The Reason Roundtable

"Deregulate everything," reads a typical tweet from Cliff Maloney, the avuncular national president of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), a student group started by former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) on the heels of his insurgent runs for president in 2008 and 2012.

With chapters on 900 campuses, YAL is fast-growing and increasingly visible. Its mission is to identify and train political activists who can start conversations about limited government and individual freedom in new and interesting ways. (YAL's giant "free-speech beach balls," on which people can write anything they want, have caused a commotion on more than a few campuses.) Unlike many other libertarian groups, YAL also endorses candidates for office.

Reason's Nick Gillespie caught up with Maloney at FEEcon, the annual gathering in Atlanta sponsored by the Foundation for Economic Education, to talk about the midterm elections, whether Donald Trump is good or bad for libertarians, and what to expect at YAL's national convention in July.

In previous lives, Matt Kibbe has been a congressional staffer, the head of FreedomWorks, and a New York Times best-selling author.

These days, he's the president and "chief community organizer" at Free the People, a libertarian nonprofit that defends "free speech online, the right to bear arms, and privacy from government cyber-snooping."

At FEEcon, the annual gathering in Atlanta sponsored by the Foundation for Economic Education, Kibbe talked with Reason's Nick Gillespie about his belief that culture is more important than politics, how to reach the "liberty curious" via social media, and Off the Grid, his group's forthcoming documentary series about Rep. Thomas Massie's "quest for a self-sustainable life on his farm in eastern Kentucky.

In our weekly round table, Reason editors Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch argue about the Trump administration's family-separation policies, the Republican Party's dark fantasies about pro-immigrant elites, and Harvard's discriminatory pro-diversity admissions policies.

Reason editors discuss what anti-immigration fantasy looks like when translated into policy, and how education diversity goals lead to discrimination.

"You needn't be engaged in espionage, or anything illegal, to benefit from better digital privacy practices," writes Associate Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown in the controversial, provocative "Burn After Reading" issue of Reason. In "Personal Encryption 101," Brown lays out easy steps to keep your online communications safe from the clutches of "surveillance-happy state actors and data-harvesting advertisers."

That said, since joining Reason in 2014, Brown's writing has focused on all sorts of black- and gray-market activities—especially sex work—that definitely do benefit from being secured. In this Reason Podcast, we talk with Brown about her award-winning work debunking press hysterics who routinely misidentify all prostitution as "sex trafficking," her belief that the psychological "harms that are unique to sex work right now are all harms that are related to the black-market aspects of it rather than the industry itself," what libertarian feminism looks like, and more. Brown is one of the founders of Feminists for Liberty, a group that is "anti-sexism & anti-statism, pro-markets & pro-choice."

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Nick Gillespie talks with Reason magazine Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward about how she became a libertarian, why she likes to defend the indefensible, how she came up with the masterful "Burn After Reading" issue of Reason (which teaches you how to build a Glock in your kitchen, hire an escort, hide your bitcoin, and more), and what she thinks the world will look like in 2068.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

In today's episode of the Reason Podcast, Volokh Conspirator and University of California, Los Angeles, law professor Eugene Volokh and Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward ponder the question: What is the difference between this month's edition of Reason magazine and The Anarchist Cookbook?

We wade elbow-deep into some juicy questions about "crime-facilitating speech"—a term coined by Volokh in a 2005 paper—how it applies to the Burn After Reading issue and other questions of journalistic ethics. The podcast also digs into hypotheticals about source protection, white-hat hacking, national security, doxxing, and whether it's legit to flash your headlights to warn fellow drivers about an upcoming speed trap.

The New York governor's race this fall has garnered outsized national attention partly because a well-known actress is mounting a left-wing challenge to the two-term Democratic incumbent, who just happens to be the son of a past governor, a one-time Kennedy family in-law, and a cabinet secretary during the Bill Clinton administration.

Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda on the long-running show Sex and the City, is an unrepentant progressive who has been attacking Andrew Cuomo hard from the left.But there's another candidate running for governor who's worth a longer look than either Nixon or Cuomo. Libertarian Party candidate Larry Sharpe is a New York City native, former Marine, and an entrepreneur who came within 32 votes of being Gary Johnson's vice-presidential candidate for the 2016 election. When Reason asked his rival Bill Weld how the LP could become more successful, Weld replied, "You want to get out more candidates like Larry Sharpe."

Introductory segment produced by Austin Bragg. Edited by Ian Keyser.

'Covert Affair' by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY 3.0

There is no doubt that President Trump is shaking the hell out of the status quo. Reason editors Katherine Mangu-Ward Peter Suderman, Matt Welch & Zach Weissmueller sort through the pluses and minuses of presidential norm-breaking on trade, the G7, NoKo, and weed.

Trump disrupts the status quo on trade, diplomacy, North Korea, and pot.