Category Archives: Libertarian

Flown by many protesters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the Gadsden flag has a design that is simple and graphic: a coiled rattlesnake on a yellow field with the text Dont Tread On Me. But that simple design hides some important complexities, both historically and today, as it appears in rallies demanding President Donald Trump be allowed to remain in office.

The flag originated well before the American Revolution, and in recent years it has been used by the tea party movement and, at times, members of the militia movement. But it has also been used to represent the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. mens national soccer team and a Major League Soccer franchise.

As a scholar of graphic design, I find flags interesting as symbols as they take on deeper meanings for those who display them. Often, people use a flag not because of what is explicitly displayed, but because of what the person believes it represents though that meaning can change through time, and with ones perspective, as has happened with the Gadsden flag.

The flags origin isnt entirely clear. It seems to begin with a simple illustration accompanying an essay by Benjamin Franklin in 1754, 20 years before American independence. The image, possibly drawn by Franklin himself, portrays the American Colonies as parts of a divided snake, simply stating Join, or Die. The essay it accompanied addressed the major current issue for British colonists in North America: the threat of the French and their Native American allies.

Later, as the American Revolution took shape, the image took on a new meaning. Colonists hoisted various flags, including ones depicting rattlesnakes, a distinctly American creature believed to strike only in self-defense. The flag commonly known as the First Navy Jack had 13 red and white stripes, and possibly a timber rattlesnake with 13 rattles, above the words Dont Tread On Me.

In 1775, as the American Revolution began, South Carolina politician Christopher Gadsden expanded on Franklins idea, and possibly the red-and-white flag as well, when he created the yellow flag with a coiled rattler and the same phrase: Dont Tread On Me.

For most of U.S. history, this flag was all but forgotten, though it had some cachet in libertarian circles.

The First Navy Jack version resurfaced in 1976 on U.S. Navy ships to celebrate the nations bicentennial, and again after 9/11, though today that flag is reserved for the longest active-status warship. Its use remained largely apolitical.

In 2006 the slogan and the coiled snake saw some commercial use by Nike and the Philadelphia Union, a Major League Soccer team.

Around the same time, though, the flag took on a new political meaning: The tea party, a hard-line Republican anti-tax movement, began using it. The implication was that the U.S. government had become the oppressor threatening the liberties of its own citizens.

Perhaps as a result of the tea party movement, several state governments around the country offer a Gadsden flag license plate design. At least some of those plates charge additional fees for the special plate, sending proceeds to nonprofit organizations.

The Gadsden flag has appeared at other political protests, too, such as those opposing restrictions on gun ownership and objecting to rules imposed in 2020 to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Most recently the flag has been flown and displayed at some post-election protests, including events where demonstrators called for officials to stop counting votes and both inside and outside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., during the counting of the electoral votes on Wednesday.

Because it is commonly flown alongside Trump 2020 flags and the Confederate battle flag, some may now see the Gadsden flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate or even racism. If so, its original meaning is then forever lost, but one theme remains.

At its core, the flag is a simple warning but to whom, and from whom, has clearly changed. Gone is the original intent to unite the states to fight an outside oppressor. Instead, for those who fly it today, the government is the oppressor.

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Yellow Gadsden flag, prominent in Capitol takeover, carries a long and shifting history - The Conversation US

Syracuse, N.Y. About 17,000 Onondaga County voters have a decision to make by Feb. 14, according to letters that went out in recent days:

They can keep their current enrollment status in the Green, Independence, Libertarian or Serve America Movement party. That means they can still vote in 2021, but only in the general election, not in primaries, elections officials say.

Or, these minor party members can chose to enroll in one of the four remaining parties on New Yorks ballot: Democratic, Republican, Conservative or Working Families.

Lastly, the voters can also choose to become a non-enrolled voter another category that means theyre not enrolled in any party and limits voting to general elections.

The options come after four of the six minor political parties in New York failed to get enough votes in 2020 to automatically qualify for a ballot spot this year.

In past years, the minor parties had to get 50,000 votes during a gubernatorial race to remain on the ballot.

But a change last year made securing that spot harder for the smaller political parties.

Now, minor parties must get 2% of the vote in a presidential or gubernatorial year. That threshold set last November was about 173,000 votes, according to the states certified election results.

These four parties fell well short of that in the Nov. 3 election in New York.

