's smallest political quiz. Essentially it's a diamond shape that is made into quadrants. You're either more libertarian or more authoritarian from top to bottom.

Ekins: Yes. It's the same idea. What I did in this graph is plot where all the people live ideologically. What you see is it's a big blob. There is no structure meaning, there aren't just these, the story of polarization which does seem to be true at the congressional level, people who are elected to political office. But of the regular people of America, if polarization was happening and in Mo Fiorina, if he were wrong, then you would just see these two groups of people separated from each other on this plane. But that's not what it is. We see people are just randomly distributed. Meaning there are people with all different types of combinations of attitudes and the way our politics actually manifests is how we organize those people into, how those people organize themselves, I should say, into interest groups, into advocacy organizations, into businesses and then ultimately into politics. The way it is now, with Democrats and Republicans, it's by no means the only organization of politics that we can have.

Gillespie: Is there a sense and certainly I feel this and Matt Welch my recent colleague and I have written a book about it, but that part of what we're witnessing and it's hard to believe we're in the 2017, we're well into the 21st century but we're kind of stuck with these two large political groupings that go back to before the Civil War and that the groups that they were originally, and they get remade every couple of decades, but the groups, the conglomeration of voting interests that they once served, say even in 70s or 80s have fallen apart because this, to go from your blob on the Nolan chart to Democrats and Republicans in Congress if you're pro-abortion you have to vote for a Democrat and if you vote for a Democrat that means you're also voting in favor of certain elements of affirmative action or immigration policy.

If you're a Republican and you don't want people to burn the flag it also means you also have to be for lower marginal tax rates. These are things that really don't have any necessary connection. Is that the parties are describing or they're appealing to fewer and fewer people but you still have to vote for one or the other.

Ekins: Yes and that's probably contributed to the rise of the independent voter as well documented in your book. Also political scientists have shown that it's not just unique to US but most countries that have a political system similar to ours have what is equivalent to their congress, or their parliament divided along economic issues. In United States, this is by no means always true, but typically speaking, when people vote, they tend to vote along their economic interest, their economic issue positions if that makes any sense. All the social issues or at one time race became a second dimension in American politics. When these other issues have come out, then people are stuck, if they are out of alignment with their party on maybe social issues but are in alignment on economics the forces tend to have them voting along the lines of economics. That seems to be true not just in the US but other countries.

Gillespie: That explains libertarians voting oftentimes, self-identified libertarians or people in the libertarian movement aligning with the Republican party rather than the Democratic party because most of the people, I suspect, most of the people I talk to that I know at Cato and certainly at Reason are askance that they're not happy with Republican positions on a variety of science issues, on a variety of social issues for sure but they end up voting because they say, economics is more important.

Ekins: Yes, that seems to be what happens. But to some extent that is changing. There are periods of time where another dimension rises up like racial issues in 60s. Civil rights became so important some people were willing to say, I'm not going to stand with this party and allow it to continue doing what it's doing. It forced the party to change.

Gillespie: How does immigration fit into this? Because in Drutman's analysis it seems that immigration is a big, is one of those inflection points or hotspots. It becomes very interesting to me because Hillary Clinton when she was running as senator for the Senate in New York was very explicitly anti-illegal immigrant, she said she was against giving them drivers license. Bill Clinton forced the Democratic party platform in the 90s to be very hostile to immigration in general but especially illegals and one of the big pieces of legislation that he signed, actually on welfare reform in 90s and this is not necessarily a bad thing, but made it illegal immigrants and even legal immigrants for the first five years to be cut off from transfer payments, means tested transfer payments.

There's a sense that the Democrats are friendlier towards immigrants than Republicans and there seems to be some evidence for that at least in attitudes if not in policy because Obama was pretty terrible towards immigrants. But Mitt Romney was even worse. My larger question or I guess there's two questions here. One is something like immigration, it's not exactly clear how different the parties are in practice but then it's also, how much does it matter to voters whether or not, they might feel very strongly about immigration but it might be the 10th issue that they actually vote on. It doesn't even really come into play. How do you measure the intensity of a voter's belief in a particular topic and how that actually influences who they pull the lever for?

Ekins: There's a lot there. The first thing I would say is that there is a lot of posturing when it comes to immigration policy. Like you said, in many ways there aren't significant differences between many Republican and Democratic lawmakers when they, in their actual positions on immigration. But the posturing is different. Talking about self-deportation, that immigrants must learn english. Again it's not to say, most Americans to be honest would prefer immigrants learn english, it's not like that is so controversial, it's the way that it is said. If you're very first thing is about we need to secure the border and then second then we need to deal with X, Y and Z immigration issue. It gives the impression to people who are themselves immigrants or their children or friends of immigrants, are close to the immigrant experience, they get the very strong impression that they are not welcome. That is hugely important in how people are voting and that's why Democrats appear to be the pro-immigration party more so than Republicans. There are some policy differences like DOCA and things like that. But posturing is hugely important.

Generally speaking, I would say immigration hasn't been the highest priority when it comes to how people vote but data coming out of the 2016 election that I find very compelling and that we worked on as part of the Democracy Fund voter study group, suggests that immigration attitudes were by far what made this election and voting for Donald Trump most distinctive. It's not to say that people changed their minds, they don't seem to have changed their minds but rather these were concerns that they already had and they were activated by the rhetoric of the campaign. These were concerns people had, most Republicans and Democrats weren't talking about it in a way that people could really relate to then Trump comes in and just blows the lid off of it. Without nuance or without sophistication about the delicate issues that are at play here and people were so relieved and validated to have someone talk about immigration in the ways that they thought of if, they became very devoted to him. That meant ...

Gillespie: I'm sorry, go ahead.

Ekins: I was going to say, and that meant other scandals that came out during the course of the campaign did not matter as long as he continued to validate feelings on immigration.

Gillespie: In the Drutman analysis, part of it was that he sees the Democratic party as basically pretty supportive and in line behind liberal economic policies and liberal identity policies. He identifies two different groups within the Republican party that Trump appealed to. One are traditional conservatives and Republican voters who are conservative on social issues and also say they're conservative on economic issues. But then populists, I guess populists he defines as people who are into big government, populists like farms subsidies, they like business subsidies, they like subsidies for jobs and the idea that the government will take care of them against the, whether it's Islamic terrorists or big business or rapacious interests. But also, but they're conservative on these identity issues. Trump in a way, in that rating he was able to get the populists who might have voted for Obama in 2012 but definitely were not going to vote for Hillary because she seemed to be, she's part of the establishment, she doesn't care about them, she's a New York elitist. Is that accurate?

Ekins: I think that is. Obama had an economic message that resonated with these voters. Hillary Clinton didn't seem to give the impression that she cared much about them at all. She thought, "Oh, demography is destiny, we no longer need voters that come from certain economic and other types of strata in the electorate." And she didn't talk to them. Obama did and it served him well.

Gillespie: The joke was that she went to Chipotle more often during the 2016 campaign than Wisconsin. And you assume if you're a displaced or you feel like you're a displaced factory worker in northern Wisconsin and somebody's going to Chipotle you're not going to identify with them particularly strongly.

