Libertarians in Bush’s World

Imagine ordinary, non-ideological people hearing about an obscure political sect called libertarianism, which emphasizes self-ownership, property rights, resistance to tyranny and violence, the reduction of taxation and regulation, control over one’s own investments, and the de-emphasizing of litigation as a primary means of dispute resolution.

Since this philosophy has very few adherents in the general population and is very much a minority position among intellectuals, one might expect proponents of the creed to count themselves lucky, given the likely alternatives, if the president of the country in which most of them live increasingly emphasized the themes of freedom and ownership in his major speeches; toppled brutal totalitarian regimes in two countries while hounding democracy-hating theocratic terrorists around the globe; cut taxes (despite howls even from some in the free-market camp that the cuts were too deep); called for simplification of the tax code; appointed relatively industry-friendly officials to major regulatory bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration despite frequent criticism by the media; proposed partially privatizing Social Security (America’s largest socialist boondoggle but one long regarded as sacrosanct by political analysts); and pushed tort reform to combat the chilling effect of lawsuits on doctors and manufacturers.

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No Such Thing: Litigating Under the Rational Basis Test

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Betwixt Principle and Practice: Tara Ross’s Defense of the Electoral College