Free Thoughts

Why is objectivity important when it comes to how judges decide cases? Tara A. Smith joins us this week to talk about what people mean when they say “We want judges to be objective and to uphold the law.”

We discuss the what, how, and why of judicial objectivity, first principles, the value of discretion among different government actors in a legal system, and we compare Smith’s theory of judicial review to other, competing theories.

Show Notes and Further Reading

Smith’s book on this subject is Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System (2015).

Trevor recommends the 1961 movie Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer.

Near the end of the episode, Smith mentions Randy Barnett and Josh Blackman’s Weekly Standard article “The Next Justices.”

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we are joined by Flemming Rose, the editor who defended Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s printing of 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005. We talk about the tradition of religious satire in the Western world, the importance of free speech to pluralistic societies, and the dangers of censorship—even self-imposed censorship—on those societies.

Show Notes and Further Reading

Flemming Rose’s book, The Tyranny of Silence (2014), has a new paperback edition coming out this year. In the book he provides a personal account of an event that has shaped the debate about what it means to be a citizen in a democracy and how to coexist in a world that is increasingly multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What’s it like running for elected office in New Zealand on a free market, limited government platform? How did the economic liberalization of New Zealand in the 1980s happen? What are the contemporary political issues of the day in New Zealand?

Show Notes and Further Reading

New Zealand consistently outranks the United States in the Fraser Institute’s annual Economic Freedom of the World report. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does Star Wars have a distinct political viewpoint that we can tease out? Would the Rebel Alliance be considered a terrorist organization? How would we know if a rebellion was justified? Is the Star Wars story libertarian?

Show Notes and Further Reading

The original trilogy of Star Wars movies and the prequel trilogy of the late 90s/early 2000s will be joined by Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the day this podcast is released.

Trevor mentions Somin’s work on political ignorance; for a more in-depth study, listeners may want to read his book on the matter: Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (2013), or read the Cato Unbound series on democracy and political ignorance.

Listeners may also enjoy the podcast we did earlier this year with Timothy Sandefur on the politics of Star Trek.

Ilya Somin was also a guest in a KosmosOnline podcast about Star Trek.

Somin frequently mentions the animated TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How did the effort to foil American terror plots change after 9/11? How are terrorists deterred from their goals?

John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart join us this week to talk about why our government needs to think realistically about combating terrorism.
 
Show Notes and Further Reading

Mueller and Stewart’s new book on how our post-9/11 government ends up chasing incredible terrorist threats, Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism (2015).

Mueller mentions a 2010 comedy movie about British jihadists, Four Lions.
 
Mueller also mentions a book of student papers that he edits that follows post-9/11 terror cases in America, Terrorism Since 9/11: The American Cases (2015).

Garrett Graff’s The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War (2012) is a good overview of how the FBI currently responds to terror threats.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you started from scratch and wanted to build a government that preserved the free choices of its citizens as much as possible, and used force only in circumstances where it provided net benefits to all concerned parties, how would you do it? How long would its powers remain limited?

Richard A. Epstein joins us this week to discuss classical liberal statecraft, state cartels vs. private monopolies, inequality, and more.

Show Notes and Further Reading

We highly recommend reading all of Epstein’s books; start with Simple Rules for a Complex World, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, and The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government.

Here’s a video lecture Libertarianism.org produced on Simple Rules for a Complex World.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matt Ridley joins us this week to discuss his latest book, The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (2015). In it, he theorizes that much of the order we see in the natural world and in human culture and society is the result of unplanned, bottom-up, emergent evolution.

Is there a way to introduce these evolutionary pressures to government?

Is there a bias to thinking that the world operates by design, from the top down? Does this bias have an origin in our evolutionary psychology? Is it reflected in how we view history?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Ridley’s newest book, The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (2015).

Ridley’s bestselling book is an optimistic look at progress and economic history: The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2011).

Also from Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (1998).

Libertarianism.org has a video from 1983 of professor and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek talking about cultural evolution and the origins of tradition in society.

Ridley mentions the ideas and management practices of Mike Bracken, the UK government’s former digital chief. Here’s an extended interview with Bracken about his ideas for government and why he chose to leave.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The economic historian and economist Robert Higgs joins us to talk about his new book, Taking a Stand: Reflections on Life, Liberty, and the Economy (2015).

Show Notes and Further Reading

Higgs’s classic work on how government has grown, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987).

We also talk about Higgs’s Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American economy 1865-1914 (1977).

Higgs mentions a few books by C. Wright Mills: The Power Elite (1956) and The Sociological Imagination (1959).

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The celebrated science fiction franchise Star Trek is well known for incorporating broad discussions of philosophy and ethical conundrums into its episodes and movies. Timothy Sandefur joins us to talk about how the series deals with some of these big questions.

How does Star Trek: The Original Series reflect the way people thought about politics, justice, and human rights in the wake of the second World War? How does the series change over time? The Prime Directive: is it moral? What was its purpose in the original series if Captain Kirk violated it half the time?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Sandefur’s original article “The Politics of Star Trek” appeared in the Summer 2015 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

Star Trek: The Original Series episodes referenced in this podcast episode:

“The Way to Eden”
“The Conscience of the King”
“The Apple”
“Spock’s Brain”
“Arena”
“Plato’s Stepchildren”
“Space Seed”

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.