Ekins: Yes, that true. Also a lot of people have argued that Donald Trump is basically a Democrat. We was for years and he gave lots of money to Democrats. He's basically a Democrat but he is very suspicious of immigration which is right now out of line with the Democratic party.

Gillespie: Right, and he ran against the swamp in DC and all the people who had been living there or attached to it for years. Even though his economic policies were indistinguishable, it's just in the news that the Carrier air conditioning plant in Indiana that he had made a big stink about, getting them to not move to Mexico and of course all the jobs are going to Mexico anyway but it was a very interventionist, I don't even know that it's Democrat versus Republican 'cause Republicans love business subsidies in their own way but it was very populist certainly that the president was going to force big business to heel and to do what is right for the common American worker.

Your Cato colleague David Boaz who has written widely and wonderfully about libertarianism and you've done some work with him, about a year ago he asked Gallup to follow up. And I'm curious about this because I like this story a lot. He used Gallup data to break people into four categories: conservatives, liberals, populists and libertarians. He found using a question that keyed off of, that Gallup itself uses, to talk about political ideology, he found that libertarians, people who tended to be socially tolerant and in favor of small government were the single largest ideological block, 27%. Then there were conservatives at 26%, liberals at, I think it was 23% and populist at 15%. Does that work for you? In general that method and those results, do you find those are worth keeping in the front of our minds?

Ekins: I would say that's a little bit on the higher end of the numbers that I've seen. But that's a product of the method of using, I believe, they were using two questions. Something on an economic issue, role of government in the economy and then traditional values and you just look at who of the respondents said that they wanted small government and government not to promote traditional values.

That's a fine way to quickly segment the electorate but I probably wouldn't put too much stock in there being a difference between 27% and 23%. I do think though that that populist, the populist bucket if you will, Paul Krugman called them hardhats, some people call them communitarians or statists. They do seem to be a smaller segment of the electorate and think that they're going to be getting smaller as people do become more socially liberal over time.

Gillespie: Is there a sense, I realize this might be outside of your realm of expertise or interest, but part of thing as mediocre as the economy has been in the entire 21st century, we've been well below 2% annual growth which is something that we used to take for granted or even something closer to 3%, but the fact is is that most people's material lives are pretty good and they're getting better in terms of people have food, clothing and shelter and those things tend to get better over time. Are we moving more into a realm where the more symbolic issues or what you talked about as posturing or what we might call identity issues, are those going to dominate more and more? You had mentioned that civil rights was a huge factor in the 60s, obviously there was foreign policy as well as economic issues going on but are we more in a symbolic space now where it's not about whether or not people have enough to eat. Nobody's going to win election as president again by promising a chicken in every pot. But are we in a post-economic phase of political identity?

Ekins: I think that's a very interesting question and it reminds me of Brink Lindsey's book Age of Abundance with the idea being that economic wealth essentially allows us to have, I'll just make this up here, luxury ideological goods. If you have what you need then you can focus on other things that you believe in truly from a political standpoint that are not related to the bread and butter of jobs, housing, food, things like that. Certainly we have seen that. The introduction of social issues and cultural issues as being a second dimension of American politics emerged about the time that economic prosperity and growth really took off.

But I would say this, as a caveat to that, in the Democracy Fund voter study group that we worked, our group more broadly, two authors Ruy Teixeira and Robert Griffin at the Center for American Progress, they did another paper and what they found, was I thought very interesting, that individuals who were struggling economically or said they were struggling economically in 2012 were significantly more likely by 2016 to have become more anxious and concerned about immigration and wanting to restrict immigration. Let me just, if I'm saying that clearly enough here. People that had worse economic situations in 2012, four years later disproportionately turned against immigration. Why is that?

It does seem to me that to some extent this isn't just purely an ideological luxury issue that many people perceive it to be economic even if it might not be, people think it is.

Gillespie: Right, and it speaks to a whole host of, beyond any question about economics and as good libertarians I suspect we agree that even illegal or maybe especially illegal immigrants are a boon to the economy to the culture et cetera but regardless of the economics of it, the idea that you are a person in America who has been made redundant or irrelevant in a particular economic moment and you're pissed. Immigrants are the ultimate place where you can focus your anger and ire. Somehow they are getting something that you cannot anymore.

Ekins: Right. There definitely seems to be something going on there. It was a theory that a lot of people had that I think to Teixeira and Griffin really showed that empirically.

Gillespie: Now of course Teixeira also has been talking about the oncoming iron clad Democratic majority for a decades really. And we all do this where we, going back to Kevin Phillips who had the coming Republican majority at a point when the Republicans looked like they were about to go out of business. He was right for a while then was wrong, right again. One of the things that Gallup and I guess Harris used to do this too, where they would ask people to self-identify both as Republican and Democrat and it was always that there were always more Democrats, people who would identify as Democrats than Republicans but there were always many more people who would identify as conservatives rather than liberal and in most of those things, the self-identified liberal group would never get really more than about 20% of the electorate going back to 1970 and conservatives would be in the 40s, sometimes almost the 50s.

Yet over the past half century Republicans keep winning elections, particularly at the state and local level and Democrats keep losing. Is there any worthwhile way of digging through that where there are more Democrat, people who identify as Democrats but there are more conservatives but that's why Republicans win elections? Or is this just these are categories that are so loose that they really don't tell us anything?

Ekins: Well I think the first point, it brought to mind a phrase that I think you hear a lot of people say. Where they say, "I'm a conservative, I'm not a Republican." That distinction matters to a lot of people. But as political science research has shown, over time the parties have become more aligned with a particular ideology. Conservatives are more likely to be Republican and liberals more likely to be Democrat than in the past. That doesn't mean though that people are comfortable with the words liberal. For some reason the word liberal has been a bad word and so a lot of people who really are just liberal Democrats would say, "I'm a moderate Democrat," or "I'm more conservative." That's just more semantics. I think that's why we want to ask them, what do they think about public policy? That's the best way to know where people go.

I don't know how this maps onto though, the fact that Republicans have been doing better at winning these state and local elections. Other than the idea that they are more organized than the Democrats are right now. Right now Democrats seem to be very focused at the federal level and protests and more like expressing themselves. For instance in Los Angeles it's my understanding that, wasn't there 700,000 people who turned out for the women's march and it was only a couple hundred thousand showed up for the local elections? In the same month.

Right now it seems like Democrats are more focused on expressing frustration and anger and Republicans have been more organized and as a result they have been winning more elections at the state and local levels.

Gillespie: Let's talk about millennials. A few years ago you did a fantastic survey for Reason and the Roop Foundation about millennials and you've continued to work that ground. Are millennials, are they more or less libertarian than GenXer's or Baby Boomers? You foregrounded a lot of this and I guess we actually wrote something together about this that I'm now in my dotage I'm remembering. It seems that millennials use a different language to talk about politics. Are they, and a lot people confuse that for them being socialists, literally socialists, a lot of millennials love Bernie Sanders. Millennials, at least going back to the Obama years, which would have been the first elections that they could have voted in, overwhelmingly vote for Democrats at the presidential level. What you're take on millennials? Are they more or less libertarian than people in the past or are they more or less liberal or progressive?

