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Writing at Reason online, Brendan O’Neil criticizes what he sees as new London mayor Boris Johnson’s authoritarian tendencies. Johnson has banned drinking on London’s subways and buses and wants to take away juvenile offenders’ travel passes. “Like a Stalinist thug, he’ll deny internal freedom of movement within London to any youngster who fails to behave [...]
Filed under: World, libertarianism
My Reason review of Pure Goldwater, a collection of the late senator’s journals and miscellanea edited by his son, Barry Jr., and John Dean, is now up at their website. Unlike more famous Goldwater books like Conscience of a Conservative, this one is actually the senator’s own words (even though, weirdly enough, the publisher has [...]
Filed under: Conservatism, libertarianism
It took six rounds of balloting, but former Georgia Republican Rep. Bob Barr beat Mary Ruwart, the choice of the Libertarian Party’s radical caucus, for the LP’s presidential nomination today. Wayne Allyn Root, another ex-Republican, took the vice presidential slot after a tight race with medical marijuana activist Steve Kubby. Robert Stacy McCain and David [...]
Filed under: libertarianism
No, not that nomination, I’m talking about the Libertarian Party nomination, which will be decided in Denver this weekend. Bob Barr and Mike Gravel are both in contention for it. So are several LP veterans and libertarian activists less well known to the public but who still have a serious chance (Mary Ruwart, George Phillies, [...]
Filed under: Politics, libertarianism
The prolific Jeremy Lott has a fun little piece about the race for the Libertarian nomination and points to one of the curious facts about the LP, its purity testing:
This ideological rigidity has drawn a self-selected group of freedom’s bitter-enders who hate the Federal Reserve and fear the Post Office. They win a handful of [...]
Filed under: Election, libertarianism
No, not because he’s an “appeaser,” and not because he’s a crypto-Rev. Wright-style racist–the standard Republican charges against Obama are silly. We should be afraid because he is just like most Democrats and some Republicans in that he believes the government should run our health care. Even if you don’t get really upset about government [...]
Filed under: Conservatism, Culture, Economics, Election, Religion, libertarianism
Government regulation is often, at heart, state protection of the incumbent businesses. This was a central theme of my book, and is a recurring theme of my column. Radley Balko, at Reason’s Hit & Run blog today, points us to a particularly ridiculous example of this: A guy offers a lady a ride home; she [...]
Filed under: Economics, libertarianism
Bob Barr formally declared himself a candidate for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination yesterday. Today, Jim Antle looks at how Barr’s inconsistencies — as a congressman, he supported the Drug War, the PATRIOT Act, the Iraq War, and Bush’s prescription drugs plan, positions he disavows now — might play out among Libertarian partisans, a “group [...]
Filed under: Politics, libertarianism
Leon’s post below about mentioning government “health visitors” reminded me of a topic that’s been haunting me and some of my Catholic conservative friends in recent weeks.
In Texas, the government raids a “compound” of polygamist breakaway Mormons, on an accusation of abuse that proved to be fraudulent. The state of Texas (the same government that [...]
Filed under: Culture, Religion, libertarianism
Dan should be skeptical about the notion that libertarian-leaning Republicans are supposedly rebelling against the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy. The several Republican lawmakers (many of them were mainstream types) who made the somewhat critical remarks during the Petraeus’s hearings were just hedging their bets in case things go from bad to worse to really, really awful [...]
Filed under: Iraq, libertarianism