Statewide, just 60,234 Libertarians voted for Jo Jorgensen. Another 22,587 Independence members voted for Brock Pierce. The SAM party didnt run a presidential candidate.

And Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins, of Syracuse, got 32,753 votes in New York.

The ballot change doesnt mean the parties are going away.

Also, no voter registered in these parties will lose their ability to vote, Elections Commissioners Dustin Czarny and Michele Sardo said.

If they choose not to make a change, they will still be registered and the county will continue to track their current party status, Sardo said.

That could be important if the parties re-qualify for ballot status in 2022, the next gubernatorial race.

But going forward, these voters wont be allowed to vote in primaries in the other four parties, Sardo and Czarny said.

To be eligible to vote in 2021 primaries, the deadline to change your registration is Feb. 14.

Got a story idea or news tip youd like to share? Please contact me through email, Twitter, Facebook or at 315-470-2274.

The rest is here:

17,000 Onondaga County voters have a decision to make: Should I enroll in another party? - syracuse.com

Will you be Hamilton or Burr? Major changes to election rules and attempting to launch all-mail balloting just months before the 2020 election was always a setup for a nasty, partisan duel.

And now its moved beyond lawsuits and debate. As I type these words, C-SPAN is showing scenes of protesters breaking into the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Wednesday morning (January 6th), the House of Representatives was debating alleged violations of Arizona elections rules. Objections were raised to an extension of the voting registration deadline saying that under the U. S. Constitution, election rules are to be set by the legislature, and the rules were changed without legislative action. It was looking to be a pretty boring day of legal minutiae and grandstanding.

For two months, friends have been sending links with claims of fraud, honestly concerned over election integrity. Dear friends on the other side have resorted to name-calling toward anyone who even dares ask questions. One called me this morning to vent four years of anger. He said hed already had a lot of practice with his family. Brother against brother. The divisions make my heart hurt.

Ignoring questions doesnt make them go away. As Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said in her statement earlier this week, millions of Americans have questions that have not yet been answered. Letting debate drone on for days might have helped defuse the anger. The optimist in me was hoping so.

Vice President Mike Pence has been solid, following the U.S Constitution and sticking courageously to his appropriate role. He would have kept the debate civil, boring and in accordance with the rules. But President Trump has always been the wild card.

As a conservative with libertarian leanings, I have struggled with the last four years. President Trumps administration has carried out a strong conservative agenda. He has appointed judges committed to the philosophy of judicial originalism. Streamlining regulatory red tape has been a reality. The economy was picking up speed until hit by the pandemic, although no president deserves as much credit as they are given for either the rise or fall of the economy.

Internationally, ISIS has been defeated and weve seen breakthroughs toward normalization of relationships in the Middle East. The U.S. Embassy was finally moved to Jerusalem as Congress directed in 1995, after being ignored by three presidents. We have not become embroiled in any new undeclared wars and were winding down those underway for over two decades.

But then theres the man himself. President Trump is a self-centered party of one who cant resist saying whatever pops into his head. If I had a dollar for every time Ive heard a Republican say if only hed stop tweeting, Id be paying off my mortgage tomorrow.

He has consistently been his own worst political enemy and a threat to the Republican Party. His ranting rhetoric over the last two months has been a tremendous disappointment. Legal maneuvering is the American way but a blustering phone call to a state election official is not. Exhorting a protest crowd to never accept the results of an election is blatantly irresponsible.

And then the fire pager interrupted with an EMS call. National events became irrelevant just as President-elect Biden was saying something civilized while challenging President Trump to fix what hes broken. A half-hour later while kneeling in my neighbors living room, I caught a glimpse of a caption on the TV reading Trump: Leave Peacefully.

Donald J. Trump captured the Republican nomination in 2016 by working the party rules better than any other primary candidate. He needs to follow the constitutional rules now and leave peacefully.

On Tuesday, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers optimistically supported having the discussion and airing the questions, but yesterday she had the courage to change her mind. Her full statement following the break-in at the Capitol soundly condemned the violence, saying in part, What we have seen today is unlawful and unacceptable. I have decided I will vote to uphold the Electoral College results and I encourage Donald Trump to condemn and put an end to this madness.