Ekins: It's hard to answer that question. I would say that GenX in some respects seems to be the more libertarian generation of the groups. With millennials what we found is that they don't seem to stand out on economic policy so a lot of people think that they're all socialists because they like Bernie Sanders. That actually doesn't seem to line up with where the facts are. But they came of a political age, more or less, when Bush was either president or on his way out and the Republican party brand was in shambles and Obama was an incredibly popular brand and figure. So obviously the messengers that they trust, President Obama, John Stewart of the Daily Show, the messengers that they trusted really didn't tell them anything about free market economics. It's actually maybe almost surprising that they're not more statist than they are.

It's on the social issues that we see a difference and that they are more libertarian on social issues and civil liberties except for one issue. Free speech issues, I think this is something that we're going to need to keep an eye on. Where younger people are more supportive of the idea that some sort of authority, whether it's the college administrator or the government should limit certain speech that is considered offensive or insulting to people.

Gillespie: Wow. You're working on a study about that, is that correct?

Ekins: That's correct. It should be out in September.

Gillespie: Wow. That is obviously something to look forward to. You also recently identified in a, again at cato.org, five types of Trump voters. What are they and how are they relevant to analysis?

Ekins: Yes, this is also part of the Democracy Fund voter study group, we talked about them quite a bit during this podcast. I wrote a separate paper that did a type of statistical analysis, a cluster analysis of the Trump voters. Because a lot of folks have had this tendency to talk about the Trump voter as though it's one type of person, that voted for him for one particular reason. This statistical analysis that I ran, found five different types of Trump voters and they are very different from one another. On even the issues central to the campaign, immigration, matters of race and American identity. They're even very different on the size and scope of government. In way it's amazing that they're all in one coalition here. I could go over some of those groups if you are interested.

Gillespie: Yes, please do.

Ekins: The first group I'll mention, I call them the American Preservationists. They are the core Trump coalition that put him through the primaries. They're not the most loyal Republican voters though. They're more economically progressive, they're very concerned about Medicare, they want to tax the wealthy some more but they are very, very suspicious of immigration both legal and illegal. They have cooler feeling toward racial minorities and immigrants. They fit the more typical media accounts of Trump voters. What really surprised me about this group is that they were the only group that really felt this way and most likely group to think that being of European descent was important for being truly American. A very unusual group of voters. But they comprised about 20% of the whole coalition.

Gillespie: Wow, and they're highly motivated and intensely active. I recognize them daily in the comment section at Reason.

Ekins: Yes. But again 20% of the coalition.

There was another group that I think would really surprise you that existed in the same coalition. I call them the Free Marketeers. They actually comprised a larger share, 25%, and in many ways they're the polar opposite of the American Preservationists. They were the most hesitant Trump group. Most of them voted for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio in the primaries and they said that really their vote was against Hillary Clinton. As opposed to being for Trump. These are just, as the name implies, small government fiscal conservatives, they have very warm feelings towards immigrants and racial minorities. They're the most likely group to support making it easier to legally immigrate to the US. They're very similar to Democrats on these identity issues. They're polar opposites to the Preservationists.

Gillespie: How do they, I guess I know the answer to this which is it's Hillary Clinton. Because Trump was so out there in terms of trade protectionism and forcing businesses to his will, he did not seem to be at all a free trader or a free marketer.

Ekins: Not at all but Hillary Clinton, besides trade didn't seem to be one either. I think they disliked her so much it seems like they, that's why they voted for Trump. But they also have the most in common with the third party voters who voted for Gary Johnson. If they weren't voting for Johnson or staying home, they were in this bucket.

Gillespie: You did have one group in your schematic that were, I'm sorry I'm blanking on the title now, but it was the Disinterested or Disaffected voters. Is that right?

Ekins: Yes, they were a small group, The Disengaged. They didn't tell us much about their politics, they're the type of people that when they take surveys they just don't have many opinions but the opinions that they did have were, they were suspicious of immigration and the felt the system was rigged against them. That was really a more common thread. It's not a thread that all the Trump voters shared in common but there was a bit more suspicion of immigration which make sense because that was a major part of Trump's campaign rhetoric.

Gillespie: Right. That also calls to mind the Drutman analysis where this idea of the system being rigged or the system not working anymore. If not, the system is either actively hostile to you or it just is just totally incompetent in delivering basic things. Like I work hard so I should have a good life, this system isn't doing that anymore. Is that, which also linked Trump and Bernie Sanders 'cause Sanders was running as an outsider and oftentimes in terms that were almost indistinguishable from Trump. Is that really the battleground now of whether or not you are working or are supporting the establishment or are you a marker of the system or are you actively attacking it? Is that the real front of American politics?

Ekins: I don't quite see it like that. I did find a group that fit that exactly. Their name is just what you'd expect. I call them the Anti-Elites. They fit just what you're talking about. They don't really align with Trump that much on immigration issues, they're a lot like Democrats on economics and immigration but they really felt like the system was rigged against ordinary people like themselves. And the establishment versus the people. For two of the five clusters, and they're the majority, of the Trump voters, the Free Marketeers and another group that I haven't mentioned yet, The Staunch Conservatives.

They're just more conventional Republicans. They don't think the system is rigged. They don't think that people take advantage of you. They think that they have agency and that they through their votes can change the political process, which is the exact opposite of the Preservationists that I mentioned and the Anti-Elites. Which fits that narrative that you're talking about. Now that narrative really does a good job at explaining more of the vote switchers, the people who voted for Obama in 2012 and switched to Trump in 2016, they do feel that way. But that doesn't explain all of the Trump voters.

Gillespie: How common was it for people to have voted for Obama and then to have switched to Trump.

Ekins: I had the number almost in the top of my head today. It was about 6%, something like that. Sizable enough obviously. But there were also voters, Republicans who voted for Romney who switched and voted for Hillary Clinton or a third party. If I remember correctly it was slightly more Obama voters switched to Trump than Romney voters that left the Republican party. There's a slight net gain, but I think it's important for people to realize that for all the voters that Trump picked up, the Republican party lost a lot of voters too because of Trump.

Gillespie: Do we make a mistake, a fundamental mistake when we try to analyze political trends through presidential elections? Because they come once every four years, we had, this time around, we had the two least liked candidates in American history. Is it a problem if we key too much off of who wins the presidency? And we essentially, just as we started the 21st century, with a dead heat where a few thousand votes essentially separated Bush and Gore. We had this bizarre outcome where Trump lost the popular vote pretty sizably but won the electoral vote. To my mind that's not a constitutional crisis, it's a sign that nobody can get to 50%. Is it wrong to look at the presidential races as the way, to tell us where politics is going?

