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Reason’s Nick Gillespie – Is Trump Bad for Libertarianism?
When it comes to tackling regulations (Title 9, Obamacare, small business, etc.) Trump has many Libertarians applauding. So why does Reason’s Nick Gillespie suggest Trump may be bad for the Libertarian cause? Nick is currently the Contributing Editor of Reason.com and the Editor-in-Chief at Reason.tv, the home of Free Minds and Free Markets. We discuss entitlements, Libertarianism as a governing body, limited government in the age of Trump and much more. You can (and should) find Nick on Twitter and Facebook. Special thanks to virtuoso pianist Hyperion Knight for his beautiful background music taped at the Freedom Fest Convention at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, NV.
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Nick Gillespie is bad for libertarianism. His constant drum beat against the war against murdering Muslims helped obama get elected. His pacifism, which was never part of libertarianism, was overwrought and usually put forward with trite arguments and misunderstood facts.
Libertarianism is dead. We’re now fighting for return of basic rights, and people with Nick destroyed any hope of advancing libertarianism, with the exception of pot being quasi legal in a few states.
I love Nick Gillespie even when I disagree with him. Really looking forward to this.
Likewise. He finishes a close second behind our own Peter Robinson for my favorite interviewer.
I’m not 100% on board re: pacifism and libertarianism, however, I do think Gillespie et al are a useful counterweight to the Bill Kristol/AEI wing of the political right, who in general have never found a country they didn’t feel like bombing.
Furthermore, whatever disagreements you may have with him, I think the Nick Gillespies and Kennedys of the world do a good job of getting the whippersnappers off of their video doo dads and faceboxes and thinking about politics. If your biggest complaint re: Gillespie is that he’s too dovish, then he’s really not so bad. Attributing any great responsibility for ’08 and ’12 gives short shrift to the fatal flaw in those campaigns—the candidates were BAD.
Worthy talk. Good man.
That’s the easy complaint against him. My biggest complaint is that he rarely knows what he’s talking about, especially regarding the military.
Agreed, but not as bad as the Obama campaign was good at leveraging irrational and emotional/fear-based motivations ensuring their voters got off the couch… and the Left knows this. So, watch for Kamala Harris in 2020 or 2024 as the single issue demographic/identity vote is all they had, and will ever have.
She wants it so bad it hurts. She and Corey Booker may have to settle this in a no holds barred cage match. For what it’s worth, I think BLM has really changed the public’s view of identity politics. My impression is that that strategy just doesn’t have the same impact in 2017 as it did in 2008 or 2012, maybe I’m wrong.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to this episode!
Jamie, further to our discussion at Stonehaus, I’m interested in what you’ll think of Nicks perspective.
Of course, I’ll get around to it tomorrow though I have to finish my Q2 tax returns.
I see this as a difference between people who are militantly isolationist versus those who think about issues, reality, and human beings as they are. The Reason crowd is the first group (fortunately, they are as marginal as the wacko lefties are, though they are smarter and more rational, just belong in the world of Jean Auel rather than the 21st century where there are billions of living humans), and the “Bill Kristol/AEI” (boy, talk about an ignorant characterization) crowd is the second.
Hyperbole aside, you don’t think Kristol has been prominently hawkish? I know this is the standard characterization he gets, but I have honestly found it to be true. Perhaps you can correct me, but as far as I’m aware the neocon camp really is the interventionist wing of the right.