Take her advice. To Trump supporters, accept the Electoral College results. And to everyone, end the madness of brother against brother. Choose to be Alexander Hamilton, with the courage to pull your shot, confident in your ability to debate another day. Or will you be Aaron Burr, who sings with regret at the end of Hamilton, the Broadway musical:

I was too young and blind to see I shouldve known the world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com

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Sue Lani Madsen: End this madness of brother against brother - The Spokesman-Review

Across the globe, 2020 has proved to be one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory. From COVID-19 to the US Election, gain insight into some of the many events of 2020 with our curated reading list from theWhat Everyone Needs to Knowseries:

Presidential elections are the crown jewel of American electoral democracy, but there are some very important issues looming. Is the electoral college the most reliable way to measure a presidential election, or should we be looking at other systems? The primary and pre-primary phases are long, expensive, and arduous. There are several ways our system could be made better. Will we ever create a better system?

Read chapter five, Presidential Elections, from Dennis W. JohnsonsCampaigns and Elections: What Everyone Needs to Know here.

Commentators use few words to describe the American political scene as frequently as they use the word polarized. But unfortunately, the terms polarized and polarization have taken on such a wide variety of meanings among journalists, politicians, and scholars that they often confuse, rather than clarify, the problems that our political system faces.

Read chapter two, What is Political Polarization?, from Nolan McCartysPolarization: What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

How is the word immigration defined? TheOxford English Dictionarystates that [immigration] is the action of entering into a country for the purpose of settling in it. The definition conveys a sense of individual freedom. What are the meanings of exile and refugee? Are all Latinos Immigrants? What is the overall position of Latinos on Immigration?

Read chapter four, Yearning to Breathe Free, from Ilan StavanssLatinos in the United States: What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

Somewhere between one-tenth and one-third of Americans are libertarians. Many libertarians do not self-identify as libertarian. They call themselves liberals, moderates, or conservatives. Many of them vote Democrat or Republican. Thus, to know what percentage of Americans are libertarian, we cant just ask people if they are libertarians.

Read chapter nine, Politics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, from Jason BrennansLibertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

The worlds wealthy democracies all have relatively honest governments. However, that wasnt true a hundred or two hundred years ago, when they looked like governments in todays poor countries. How did they do it? How do countries escape a high-corruption equilibrium?

Read chapter eight, How do Countries Shift from High to Low Corruption?, from Ray Fisman and Miriam A. GoldensCorruption: What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

When we move toward an analysis of inequalities in the wider world, we are required to cope with far more complex and uncertain data, and at the same time to seek simpler and more abstract theories. But to come up with a theory that has common application across many countries, we need measurements of inequality across countries and through time that are reasonably comprehensive and reasonably reliableand this is a major challenge.

Read chapter seven, Causes of Changing Inequality in the World, from James K. GalbraithsInequality: What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

Politics in authoritarian regimes typically centers on the interactions of three actors:the leader, elites, and the masses. What are the major goals of these actors? What is the difference between an authoritarian leader and an authoritarian regime? What is the difference between an authoritarian regime and an authoritarian spell?

Read chapter two, Understanding Authoritarian Politics, from Erica FrantzsAuthoritarianism:What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

Environmental protection is a relatively new idea. Today, environmental protection, however one defines it, has taken root around the world. Why does the environment need protection? How did protecting the environment become a societal concern?

Read chapter one, Environmental Protection, from Pamela HillsEnvironmental Protection:What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

What climate change policies are governments around the world using to fight climate change? What is a carbon tax? What are cap-and-trade and carbon trading? This chapter will explain the most commonly used or discussed climate policies around the world. It will also explore some of the issues involving climate politics.

Read chapter five, Climate Politics and Policies, from Joseph RommsClimate Change:What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

The marine environment covers not only the ocean, but estuaries (e.g., bays), which are coastal areas where the seawater is diluted with freshwater coming from rivers and streams, or sometimes groundwater. Much of the pollution is concentrated in these shallow coastal areas, which are often next to urban centers and other concentrations of humans who are responsible for the pollution.

Read chapter one, Introduction to marine environment and pollution, from Judith S. WeissMarine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

A vaccine is a substance that is given to a person or animal to protect it from a particular pathogena bacterium, virus, or other microorganism that can cause disease. The goal of giving a vaccine is to prompt the body to create antibodies specific to the particular pathogen, which in turn will prevent infection or disease; it mimics infection on a small scale that does not induce actual illness.

Read chapter one, What is a Vaccine and How Do Vaccines Work?, from Kristen A. FeemstersVaccines: What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

A novel infectionnew and previously unconfrontedthat spreads globally and results in a high incidence of morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death) has, for the past 300 years or more, been described as a pandemic. Who declares a pandemic? Should the pandemic classification system be refined?