Ekins: I think you're absolutely right. People read way too much into presidential elections. If you recall after George W. Bush won in 2004, there were all sorts of magazine covers and books that would show red America being huge and then blue America, the coasting really small and the permanent Republican majority but then, then Obama won then it was demographics is destiny and it's going to be a permanent Democratic majority. Even still a lot of people have read, particularly I would say on the more Republican side of thing of over read too much into this Trump election thinking that, oh if only Republicans appeal on the way that Trump does that's how they win.

Here's what we know in political science. This might surprise some of the listeners here, but that economic variables for instance, how fast the economy's growing, what's the labor force participation rate as well as the current president's approval ratings. A couple of these structural variables predict almost every election outcome over the past 100 years. What that means, I'm not saying campaigns don't matter, they seem to have to matter in some respects. Maybe if you didn't run a campaign then you would just get blown out of the water. Assuming you've got two campaigns going, the structural variables seem to be hugely important.

They're not always right, they've missed three elections, one of them was Gore versus Bush, as you recall Gore did technically win the popular vote. These models seem to be pretty good. And throughout this entire election campaign I was telling folks, hey look at, I'm forgetting his name, excuse me. There's a few economists that do this Abramowitz did one of these models, Ray Fair at Princeton does a model. If you followed Ray Fair's model, he predicted a Republican win almost the entire election. I thought well, just about any Republican can win this election. I thought Trump might not be able to do that, there are outliers but he did pull it out, and I think part of the reason are these economic fundamentals.

Gillespie: Let's close out by talking about libertarians and their way forward for people who are libertarian voters, obviously Gary Johnson and William Weld for all of the tension and controversies within that campaign and whatnot, they had the best, by far the best results of any libertarian party candidate. But beyond the LP, with small L libertarians, what are the issues that libertarians are interested in that seem to give the most possibility of building meaningful alliances and pushing forward over the next couple of years? In the past it's been things like drug legalization, criminal justice reform. Certain aspects of immigration and free trade certainly. Gender equality and marriage equality. Are libertarians, where would you say, given their array of issues, where do those match up with most other groups where we might be able to build meaningful alliances?

Ekins: I think it's a great question but I think it's a hard question to really answer. I agree with you on most of those issues, that those continue to be key issues for libertarians particularly criminal justice reform, privacy issues. That's something that really wasn't on the radar in terms of issues until Edward Snowdon really it seems like. But I think another thing for libertarians to think about is thinking about Republicans and Democrats, and realizing that they do have shared interests with both groups. To try to emphasize what we as libertarians are for, not what we're against. I'll give you an example 'cause we're talking about healthcare a lot on the news.

I am for everyone who wants to have access to healthcare to able to get it. We live in a country where people have houses, they have access to food and they don't have the government running it. We have found a way that the markets provide these things then we do have a social safety net for those who hit hard times and need help, we have ways to fill those gaps but it doesn't require the government to run it all. When it comes to things like healthcare and other issues like that we are for all of these positive outcomes.

The question is what's the best way to do it? What I often hear is some of our libertarian friends talking about what we're against. Let's talk about what we're for, whether that be for criminal justice reform, whether it be for healthcare, whether that be for entitlement reform, drug reform and so forth. Let's talk about the end goals 'cause you think about it, I hear this coming from the political parties all the time. They tell you the outcome that they want to deliver you. Now they're wrong all the time but let's talk about the outcomes that we believe that a freer society that libertarian public policy can help deliver. Let's focus on the positives.

Gillespie: All right that sounds like pretty sage advice and I'll be very interested in September when your paper about free speech and millennials comes out because it may be, it'll be interesting to see what's the outcome you're proffering there. And then working to persuade millennials who are more likely to believe in constraints on speech. It sounds like a tough nut to crack but a really interesting one as well.

We have been talking with Emily Ekins, she's the director of polling at the Cato Institute and she is also a PhD in political science from UCLA and writes widely on voter attitudes and millennial attitudes as well.

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Do Libertarian Voters Actually Exist? Yes, and in Droves [Reason Podcast] - Reason (blog)

Libertarian Law Firm Sues Over Seattle’s Democracy Vouchers – TheStranger.com

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Have you used your Democracy Vouchers yet? SEEC

The same law firm suing over Seattle's "first in time" rental law is now taking on the city's new public campaign financing program, the first voucher-based system in the country.

Today, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) announced a lawsuit alleging that Seattle's Democracy Voucher violates the First Amendment by using public dollars to subsidize political campaigns some taxpayers may not agree with. The program uses property tax revenue to gives Seattle residents $100 in vouchers they can donate to city council and city attorney candidates (the mayor's race will also qualify in the future). While other cities and states use other models of public campaign financing, like matching grant programs, Seattle was the first to pass a voucher system.

"'Democracy voucher' is mere euphemism for a law that operates in effect as a politician enrichment tax," the PLF writes in its legal complaint. Appropriate for a firm focused on landlords and property rights, PLF lawyer Ethan Blevins calls out tenant advocate Jon Grant, who has raised nearly $129,000 in vouchers in his race for city council.

"So rental property owners are forced to bankroll a politician who is adverse to their rights and their interests," PLF attorney Ethan Blevins said in a statement.

PLF is representing two Seattle property owners, Mark Elster and Sarah Pynchon. Elster lives in a single-family home he owns in Seattle. Pynchon owns a single-family home in Seattle but rents it out and lives outside the city.

"This program is so patently and obviously unfair, Elster said in a statement. "The democracy voucher program puts other peoples political beliefs into my mouth."

Sightline, a local think tank that advocated for Democracy Vouchers, argued at the time that the program is legal despite federal court decisions defining money as speech. Sightline director Alan Durning says the initiative that created Democracy Vouchers was "carefully vetted by a dozen lawyers," including Constitutional law experts, and he stands by that analysis today.

I would be astonished if there is any legal merit whatsoever in their free speech argument, Durning says. There are at least a dozen cities and states around the country that use public funds to support campaigns and Seattles program doesnt do anything that they dont do. In fact, we give a lot more control to individual voters [by using vouchers instead of a more common block grant system]."

UPDATE: University of Washington Constitutional law professor Hugh Spitzer sounded like he could barely contain his laughter as we talked about the PLFs legal challenge to Democracy Vouchers this afternoon.

The lawsuit claims that Pynchon shouldn't pay towards a public campaign financing system in Seattle because she doesn't live here.

That argument doesnt make any sense at all, Spitzer told me. Theyre saying they dont want to pay taxes, they dont want to support public programs if they dont live in the community. Thats not how property taxes work Thats a silly argument.

More broadly, both Spitzer and Brent Ferguson, a lawyer at the Brennan Center (which advocates for public campaign financing), say they dont expect PLFs challenge to succeed. Public campaign financing schemes have been challenged before, they said. And, while some other models have been struck down or limited, courts have rejected the argument that public campaign financing compels people to support speech they dont agree with, Spitzer and Ferguson said.

The government engages in its own speech all time, Ferguson said. It pays for politicians, it pays for judges, it pays for advocacy. And arguing you disagree with those forms of government speech is never a successful argument to get out of paying taxes, Ferguson said.

