Policy@McCombs

In 2017, 8th graders Aidan and Tristan Caplan talked to their dad, Bryan Caplan, about their homeschooling experience in middle school. Spoiler: After three weeks of regular high school, they resumed homeschooling and are now at Vanderbilt University.

Brothers Hyrum Lewis (BYU – Idaho) and Verlan Lewis (Utah Valley University)’s new *The Myth of Left and Right* attacks the “essentialist” view that “left” and “right” are coherent political philosophies in favor of a “social” view that “left” and “right” are incoherent bundles of issue positions.  In this interview, Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson find much common ground with the Lewis brothers, but still find some residual merit in the essentialist view.  Hanson analogizes ideology to gender identity: Some features of gender are social, but are all of them?!  Caplan maintains that the social theory is 85% true, but the authors stick with 100%.  

Also: Should there be affirmative action for right-wing academics?

Bryan Caplan interviews Chris Rufo on his best-selling *America's Cultural Revolution*. In this wide-ranging interview, Rufo tackles some tough questions, including: How bad were the founders of critical theory, really? How fake is Continental philosophy? What would Rufo had done if he'd had Freire's job in Guinea-Bissau? Are fanatics evil? And, does he really hate libertarians? And many more.

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. This two-lecture series on Rousseau, delivered in the late 1980s, shines a spotlight on the great intellectual outlier of the Enlightenment. While Voltaire, the Physiocrats, Locke, Smith, and Hume promoted rationalism and individual freedom, Rousseau was a harsh, if sometimes veiled, critic of both. Walsh paints Rousseau as an early adopter of the Orwellian idea that “Freedom Is Slavery” – and the proto-totalitarian inspiration of not only the French Revolution, but the socialist and nationalist revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the history of ideas once again available to the curious public.

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. This two-lecture series on Rousseau, delivered in the late 1980s, shines a spotlight on the great intellectual outlier of the Enlightenment. While Voltaire, the Physiocrats, Locke, Smith, and Hume promoted rationalism and individual freedom, Rousseau was a harsh, if sometimes veiled, critic of both. Walsh paints Rousseau as an early adopter of the Orwellian idea that “Freedom Is Slavery” – and the proto-totalitarian inspiration of not only the French Revolution, but the socialist and nationalist revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the history of ideas once again available to the curious public.

Historian and polymath Ralph Raico explores the classic criticisms and seminal critics of classical liberal thought.

 Historian and polymath Ralph Raico explores the basic ideas and seminal thinkers of classical liberal thought.

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. This lecture on the Enlightenment, delivered c.1992, gives a typically insightful and humorous intellectual tour of the Enlightenment. The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the history of ideas once again available to the curious public.

George Walsh (c.1923-2001) was one of those old-school professors who wrote little but read everything. These two lectures on Protestant Fundamentalism, delivered in the late-80s, distill decades of study of Protestant Fundamentalism with great insight and humor, handling the ideas with the same seriousness that intellectual historians normally reserve for the Great Thinkers of Western Philosophy.  Lecture 1 covers fundamentalist theology and epistemology; lecture 2 delves into fundamentalist ethics and politics.  The Salem Center’s Bryan Caplan, who heard Walsh live in 1989, has plans to make all of Walsh’s “lost” lectures on the history of ideas once again available to the curious public.