Read chapter two, Pandemics, Epidemics, and Outbreaks, from Peter C. DohertysPandemics:What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

Fear and anxiety are normal in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. We do not want to pathologize this normal fear and anxiety. We hope that people can use their good coping skills to deal with this unprecedented situation. We know we are in the thick of it, but we do not know exactly where we are in it.

Read the final chapter, Afterword in the Face of the COVID-19 Pandemic, from Barbara O. Rothbaum and Sheila A. M. RauchsPTSD: What Everyone Needs to Knowhere.

As we reach the close of 2020, we look ahead to a hopeful 2021. With the forthcoming events of 2021, stay up-to-date on the most important topics leading the discussion today in politics, health, global affairs, and more with theWhat Everyone Needs to Knowseries.

Featured image by Kelly Sikkema

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What everyone needs to know about 2020 | OUPblog - OUPblog

When Boris Johnson addressed his party this week on a Zoom call, it had all the makings of a horror show. The prime minister had, the day before, announced a third national lockdown for England an action he had once likened to a nuclear deterrent and one that his lockdown-sceptic backbenchers had previously said would lead to a huge three-figure rebellion.

Over the past six months, Johnsons relationship with his party has come under severe strain over the Covid restrictions, which are opposed by the Conservatives libertarian wing. At the last lockdown, in November, he was accused by MPs of pushing the UK closer to an authoritarian coercive state as well as failing to live up to his supposed Churchillian values.

Yet on this weeks 45-minute call something unusual happened. Not a single Tory MP used the Q&A session to quibble with the proposed seven-week lockdown, which will be nearly as strict as the one imposed last March. Instead, the questions were focused on whether it could run longer without parliamentary consultation, the vaccine rollout, and mitigating the consequences of shutting schools.

It was a different world compared to how these sessions went a few months back, says one attendee on the call.

The conventional wisdom in November was that rebellions on the issue already big enough to demolish the prime ministers majority of 80 would only grow in size. But ahead of last nights vote, aides in No 10 were the most relaxed over the numbers they have been for some time.

A combination of factors, from the vaccine to new insight on the spread of the virus, has led to a step-change in how Tory MPs view lockdown measures. While theres still no love for the restrictions, there is a sense that this time around they could be necessary.

Dont expect many speeches on freedom in the coming weeks, one Conservative MP tells me. In a pandemic when a million people are infected, there are fewer diehard libertarians.

The vaccine had not initially been enough to convince party backbenchers that hard suppression was the right approach. The new variant has changed that.

The data that is coming in is hard to argue with, says a minister. While in the past, meetings of cabinet ministers featured debates between the lockdown hawks and doves over the severity of restrictions, this has now changed. In the Covid-O meeting on Monday and the subsequent conference call with MPs, there was unity.

The figures comparing now to where we were in March were seen as particularly alarming. Those who have pushed for strict measures from the beginning are keen to point out that the chancellor, Rishi Sunak formerly seen as the chief anti-lockdown hawk has been comparatively quiet of late.

This change is reflected, too, in the parliamentary party. While there are still MPs opposed to the new lockdown they are, according to one colleague, the hardliners. And even they admit they dont have the numbers to bring about any change in policy.

Those MPs who support restrictions have often been the quieter section of the Tory party. But they have grown louder in recent weeks. Neil OBrien has become a vocal critic of those dismissive of Covid, taking his party colleagues to task on social media. While thats gone down badly with some Tories, few are in the mood for a Twitter spat.

The pragmatists can see that the situation has changed and that means our position has to as well, says an MP who voted against the second lockdown. Others put it more bluntly. Were not headbangers, one explains. The data in the past has been dubious but this time things do appear different and theres also a vaccine route out of indefinite lockdowns.

Its for these reasons that the anti-lockdown MPs are in large part turning their attention to the next battle rather than fighting the old one. Their new priority is to make sure their voice is heard in the upcoming debate on when restrictions should end.

Mark Harper the chair of the Covid Recovery Group has issued a call for the government to start relaxing restrictions next month. The questions over Zoom to Johnson from this group focused on what the UK could learn from Israels fast rollout, and when two vaccinated people can meet.