Blevins could not immediately be reached for comment.

In an interview, Blevins disagreed. He argued the voucher program is uniquely legally questionable because individual votersinstead of the governmentdistribute the money. "It's the government as the speaker versus the individual as the speaker," he said, arguing that hasn't been tested in court before. (The other lawyers I talked to said the vouchers were not enough to make this system significantly different to a court than other systems.)

Blevins also stood by his argument that it's unfair for his client to pay into a system she can't use. And his other client, "a believer in free markets and individual choice," won't likely be represented by anyone running for office in Seattle, he said. "People who take minority or dissenting viewpoints are undermined" in this system, Blevins said.

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Libertarian Law Firm Sues Over Seattle's Democracy Vouchers - TheStranger.com

Third Sitting New Hampshire State Rep Flips to Libertarian Party! – Free Keene

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Just-Flipped-to-Libertarian State Representative Brandon Phinney

The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire held another press conference today announcing the awesome news that now a THIRD sitting state representative has flipped parties to the LPNH! The LPNH has already made two previous historic announcements earlier this year with state representatives Caleb Dyerof Pelham and Joseph Stallcop of Keene changing from republican and democrat respectively to the Libertarian Party of NH and then forming a Libertarian caucusin the state house for the first time in twenty years.

Representative Brandon Phinney, who was elected in 2016 as a republican, said during his official announcement at todays press conference, that the republican party leadership has been chastising their legislators for not following the leaderships demands. Phinney said in his speech that he was stifled by party leadership and that he and the other liberty minded reps were labeled terrorists! He said, What I found was that both parties were seeking to manipulate the potential legislation and the legislative process for political gainI was not elected to do the bidding of a political party at the expense of my principles. He finished his speech by saying, Integrity and a clear conscience is desperately needed in the New Hampshire house and together with representatives Dyer and Stallcop, I believe that our cause will ignite a shift in political affiliation in this state.

Phinney was joined in speaking by the chairman of the national Libertarian Party, Nicholas Sarwark, who came up from their offices in DC to help commemorate the occasion. In his speech, Sarwark delivered an invitation to legislators, politicians, and others saying, if youre tired of living a lie, if youre tired of standing up for things you dont believe in, come out of the closet. Become a libertarian. Come home. It was Sarwarks first time visiting the Live Free or Die state. Heres the full press conference from this morning in Concord:

So, now the LPNH has three sitting state representatives in the NH state house, and this has all transpired within six months! Thats three more Libertarian state reps than the rest of the 49 states have, combined! If it seems like all this success came out of nowhere, youre right. Until September of last year, the LPNH was basically a dead organization until a couple of guys who moved to NH as part of the ongoing NH Freedom Migration, Darryl W Perry and Rodger Paxton got elected to chair and vice chair of the party and proceeded to breath new life into the organization.

Can the party maintain this amazing pace? How many more reps will flip before the next election in 2018? Thanks to the diligent research of hate group Granite State Progress we know there are approximately fifteen current sitting state reps who are Free State Project participants or friends, so there are many other potential Libertarian Party of NH converts still out there in the state house.

The national Libertarian Party has NEVER had the level of success in its over four decades in existence as the NH Freedom Migration has has in about a decade. We continue to prove that concentrating activism in one geographic area is a successful strategy, and todays announcement is yet another feather in our cap. Liberty is winning here, and we can have bigger and more impactful successes if you come join us. Here are 101 reasons why you should start planning your move to New Hampshire ASAP.

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Third Sitting New Hampshire State Rep Flips to Libertarian Party! - Free Keene

Solomon Islands at a crossroads as Australian-led assistance mission bids farewell – ABC Online

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Updated June 29, 2017 10:37:53

The Australian-led assistance mission to Solomon Islands will officially end tomorrow, as the country eyes a lasting peace after ethnic violence that left it on the brink of collapse.

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) saw Australia, New Zealand and 13 other Pacific countries send help to stabilise the island nation, at the request of its government.

Australia spent an estimated $2.8 billion on the 14-year mission, contributing 7,200 soldiers and 1,700 Australian Federal Police officers to the effort.

But as the mission draws to a close, there are concerns over whether the current peace will endure and in the words of the country's Prime Minister, Solomon Islands has arrived at a crossroads in its history.

The ethnic violence in Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003 which locals refer to as "the tensions" saw fighting between militants from Guadalcanal island and the nearby island of Malaita.

Militants in Guadalcanal began targeting migrants from Malaita, who had travelled to Guadalcanal to seek employment in the capital Honiara, and had over the years created multiple settlements on the island.

The militants resented the growing influence settlers commanded over the island, as well as the settlers' presence on their lands.

The resulting violence saw thousands of Malaitan settlers flee back to their home island or to the relative safety of the capital.

A Malaitan militant force was set up in response, further entrenching unrest across the country, and the police force began to take sides in the violence.

After years of worsening conflict and fruitless peace efforts, Solomon Islands found itself on the verge of becoming a failed state.

In 2003 the Solomon Islands government made a formal request for assistance to its regional neighbours, and RAMSI was born.

Australian soldiers and federal police quickly restored law and order and confiscated thousands of guns.

But it was not an easy mission two Australians died, one was shot in the back.

"On the side of law and order [RAMSI] was clearly very successful," said James Batley, a former special coordinator of RAMSI and Australian High Commissioner to Solomon Islands.

"And dramatically so early on, when the militant groups disarmed and their weapons were destroyed."

Mr Batley spoke to the ABC from Honiara, where he is participating in the end-of-mission celebrations.

"It's really very striking just how warm the messages we are hearing here in Honiara are," he said

Australia's Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove and representatives from other participating Pacific countries were also given a warm, traditional welcome to the capital.

Justice Minister Michael Keenan attended the ceremonies and said Australia was duty-bound to lead a regional intervention.

"Australia could not afford to have a failed state on our doorstep," he said.

"We are essentially the superpower in the Pacific, and it's very important that we play our role."

Beyond just ending the conflict, RAMSI had a broad mandate.

The mission also involved repairing national institutions, restoring government finances and the aiding the operation of the public service.

The police force also needed renewal after its participation in the conflict, and was rearmed on a limited basis earlier this year for the first time since the violence ended.

44 unarmed Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers will also remain in the country after the withdrawal to serve as trainers.

But the mission was not without its critics one of the most strident among them being the current Solomon Islands Prime Minister, Manasseh Sogavare.

While Mr Sogavare had previously accused the mission of undermining his country's sovereignty, and had even threatened to terminate the effort, he has changed his views in recent times.

Speaking in Parliament earlier this week, he praised RAMSI for fully achieving its mandate.

"It faced a lot of challenges, but of course none of which deterred the mission from pursuing and achieving the objectives it set out to achieve," he said.

"Law and order has been restored, [the] machinery of government is functioning again."

Opposition leader Jeremiah Manele said there was anxiety in some parts of the country over what would happen after the withdrawal.

