Tim Cook leads the tech industry’s participation in assisting China’s internet surveillance of its own citizens.
Subordinating the speech rights of those in commerce to a social movement overlooks the core principle of free speech.
“I always resisted cheap political fixes and utopian rhetoric. I adore John Lennon but ‘Imagine’ is a dreadful embarrassment—like Auden’s poem, ‘Spain.'”
From the Blog
Increases in divisions of labor have produced material prosperity that would have beggared the minds of the ancients.
Does the process of market creation fully price the cost of that creation?
Subordinating the speech rights of those in commerce to a social movement overlooks the core principle of free speech.
Progressives aim to create centers of constitutionally protected power naturally inhabited by left-liberals and thus resistant to the vagaries of electoral control.
Striking an agreement with your cell phone company could increase privacy protections for your records.
A new wrinkle on the protection of customer identification and cell phone records.
Liberty Law Forum
In his 1936 essay “The Crack-Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald proposed that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined…
Responses
Professor Goldman begins his Liberty Forum essay by urging a striking, but probably unworkable, reconception of the fundamental divide in conservative ranks. Rather than “the familiar distinctions between libertarianism and traditionalism, neoconservatism and paleoconservatism,” he proposes, it’s a conflict between “liberalism and reaction.” Reaction—meaning reactionary politics such as Trumpism—is, according to Goldman, not easily compatible with…
Samuel Goldman has written a bracing Liberty Forum essay suggesting that the Right side of the political spectrum is split, perhaps hopelessly and irrevocably, between classical liberalism and reaction. The roots of the divide are deep and enduring but what brings the problem into bold relief is our political moment and, above all, the rise…
Samuel Goldman has written a wide-ranging and thought-provoking Liberty Forum essay on the current sorry state of American conservatism. This sorry state is especially sorry for those of us who, like Dr. Goldman, believe that classical liberalism is the best part of American conservatism. It is an assessment, he says in conclusion, which he hopes…
Samuel Goldman has made a stimulating contribution to our political discussions. “What is the Future of Conservatism?” is thoughtful and thought-provoking. In light of the feud between Never Trump conservatives and Trump-supporting conservatives, it is well worth pondering if Goldman is right that we are witnessing a conservative “crack up.” This concern is not new. He…
I am grateful to David B. Frisk, John O. McGinnis, Matthew Mitchell, and Richard Samuelson for their generous and thoughtful replies to my Liberty Forum essay. Speaking broadly, we agree that the American Right is in a bad way. We also think it would be a mistake to abandon classical liberal commitments to constitutional government,…