Lockdown-sceptic Tories view the prime ministers commitment to publish daily vaccine numbers as a way to keep his feet close to the fire on his mid-February vaccination pledge for the most vulnerable groups. Their hope is that granular data on those receiving it will allow informed interventions that No 10 will find hard to ignore.

However, in government the most imminent concern is to protect hospitals over what one minister describes as scary numbers of patients in the coming weeks. Theres a sense that there can be no early freedom until that pressure has passed and there is no sense yet of when it will. This is where the friction will come.

The lockdown sceptics are also keen for a roadmap to ditch all restrictions in the coming months rather than a gradual relaxation with no clear endpoint. However, in yesterdays Commons debate on the lockdown, Johnson said there would be no big bang moment he is reluctant to set any firm date for the freedom his party craves. No 10 is also braced for warnings from scientists over the risks to the non-vulnerable from lifting restrictions.

Its this argument that the lockdown sceptics are looking ahead to. Fight the third lockdown? No. For them the real debate is how many need to be vaccinated before all restrictions go.

The rest is here:

Boris Johnson's lockdown rebels have gone quiet. But it won't be for long - The Guardian

Times Herald-Record

The Republican Party has no values and nothing to offer New York State. They have no ideas and no solutions.They trot out a sacrificial lamb every four years to run against "King" Cuomo and complain about how bad things are, then disappear until the next election.

Worse yet, they voted with Democrats to give Cuomo unlimited emergency powers to address the pandemic, which translated into a months-long lockdown that decimated small businesses and destroyed thousands of livelihoods. If thats how they legislate, then they deserve to be relegated to third-party status with zero influence on state politics, which is exactly what will happen come January when a Democratic supermajority takes control of the State Senate.

Theyll be able pass legislation with impunity and continue to implement disastrous policies that have created an exodus from this state.The Libertarian Party offers a viable alternative. Learn more at lpny.org.The Republicans cant save you.Change your party, change your vote.

Pietro S. Geraci

Chair, Orange County New York Libertarian Party

Newburgh

The rest is here:

Letter: Libertarian Party has the answers - Times Herald-Record

In brief

Former presidential candidate and libertarian Ron Paul thinks that the best way to deal with Bitcoin is to legalize it.

The ex-Libertarian Party congressman for Texas today said on the Stephan Livera podcast that he is interested in the cryptocurrency because it is not a creature of the governmentbut he added that the government was watching the asset very closely.

Bitcoins legal status in the US depends on different state laws, rules and regulations surrounding the cryptocurrency, which are constantly changing.

Ron Paul wants to make Bitcoin legal. I thought the important thing is that we should do whatever we can to make it legal, he said. I wanted to make it legal from the start.

Let people make their decision, he added.

In the US, a number of statessuch as New Yorkhave strict regulations surrounding cryptocurrencies. But most still havent legislated on cryptocurrency.

Ron Paul argued on the show to not even tax the assetbut thats unsurprising considering that the libertarian is against taxes in general.

I dont even believe in the IRS, he boasted, adding that it was illegal to own gold up until 1975something he doesnt want to happen to Bitcoin.

So that's why, you know, I got into politics, and that's why I've remained the skeptic, he said.

The perfect system is freedom of choice, then you and I can decide exactly what we should use as our monetary system.

It doesnt look like Bitcoin will be banned in the US anytime soon, but one thing is for sure: regulation is coming.

Link:

Libertarian Ron Paul: Legalize Bitcoin and Abolish the IRS - Decrypt

It was 65 years ago that National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr, in a mission statement defining his new conservative magazine, argued that conservatism "stands athwart history, yelling 'Stop,' at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."

Buckley's call to arms has always struck me as both untenable and strange. You can't stop history, after all, and merely saying "no" isn't a functional political position. But Buckley's National Review certainly set the tone for the Republican Party over the next handful of decades. The rise of Ronald Reagan codified within the party what was once a fringe philosophy: Except in the case of national security, any amount of government is too much government.

Reagan established trickle-down economics with its anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-worker ethos as the sole guiding economic principle of the Republican Party. And the next forty years of Republican leadership turned trickle-down into a religion. Grover Norquist encouraged a generation of Republicans to sign a pledge vowing to reject every single tax increase that comes across their desks, with no exceptions.

Read more: How the 2020 election revealed 2 Americas, divided by wealth and opportunity

Through their obstinance, Republicans essentially trained a generation of Democrats to become what we now call neoliberals. As Democrats tried to negotiate in good faith with inflexible Republicans, their policies and proposals moved further and further rightward.