Acknowledging these concerns, Mr Sogavare described Solomon Islands as being at a crossroads, but said the country's second chance at peace was an exciting challenge.

"We must learn to live together in harmony," he said.

"We must learn, Mr Speaker, to see our differences as a point of strength."

Not everyone is convinced that lessons have been properly learnt following the unrest.

"The Solomon Islands Government did not make use of the opportunity when RAMSI [was] here to solve the underlying causes," Guadalcanal Premier Anthony Veke said.

Mr Veke said land rights on Guadalcanal, a major grievance of the militants there, have not seen any progress.

He said the Government could have used the stability provided by RAMSI to make inroads.

"If the Government wants to see Solomon Islands stability they have to be able to address these land issues in Guadalcanal."

Mr Batley is aware of these arguments.

"There's no doubt that there's a bit of nervousness around," he said.

"Some thoughtful Solomon Islanders are asking the question: 'Did we sufficiently make use of the opportunity that RAMSI provided to really address the really deep issues?'

"There is a bit of national debate around, but I think overwhelmingly the feeling is that the time is right."

Mr Veke was also positive about the prospect of an enduring peace in Solomon Islands.

"I'm confident that the country's future is bright and in good hands," he said.

"Especially with the new Commissioner of Police and also with the more than 40 AFP who will be remaining.

"I think they can still continue to provide an environment in which the common can actually address those issues."

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, world-politics, solomon-islands, australia, pacific, new-zealand

First posted June 29, 2017 09:42:13

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Solomon Islands at a crossroads as Australian-led assistance mission bids farewell - ABC Online

Answer Man: Lake Pepin is no place for manmade islands | Answer … – Post-Bulletin

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Dear Answer Man, one of the ideas that's been mentioned for dealing with all the dredged sand that the Army Corps of Engineers needs to get rid of is to build some islands in Lake Pepin. Is that even possible?

Some people say there's no such thing as a bad idea. I disagree. There are lots of bad ideas, and this is one of them.

Lake Pepin is the only natural lake (also known as a wide spot) along the whole 2,320-mile length of the Mississippi River. It's one of the greatest attractions in Minnesota (and Wisconsin, but that's another story), a place of sublime beauty that somehow has managed not to be overrun by lakeshore development or tainted by pollution. It's a mecca for boaters, anglers, eagle watchers, photographers, road trippers and anyone who enjoys a beautiful view.

First-time visitors to the area wonder how it is that they've never heard of it; longtime area residents take it for granted but are glad it's there.

So, first of all, it's a cockamamie idea to even talk about building islands in the lake. Yes, there are manmade islands in the river downstream around Wabasha; while not ideal, that part of the river has been greatly altered by the Corps' lock and dam system over the years. Lake Pepin remains pristine by comparison.

Then there's the question of where. The lake averages a depth of 20 feet, but it's more like 50 and 60 feet deep through much of it. It's hard to imagine where these sand mountains would be built without disrupting fish and wildlife, water quality, lakeshore residents and lake users.

I could go on and on, and I can think of many people around the lake who'd be glad to weigh in on this issue, but instead I directed one of my research associates to ask the Army Corps of Engineers if the idea of building islands in Lake Pepin is being considered in any way.

George Stringham, a public affairs specialist with the Corps in St. Paul, says the draft plan that was released in May "does not recommend island construction in Lake Pepin. We are not recommending this approach as a part of our strategy to address long-term dredged material management."

The Corps issued a draft plan in May for dealing with about 10 million cubic yards of sand that will be dredged from the river over the next 40 years. The plan calls for piling much of it on now privately owned land near Wabasha, Kellogg and Nelson, Wis., and developing transfer stations that will greatly increase truck traffic and commotion in other areas.

Stringham said there are "several reasons" islands in Lake Pepin are not being considered. "They include adverse environmental impacts, and substantial policy and compliance challenges, among other issues," he said.

Somewhat ironically, the Corps is looking at the possibility of "building islands in the upper part of Lake Pepin in cooperation with the Wisconsin DNR," he said. According to a news release that went out Tuesday, the Corps proposes to "investigate opportunities to utilize dredged material from Pool 4 (the area between the Red Wing and Alma, Wis., dams) to improve the ecosystem in the same pool. Potential opportunities for the Corps to improve the pool include using dredged material to build islands, dredging backwater areas, creating and/or improving wetlands, stabilizing the shoreline stabilization and planting floodplain forest."

There are environmental benefits, in other words, to dredging and reconstructing areas that have been affected over the years by the Corps' lock and dam system. A public meeting on the plan to merely study that possibility will be at 5 p.m. July 11 at the Red Wing library.

"In that part of the lake, there would be environmental benefits of such activity," Stringham told my I-Team member by email, and that area is high up on the lake. "However, no environmental agencies have expressed interest in building large islands in the lower part of Lake Pepin. It does not seem likely that there would be environmental benefits to building a large island in lower Lake Pepin."

Could dredge spoils from the Wabasha area be brought upriver to that island-building project, if it goes ahead? Perhaps, though it would be a drop in the bucket in terms of the 40-year plan.

The Answer Man gets better and better every day. Send questions to P.O. Box 6118, Rochester, MN 55904 or answerman@postbulletin.com.

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Answer Man: Lake Pepin is no place for manmade islands | Answer ... - Post-Bulletin

Toronto Islands flood damage could hit nearly $5M, city finds – CBC.ca

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Weeks of flooding that threatened to force the evacuation of the Toronto Islands this springand continues to keep the park shut caused about $4.88 million in damages, according to a report released by the city Tuesday.

Those estimates cover the losses anticipated until the end of July.

The report, released by the general manager of Parks, Forestry and Recreation,said that the exact damage costs can't be tallied until the floodwaters fully recede.

A large portion of the damages are attributed to the loss of revenue from stalled ferry operations.

Ferry service has been closed to the public since May 4.

Municipal staff estimatethat if Toronto Island Park remains closed through the end of August, the city will lose another $2.23million in ferry revenues.

In May 2016, the service ferried almost 140,000 to the Toronto Islands roughly 10 times the number that use the ferry at the same time this year, according to city statistics.

In light of these emerging costs, Mayor John Tory will makean announcement Thursdayabout how to better equip the city to manage extreme weather events.

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Toronto Islands flood damage could hit nearly $5M, city finds - CBC.ca

There’s a New Island Off the Coast of North Carolina – Smithsonian

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SmartNews Keeping you current Drone image of Shelly Island (Chad Koczera)

smithsonian.com June 28, 2017 12:57PM

Visitors to North Carolinas Outer Banks know the area is dynamic. From year to year, the barrier islands and sand spits continually change shape, expanding, contracting, and sometimes disappearing all together. This year, however, theres been a bigger change than usual,Craig Welch reports forNational Geographic.A new island about a mile long and 300 yards wide has appeared off the tip of Cape Point in Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

The strong currents and tides in the Outer Banks create and destroy new sand bars and islands all the time. But local historian Danny Couch says the new island is special. Its a hoss, he tells Welch. Every 10 to 15 years well get something thats pretty dramatic. But this one is the largest one Ive seen in my lifetime.

