Lawrence W. Reed is president of the Foundation for Economic Education, and has a long history of promoting liberty in the classroom and in think tanks. In this episode he tells us how he became a libertarian, how he has worked in and for the liberty movement over the decades, and discusses with us some of the problems in today's society.
Nullification is the idea that, in these United States, the individual states have the power the supercede and “make null” federal law that goes beyond the powers given to the federal government by the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are two of the Founding Fathers most associated with these principles, but nullification has been largely absent from national discussion from the Civil War up until the late 1990s and 2000s. Now, with the government spiraling out of control in its grasping for power, nullification is more relevant than ever.
In this episode, we're joined by Michael Maharrey, Communications Director of the Tenth Amendment Center, to learn more about nullification and its importance for the progress of liberty. He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of '98 - Kentucky. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. He has been a contributor to the LCI website and runs his own site on politics at michaelmaharrey.com, and another site specifically about Christianity and liberty at GodArchy.org.
In this "Extended Edition" of our podcast, we talk with Armond Boudreaux and Corey Latta, authors of the book Titans: How Superheroes Can Help us Make Sense of a Polarized World! about the real-world insights that superhero stories give us. More than mere entertainment, the genre of superhero comics and movies allow us to wrestle with the ethical and philosophical puzzles humanity has been wrestling with for millennia. They are a mythos for our era, and as such have important insights into the political and ethical problems our society faces today.
If libertarianism is neither of the left nor the right, then why do libertarians still get cornered as “conservative” or “right-wing” on a regular basis? Furthermore, for Christians especially the conflation of political conservatism with theological conservatism is confusing at best, grossly problematic at worst. Many Christian libertarians start off as conservatives, so understanding the key changes in thought on the pathway to liberty is useful in a variety of ways.
Norman and Nick discuss key points in the “libertarianism vs. conservatism” debate and explain why they believe libertarianism provides better answers to conservatism's big questions about ethics, political order, and economics.