Donald Trump, with his nationalistic, trickle-down-on-steroids economic agenda, could represent the culmination of that rightward economic tilt. When one entire political party believes that anything to do with government is by definition bad, is governance even possible? Can Republicans find a new economic ideology that doesn't result in a blanket rejection of everything that makes a society function?

In the latest episode of Pitchfork Economics, Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein interview Oren Cass, the domestic policy director for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign and the executive director of a new think tank called American Compass. In his work with American Compass and in his book "The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America", Cass is attempting to find a new way forward for American conservatism.

"I think the important starting place is to recognize that what we casually call 'conservative' in America today is, for the most part, not conservative at all it's libertarian," Cass explained. "And what I mean by that is it places almost absolute priority on free markets to the exclusion of a lot of other things that are really important to human flourishing and a prosperous nation."

"The free market is a wonderful thing," Cass said, "but we don't serve it it serves us." Prioritizing unregulated commerce above virtually every other aspect of American life has left the two national political parties without any common ground.

"Having a successful system of market capitalism isn't simply a matter of getting everything else out of the way," Cass said. Conservative economics must make room for "healthy institutions" that are necessary for America to continue, like "strong families and communities" and "education and infrastructure." Those institutions have largely been abandoned by the libertarian right.

Conservatives must find some way to reincorporate the fact that rules are necessary to keep the market running efficiently and "to channel competition in productive directions," Cass argued. To do that, a conservative political party with national appeal must support an economic platform that is "heavily dependent" on "a system of labor that ensures that workers are well-represented and can look out for their interests."

Read more: 'I love depreciation': How big companies use Trump-like maneuvers to play the tax code in their favor

"We've converted our high schools, basically, into college prep academies. So we almost make sure you don't learn too much useful in high school besides how to pass tests to get into college," Cass said. This leaves the huge number of Americans who don't go to college unprepared for the workforce.

By instituting educational programs that would prepare high school students to enter the workforce on graduation, and by subsidizing employer-led training for recently graduated students, Cass believes you could create "more good jobs for people without college degrees." Private enterprise would still lead the way, but it would be guided by government policy.

A progressive might argue that giving businesses tax breaks to train their ideal workforce is hardly an ideal economic scenario for Americans who choose not to go to college. But at least that argument would be happening outside the intractable libertarian frame that American politics has been locked in for most of my lifetime.

The point isn't to achieve total agreement between the conservative and liberal side of the spectrum, Cass argues it's to get back to a place where conversation and compromise is possible. After the bitter partisan civil war of the 2020 elections, a reasonable economic discussion between two opposing parties about the future of the nation sounds downright heavenly.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author(s).

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Why conservatives in the US today are really libertarians - Business Insider - Business Insider

It's Webathon Sunday, which means it's time to check in on how Reason staffers have been doing these past 12 months representing libertarian viewpoints in non-Reason media/politics spaces. But first a quick exhortation to all you wonderful readers and listeners and viewers:

PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THIS LINK TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO REASON RIGHT THE HELL NOW!

Thank you.

You know who's killing it this year? Reason's Corey A. DeAngelis, that's who. Not just with his conversation-shaping research about how public school closures correlate much more strongly with union power than COVID-19 spread, not just with his December magazine feature on how the virus is accelerating the demise of the public school monopoly model, but with his tireless advocacy for educational freedom wherever people are talking about school policy and the novel coronavirus. Which, this year, is everywhere.

Here is the Reason Foundation's director of school choice just this week on The Adam Carolla Show, whose eponymous host observed, "This guy Corey knows more than anybody."

Corey over the past year caught Sen. Elizabeth Warren (DMass.) lying about her son's private school education, kept tabs on the latest COVID-19/school developments on his popular Twitter feed, and oh yeah, just made one of those Forbes "30 Under 30" lists. From that write-up:

DeAngelis is one of the nation's leading authorities on school choice and homeschooling. He has authored or co-authored 32 peer-reviewed studies and more than 100 op-eds in outlets like The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. He's done hundreds of speaking engagements and appears regularly on Fox News.

In this big no bueno of a year, where TV greenrooms are closed, presidential politics are suffocating, and the dread virus continues to cloud the judgment of so very many people (especially elected officials), it has been a challenge to fulfill longtime Reason hero Bob Poole's long-ago vision to "engage in the battle of ideas with the whole spectrum of thinking people."