The dynamic nature of the beachcomes comes form its position near theconfluenceof two strong currents: theGulf Stream, a north-flowing warm water ocean current stretching from theCaribbeanto the Northern Atlantic, and theLabrador Current, a cold, south-flowing current. This meeting of currents causes rough waters in this region, which constantly shape and reshape the sandy shores.

AsJeff Hampton at the Virginian Pilot reports, as late as April the island was just a bump in the ocean. But by Memorial Day, the feature had formed. Thats when Janice Regan and her grandson decided to beachcomb the sandy island, finding a mother lode of pristine shells. They dubbed the place Shelly Island, a name that is spreading.

But such shell hunting is not recommended on the island. Though many visitors are crossing the 50-yard strait from Cape Point to the Island, Hampton reports, officials are cautioning that visitors should not swim or walkto the island. A strong rip current rushes through the area. Sand sharks and stingrays have also been reported in the waters, and hooks from decades of fishing at the popular spot could litter the seafloor,Hampton reports.

Travel to the sandbar is best accomplished by experienced kayakers or paddleboarders that are using appropriate floatation and [are] mindful of the strong currents in the area, Dave Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, tells Francesca Street at CNN.

This rapidly changing region grows even more unstable with a bit of energy from a storm. There are times when we've had hurricanes or tropical storms where certain sections of the beach just start to disappear, Hallac tells Welch. In other sections, I'll see something sticking out of the sand and realize it was the top of a sign that had been standing at eye level.

The fate of the newest island is unclear. It could continue to grow in the coming days,and may eventually connect with Cape Point. Or it could disappear overnight. As MarkDowdle, deputy superintendent of Cape Hatteras tells Welch, it's just another day at the Outer Banks.

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Jason Daley is a Madison, Wisconsin-based writer specializing in natural history, science, travel, and the environment. His work has appeared in Discover, Popular Science, Outside, Mens Journal, and other magazines.

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There's a New Island Off the Coast of North Carolina - Smithsonian

Pope makes appointments in Indonesia, South Korea and Marshal Islands – Vatican Radio

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Frs. Father Adrianus Sunarko OFM (Indonesia), Pius Moon Chang-woo (S. Korea) and Job Koo Yobi (S. Korea) - RV

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Wednesday made appointments in the Asia and Pacific regions, with a bishop in Indonesia, a coadjutor bishop and an auxiliary bishop in South Korea and a prefect apostolic in the Marshal Islands.

INDONESIA -PANGKALPINANG

In Indonesia he appointed Franciscan Father Adrianus Sunarko the Bishop of Pangkalpinang. The 50-year old priest is the Franciscan provincial superior of Indonesia as well as the president of the Conference of Men Major Superiors of Indonesia (KOPTARI). He takes over from Bishop Hilarius Moa Nurak SVD, who passed away on 29 April, 2016. Bishop Yohanes Harun Yuwono of Tanjungkarang was serving as its Apostolic Administrator.

Born on 7 December, 1966 in Merauke, Papua, Fr. Sunarko attended the minor seminary of Mertoyudan. He did his philosophical studies at the Driyarkara High School of Philosophy in Jakarta and his theology at the Wedhabhakti Pontifical Faculty in Yogyakarta. He took his perpetual vows as a member of the Order of Friars Minor (OFM) on 15 August, 1994, and was ordained a priest on 8 July, the following year.

As a priest, Fr. Sunarko was assigned various responsibilities:

1995-1996: Assistant parish priest of Kramat (Jakarta Archdiocese)

1996-2002: Bachelors degree in theology at the Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany

Since From 2002: Professor at Driyarkara High School of Philosophy in Jakarta

2004-2007: OFM provincial definitor

2007-2009: OFM vice provincial of Indonesia

Since 2010: OFM provincial superior of India ( 2 terms)

Since 2014: President of the Conference of Men Major Superiors of Indonesia (KOPTARI)

The Diocese of Pangkalpinang, created in 1961, is a suffragan of Palembang Archdiocese. Out of a total population of 3.345.000 over an area of 30,442 sqkm, Pangkalpinang has 58.000 Catholics. They are being ministered to by 76 priests (61 diocesan and 15 religious), 78 nuns and 15 seminarians.

SOUTH KOREA - SEOUL

In South Korea, Pope Francis appointed Fr. Job Koo Yobi as Auxiliary Bishop of Seoul Archdiocese in the capital. With this appointment, the 66-year old parish priest of Po-I Dong has been assigned the titular see of Sfasferia. Fr. Koo will assist the Archbishop, Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung who is already being aided by three other auxiliary bishops.

Born on 25 January, 1951, Fr. Koo studied at the major seminary of the Suwon (1985-1989 and 1990-1993). Enrolled for mandatory military service, he served as sergeant in aviation (1989-1990). He was ordained a priest for Seoul Archdiocese on 24 February, 1981.

As a priest he held the following positions:

1981-1982: Assistant parish priest of I-Mun Dong

1982-1983: Assistant parish priest of Shin-Dang Dong;

1983-1986: Studied at the Association of Priests of Prado at Lyons, France

1986-1991: Parish priest of Guro Dong

1991-1993: Parish priest of Sang-ge Dong

1993-1998: National director of the Association for Young Catholic Workers; member of the Labour Pastoral Commission, in-charge of the Association of Priests of Prado in South Korea.

1998-2000: Studied for licentiate in spirituality a the Catholic Institute of Paris

2000-2002: Parish priest of Jong-ro

2002-2007: Spiritual director of the major seminary

2007-2013: In charge of the Association of Priests of Prado in South Korea; member of the International Council of Association of Priests of Prado, headquartered in South Korea.

Since 2013: Parish priest of Po-I Dong.

SOUTH KOREA - CHEJU

Elsewhere in South Korea the Pope appointed Father Pius Moon Chang-woo as Coadjutor Bishop of Cheju Diocese that is headed by 71-year old Bishop Peter Kang U-il. Unlike an auxiliary bishop, a coadjutor bishop has the right to succession in the case of the retirement, resignation or death of the current bishop.

Fr. Moon, the principal of the Shinsong Girls Middle School in Cheju, was born on 15 March, 1963 in Cheju. He studied philosophy and theology at the major seminary of Gwangju, and followed it up with a masters degree in theology (1994-1996).

After his priestly ordination for Cheju Diocese on 10 February, 1996, he held the following positions:

1996-1997: Assistant parish priest of Seomoon

1997-1998: Assistant parish priest of Chungang

1998-1999: Parish priest of Choongmoon

1999-2006: Director of the diocesan Office for Youth and Education and of the Diocesan Students Association, director of the Office for Catechesis and Migrants.

2006-2016: Professor and spiritual father at the Catholic University of Gwangju

2010-2015: Doctoral studies

Since 2016: Principal of the Shinsong Girls Middle School

Erected in 1977, Cheju Diocese is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Gwangju. Out of a population of 641,355 spread across an area of 1,849 sqkm, Catholics number 75,579. They are served by 47 diocesan priests, 7 religious priests, 108 nuns and 13 major seminarians.

