Free Thoughts

What are historians to make of the paradox of American government? On one hand, Americans claim to value freedom from government interference in their lives, but on the other, Americans have also clamored for government interventions that have done everything from redistributing wealth to imposing a particular set of views on marriage, abortion, and religion.

Gary Gerstle gives a chronological history of American governance from the founding of the country to today...

What is free market existentialism? Why have adherents of existentialism so often chosen Marxism as their political philosophy?

William Irwin joins us this week to discuss his book, The Free Market Existentialist: Capitalism without Consumerism (2015)...

Families seem structured almost entirely opposite to how we think about market economies. Do theories about human behavior in markets hold up when looking at family interactions?

Steven Horwitz joins us to talk about his new book, Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions.

What did F. A...

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was a foundational utilitarian philosopher, as well as one of the foremost thinkers in the classical liberal tradition.

John Samples and Matthew Feeney join us for a discussion on the theory of liberty Mill articulates in his book On Liberty...

How did everything get so crazy in American politics? Are political renegades like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Bernie Sanders the new norm?

Are political machines, pork-barrel spending, logrolling, and professional politicians necessary for our democracy to work? Are they necessary for political coordination and cooperation? What does Rauch mean by “political realism”?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Rauch’s study on this topic, Political...

There seems to be a movement towards more student censorship on college campuses these days, but the source might be surprising: other students. Trigger warnings? Safe spaces? Microaggressions? Are college students more offended these days than they used to be?

Robby Soave joins us for a discussion about the state of free speech in American higher education...

What’s the “MIT” approach to economics, and what’s wrong with it? Is economics a hard science? What is an economic model? What are some of the problems with thinking of the world this way?

Arnold Kling claims that the economy isn’t like one big machine with a single purpose that can be fine tuned and regulated by experts. In this week’s episode, he presents an alternate way of thinking about economics, one you won’t find being taught in most college classrooms...

What is a Stingray? How does it work? Is it a good idea to make police wear body cameras? Should officers be able to turn these cameras off? What about the privacy of the civilians being recorded? Should law enforcement agencies have access to drone technology? Where do we have a reasonable expectation of privacy?

Matthew Feeney and Adam Bates join us this week to discuss new technologies available to law enforcement agencies in America, and the legal implications of these...

After giving a broad overview of the philosophical underpinnings of governments last week, Roger Pilon joins us again to discuss the U.S. Constitution in particular and how the Constitution has been interpreted over the years...

How are constitutions adopted? Did the Founders get it right? What is originalism and why do constitutional interpretations matter when studying founding texts? By what standards do we judge a theory of constitutional interpretation to be correct?

Roger Pilon joins us this week for a discussion about originalism and the U.S. Constitution. This episode is continued in a followup episode about how the Constitution has been interpreted over the years...