Reason of course loves, nurtures, and constantly expands its own platforms, but as 1980s editor Marty Zupan told Brian Doherty in his must-read oral history of the magazine, "It was obviousthat if Reasonwanted to grow, it needed to do more than have libertarians talking to one another." A key part of our mission to "influence the frameworks and actions of policymakers, journalists, and opinion leaders," is to insert ourselves wherever people are talking about politics, policy, and culture.

In bookstores, browsers come face to face with Reason arguments, most recently in Damon Root's A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution, and Ronald Bailey's Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting (with Marian L. Tupy). When Bari Weiss exited The New York Times, Robby Soave went on cable television's most-watched program to broaden the discussion into how "people with totally mundane views are being canceled before our eyes" by a loud minority of mainstream journalists who are increasingly creating "toxic environment[s] for everyone who disagrees with them." And when yet another Trump voter seeks to blame libertarians for President-elect Joe Biden's coming reign of terror, Nick Gillespie is ready to appear on Fox airwaves to argue that "Virtually any time you look at something that is good that's happening in America, when you get there, libertarians will be opening the door for you, saying 'Come on in.'"

That last clip, of course, comes from Reason's great friend (and former correspondent!) Kennedy, whose eponymous Fox Business Network program is the single most welcoming televisual home for us waving the banner of "Free Minds and Free Markets." I had the great honor of working alongside the former MTV veejay in developing and executing the precursor show to Kennedy, called The Independents (along with some bum named Kmele Foster), and I will forever be in her debt for completing the job (as much as such things can be completed) that our own John Stossel started: teaching a poorly dressed, California-talking, write-first slouch like me to do a reasonable facsimile of television.

Oh yeah, Kennedy's also a Webathon donor!

DON'T YOU WANT TO BE AS COOL AS KENNEDY??

The fun part about doing broadcast is that you never know whether a stray word or sentence will ruin your career, land with a deafening thud, or improbably strike a chord with people. I experienced the latter recently after delivering an uncharacteristically profane rant on the great Compound Media program, Mornin'!!! w/ Bill Schulz and Joanne Nosuchinsky, as Reason contributor Nancy Rommelmann looks around for the exits:

Sorry/not sorry! Long story short, going out into the non-Reason world and making principled libertarian arguments is a key part of our mission, as is encouraging the proliferation of Reason-friendly programming. Your donations make that all possible.

WON'T YOU PLEASE DONATE TO REASON RIGHT THE HELL NOW?

Excerpt from:

Be Cool Like Kennedy! Donate to Reason, and Help Us Spread #HotFreedom - Reason

Written by Julian Savulescu and Alberto Giubilini

The government has reportedly flirted with the introduction of vaccination passports that would afford greater freedoms to people who have been vaccinated for COVID-19. However, the UKs Minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, recently announced that vaccination passports are not currently under consideration in the UK. However, the issue may linger and businesses may introduce such requirements.

One of us (JS) defended immunity passports in the context of affording people with natural immunity greater freedom during lockdown, if immunity significantly reduces the risk of infecting others.

Vaccination passportsafter vaccines have been made availablecan be seen as a mild form of mandatory vaccination. Proof of vaccination could be a requirement to, for example, access certain places (e.g. restaurants, hospitals, public transport, etc, depending on how restrictive we want the mandate to be) or engaging in certain social activities (e.g. mixing with people from different households) or enable health care or other care workers to not self-isolate if in contact with a person with COVID (there were 35 000 NHS workers in isolation at the peak of the pandemic because of contact). It is worth noting that this kind of measure has already been in place globally for a long time in a more selective way, e.g. in the US where, in most states, children cannot be enrolled in schools unless they are up to date with certain vaccinations. These are also a form of vaccination passports, which simply do not use that term. Yellow Fever Vaccination Certificates are required to travel to certain parts of the world where Yellow Fever is endemic.

The ethical ground for restriction of liberty is a person represents a threat of harm to others. That is, the grounds for lockdown, quarantine, isolation or mandating vaccination is to reduce the risk one person poses to another. However, if a person is no longer a threat to others, the justification for coercion evaporates. If either natural immunity or a vaccine prevents virus transmission to others (and this remains to be determined), the grounds for restricting liberty disappear. This is one argument for an immunity or vaccination passport it proves you are not a threat to others.