MARSHALL ISLANDS

Meanwhile, in the Marshall Island in the Pacific Ocean, the Pope appointed Fr. Ariel Galido as Prefect Apostolic. The priest of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) takes over from 71-year old Fr.. Raymundo Sabio MSC, who has stepped down.

Fr. Galido was born on 3 June, 1975, at Bacuag, Surigao del Norte, in the Philippines. He was ordained a priest on 9 June, 2004, and the following year was sent to the Marshall Islands, where he served in various islands of the islands.

Created in 1993, the Prefecture Apostolic of the Marshall Islands was entrusted to the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. Made up of 5 islands and 29 atolls, Marshall Islands has an area of 181.3 sqkm with a population of 58,800. Of these, 4.925 are Catholics, who are ministered to by 6 priests (1 diocesan, 5 religious), a deacon, a religious brother and 8 sisters.

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Pope makes appointments in Indonesia, South Korea and Marshal Islands - Vatican Radio

The bizarre price war cutting the cost of flights to Britain’s most remote islands – Telegraph.co.uk

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A price war has broken out between airlines covering some of Scotland's most remote islands, slashing the cost of flights between the mainland and the Hebrides.

One-way fares between Glasgow and Stornoway on Lewis typically top 300 in high season, making the 60-minute journey one of the most expensive routes per mile in the world - but are now on sale for just 50 with Flybe and Eastern Airways, which have agreed an alliance and codeshare arrangement.

Similarly lower fares have been announced for the new alliance's routes to Sumburgh on Shetland and to Kirkwall on Orkney.

Ian Fordham, chairman of Outer Hebrides Tourism, welcomed the news, saying he hoped the affordable fares would lead to an increase in the number of visitors. We hope the affordable fares will encourage more people to take a break in the islands, especially out of the main season and experience our unique landscape and culture, he said.

Around 218,000 people visit the Outer Hebrides a year, the vast majority - 80 per cent - by ferry. High airfares have meant that flights tend to be dominated by businesses on expense accounts. The popularity of the Outer Hebrides has been growing dramatically over the past few years, and ferry capacity has been unable to cope at peak times," said Fordham.

The alliance between Flybe and Eastern Airways begins in September and follows a falling out between Flybe and Loganair, whose current franchise arrangement will stop at the end of August. Eastern Airways already flies the Aberdeen-Stornoway route.

Loganair flies routes on behalf of Flybe from Scottish mainland airports, such as the Glasgow-Barra route which involves the famous beach landing on Trigh Mhr, along with services to Benbecula, Stornoway, Sumburgh and Kirkwall. The airlines' managing director Jonathan Hinkles said the company was extremely disappointed and surprised at Flybe's decision to split with it.

Loganair says it will continue its routes and is adding additional Glasgow-Barra flights in peak season - in effect it is going head to head with its former partner - and larger aircraft on some Glasgow-Benbecula flights. The airline is also seeking a codeshare with Flybe, whose CEO Christine Ourmieres-Widener said the new agreement is a chance to offer more choices and competitive pricing in the region.

Under current arrangements passengers flying into Scotland on Flybe and onto the islands do not need to collect their bags and check in again for the connecting flights. Loganair says that baggage charges imposed by Flybe/Eastern Airways will erode any savings from cheaper tickets.

The Barra route has been the subject of local criticism for regular delays due to routine maintenance while Flybe has also faced criticism over customer care.

A spokesman for Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the Outer Hebrides' council, said it was seeking talks with all the airlines to develop a clearer picture of what the announcement may mean for the longer-term sustainability of air services to the Western Isles.

Cameron Taylor, executive director of the Orkney Tourism Group, also welcomed more flights and lower fares but cautioned: It is important for the air service to be sustainable and stable, and we would not wish commercial rivalries to create instability or uncertainty.

In Shetland, local tour operators hope the news might spark a tourism revival. Visitor numbers have declined in recent years, almost entirely because demand from the oil industry for staff accommodation has made it difficult for visitors to find a bed for the night.

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The bizarre price war cutting the cost of flights to Britain's most remote islands - Telegraph.co.uk

Girl has rare genetic disorder that makes her hair impossible to … – New York Post

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A one-year-old girl has permanent bedhead thanks to a genetic condition that makes her frizzy white locks impossible to brush.

Phoebe Braswell, from Smithfield, North Carolina, is one of an estimated 100 children worldwide with a documented case of Uncombable Hair Syndrome.

The condition thought to have been the cause of Albert Einsteins wild locks impairs the protein that gives hair its shape and strength. The hair follicles are also kidney-shaped instead of round.

As a result, Phoebes hair is fine, coarse, bright white, tangled and constantly static.

Luckily for Phoebes mom Jamie Braswell, 27, Phoebes favorite movie is Trolls and her favorite character has hair just like hers.

You never think that your child is going to have a rare disorder, but I absolutely love Phoebes hair. Its just Phoebe, Jamie told SWNS.

She loves the Trolls and Poppy is her favorite, with the pink hair. When Phoebe turns two in three months shes going to have a Trolls-themed party, the mom of two said, adding shes nicknamed her youngest daughter Poppy.

Unfortunately to others who dont understand the disorder, Phoebes hair simply looks messy.

We were in the grocery store once and a lady said, She is going to hate you when she looks at her baby photos because you let her go out in public like that, Jamie recalled.

But no matter how many times Jaime brushes Phoebes hair, it stays frizzy. Hair product doesnt help either.

Every morning it is sticking straight up and throughout the day I try and spray stuff in it to keep it down, but within 30 minutes its spiky again, said Jamie.

Thats why Phoebe always has a headband or hair tie in to keep the fly-aways out of her face.

If she didnt have that, people would think I was neglecting her, lamented Jamie.

Jamie first noticed something was different about Phoebe when strands of straw-like hair started to sprout from her scalp when she was 3 months old.

She took Phoebe to a doctor who said hed never seen any child with hair like hers before. After spotting an article on Facebook about Uncombable Hair Syndrome, Jamie phoned the doctor and got a diagnosis.

The syndrome is caused by a mutation to one of three genes PADI3, TGM3 and TCHH Phoebe will have genetic testing in August to confirm she has the disorder.

In total there are 100 cases reported to date in the world but there may be many more which have not been reported, Professor Regina Betz from the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Bonn, Germany, said.

There is no cure for the condition, though it is reported to improve with age. Jamie thinks her daughters hair is unique, but she fears Phoebe might be bullied when she grows old enough to go to school.

I do worry about her going to school because kids can be so cruel and Phoebe is the most tender-hearted little girl I have ever known, Jamie said.

Its hard for me to anticipate that people might make nasty comments, but I am going to teach her that we are all different in every way and it doesnt matter, she added.

SWNS

Waiting for your baggage can often be a boring task,...

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Girl has rare genetic disorder that makes her hair impossible to ... - New York Post