ReImagining Liberty

An important theme of this show is the role of rhetoric in politics. It's not just the arguments we make that matter, but when we choose to make them, and how we talk about political issues. And we can learn a lot about the people who disagree with us not just by parsing their arguments, but by paying attention to when and how they make them. This is critically important in a polit

We're staring down the barrel of a presidential election, one that highlights deep questions about democracy and political participation. If our goal is radically more freedom, how should we think about democracy's place in achieving that, given that the popular will often isn't for more freedom. And if the system, as it exists, is rather far from fully just, how should we approach

When Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Harris took over, we witnessed not just a change in candidate, but a change in rhetoric. Harris's campaign began talking in the language of "freedom" and "liberty." Harris's running mate, Tim Walz, contrasted himself with the meddlesome social conservatism of JD Vance by saying he was for "minding

This, as it says on the tin, is a show about liberalism. But teasing out what that term means can be challenging. Not just because it's philosophically complex, but because common usage of terms doesn't always conform to rigorous conceptual categories, and even when it does, language evolves. That's the jumping off point for today's conversation. My guest is Samant

A liberal society is necessarily an open and diverse one. When people are free to move and free to choose, a country's population and culture will reflect all those differences in tastes, preferences, and ways of living. And that's part of what makes liberalism so great.But a pluralistic society can be bothersome for those who'd prefer everyone be just like them. And if those sorts

I'm joined today by Janet Bufton, Program Coordinator & Co-Founder at the Institute for Liberal Studies. I'm a little embarassed it's taken me this long to get her on the show, because she's one of the most thoughtful advocates out there of the kind of genuine and broad liberalism--and liberal values--that are at the heart of ReImagining Liberty.We discuss the link between libe

On June 7th, David Boaz died. He was the Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute, author of *The Libertarian Mind*, and the most important figure in the libertarian movement in the last half century. He was also my mentor, my close friend, and, for twelve years, my boss.I had the privilege of holding, for the first two of those years, what is among the most exclusive, challe

Politics gets pretty emotional, and we typically view that as bad. The political scene would be better, we suppose, if more people could set aside their emotions and rationally engage with the hard questions.My guest today isn't so sure. Jason Canon is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge in political science, and while he doesn't reject reason, he argues that emotion pla

Among the various ideologies opposing liberalism that have seen new or renewed prominence in the last decade is Christian nationalism. It motivates quite a lot of the far right in the culture war, played a role in the attempted overthrow of American democracy on January 6th, and seems to be everywhere on social media.But what is it? Where did it come from? And how can liberalism re

Today's conversation is a good one, but I struggle to come up with a straightforward summary for this intro. I brought back on my good friend, and frequent guest, Cory Massimino to discuss anarchism in theory and practice. And that where we start. But we also get into a larger conversation about the nature of political debate, and the rhetoric of political change that goes well bey