Moreover, if we thought there were sufficient grounds for the drastic and long lasting restrictions of individual liberties entailed by lockdowns and isolation requirements, it is at least legitimate to ask whether there are also sufficient grounds for vaccination passports, given that the individual cost imposed getting vaccinated is likely to be much smaller than the cost entailed by those other measures (unless the risks of vaccines are significant).

However, the more effective a vaccine is, the greater the opportunity for individuals to protect themselves. A Libertarian could then argue that the risk of harming others is nullified. If you want to protect yourself, you can vaccinate yourself. If this is true, then a vaccine doesnt need to give us herd immunity. We can take individual responsibility.

Many objections can be raised against vaccination passports. For example, it is not clear to what extent vaccines will reduce transmission. However, this is something which can be addressed by science: we can work out whether natural or vaccine immunity prevents transmission by empirical work, such as employing challenge studies or other experimental designs. If it turns out that immunity is a short-lived phenomenon, then, assuming large enough availability and easy enough access to the vaccine, passports could simply be renewed with a new vaccination, in the same way as we periodically renew normal passports in order to be allowed to travel in certain countries.

Others would argue that this is the step towards an authoritarian regime which restricts liberty. However, liberty is already extraordinarily infringed by lockdown and it is hard to see how immunity passports could be worse in this respect. Indeed, it could also be argued that vaccination passports would actually increase peoples liberties: if the baseline is lockdown, having the option to leave increases options (of course, this assumes lockdowns are valid).

An analogy one of us (JS) has given in the media is with smoking in the workplace. This freedom can legitimately be restricted to ensure workplace safety and to prevent harm to others by passive smoking. Going to work unvaccinated, JS argued, is like smoking in the workplace.

But actually, there is a major disanalogy here. There is nothing you can reasonably do to protect yourself if you are non-smoker from passive smoking in the workplace. You have to breathe the air. But there is something that you can do to protect yourself from COVID-19: get vaccinated yourself.

Thus, the strongest argument against vaccination passports is that there is something people can choose to do to lower their own risk: get vaccinated. This is what makes the strongest case against vaccination passports stronger than the strongest case against immunity passports (which could be obtained after immunity is mounted through natural infection): the choice to reduce their personal risk by vaccination is more reasonable and safer than the choice to get voluntarily infected in order to acquire immunity.

So the argument that, for example, airlines like Qantas need to protect their staff and other passengers by requiring everyone to be vaccinated and to prove it through vaccination passports is flawed. Staff and passengers who are concerned about infection can choose to be vaccinated and protect themselves. It doesnt require others to be vaccinated, or so the libertarian would reply.

This stance of course assumes vaccines are highly effective. We are told that some of them might be more than 90% effective although these are only preliminary, not peer-reviewed data. Paradoxically, the less effective they are, the weaker the libertarian objection becomes because the less people can reliably protect themselves. When effectiveness is low, we need more people vaccinated to maximize the chances of achieving herd immunity

Importantly, there will be people who cant be vaccinated for medical reasons they require herd immunity. The libertarians response could be that they can protect themselves through social isolation. And given that this will be relatively rare, then the argument might be that it is a reasonable cost to pay rather, compared to infringing upon the liberty of a whole society by requiring vaccination passports to enjoy certain freedoms.

However, we need to consider not only how rare these cases are, but also the size of the costs involved. It seems reasonable to require the majority to pay a small cost (e.g. to be vaccinated, assuming the vaccine is very low risk) in order to prevent a very large cost (e.g. self-isolation) to a minority. After all, many policies are structured in this way. For example, wehave parking spots allocated to people with disabilities and which are typically less likely to be occupied, and placed in more convenient locations. The majority of people pay a small cost having to park further away or spending more time looking for a spot to park in order to prevent a large cost to people with disabilities who might have significant difficulties if they had to park further away.

The best response to the libertarian argument may be that it is important to protect those in whom vaccination is not effective, those whose immunity wanes and those who cant get vaccinated for medical reasons. If we really value liberty, the liberty of these persons to enjoy as normal a life as possible without unnecessary risks weighs in favour of introducing vaccination passports.

However, in the end, as with most practical ethics we must weigh competing reasons: liberty, well-being, for the worst off vs the wider population. Hopefully the vaccines will be effective, safe and in sufficient supply and sufficiently attractive to enough people to achieve herd immunity quickly then people can make their own decisions

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The Libertarian Argument Is the Best Argument Against Immunity Passports. But is it good enough? - Practical Ethics