The Reason Roundtable

"Many outsiders look at a firing-over-speech and say it's just a private firm's decision. No public policy or First Amendment implications, right?," writes Walter Olson for USA Today. A longtime contributor to Reason, Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who blogs at Overlawyered.com and Cato At Liberty. He stresses that "hostile-environment law is not content-neutral. It plays favorites on topics and it takes sides in debates."

In the latest Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Olson about the "Google Memo" case, in which employee James Damore was fired after circulating his opinions about diversity efforts at the search behemoth, and the debate it has started over free speech on the job, political correctness, and workplace diversity.

In her new book, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, the third volume in a trilogy, economist Deirdre McCloskey argues that our vast accumulation of wealth over the past two hundred years— which she's dubbed "The Great Enrichment"—was the result of "massively better ideas in technology and institutions." Where did they arise from? "A new liberty and dignity for commoners," she argues, "expressed as the ideology of European liberalism."

McCloskey sat down with Nick Gillespie at Freedom Fest, the annual convention for libertarians in Las Vegas, for a wide-ranging conversation on topics including the roots of "The Great Enrichment," why her gender reassignment surgery was an "expression of [her] libertarianism", and the importance of advocating policies that "actually help the poor" instead of just "making people feel good about helping the poor.

If the GOP succeeds in making even harder to become an American, other nations "are going to be eating our lunch," says Reason's Nick Gillespie. The fact is the U.S. is no longer the "default destination" for foreign talent.

On today's podcast, Gillespie joins Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Andrew Heaton to talk about the latest Republican plans to restrict immigration, the recent challenge to affirmative action on campus, and why the the trial and conviction of "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli should frighten all Americans.

And Mangu-Ward explains why New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) is the perfect Ayn Rand villain.

Nick Gillespie talks with Michael Munger of Duke's political science department, who has written a caustic, fair, and even generous review of Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains. Even as he categorizes Democracy in Chains as a "work of speculative historical fiction" that was "in many cases illuminating," he concludes that her book is wrong in almost every meaningful way, from gauging Buchanan's influence on libertarianism to her inconsistent views toward majoritarian rule as an absolute good to her attempts to smear Buchanan as a backward-looking racial conservative.

Munger, who ran for governor of North Carolina as a Libertarian in 2008 and maintains a vital Twitter account at @mungowitz, also discusses how that experience changed his understanding of politics, why he's a "directionalist" advocating incremental policy changes rather a "destinationist" insisting on immediate implementation of utopian programs, and how the movement's heavy emphasis on economics has retarded libertarianism's wider appeal.

"The intellectual backwardness of many of Trump's trade advisors contrasts dramatically with some of the very good advice he's gotten in terms of deregulation," says Roberto Salinas-León, president of the Mexico Business Forum and adjunct scholar at the CATO Institute. "Talking about your second most important trading partner in that [derogatory] vein—that's not the 'art of the deal.' That's just very bad business."

Salinas-León, an expert on trade and monetary policy, says that if Trump ends the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it would decimate jobs on both sides of the border.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Salinas-León at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas to discuss NAFTA's economic impact, his heated confrontation with Trump at Freedom Fest 2015, and how the president's anti-Mexico rhetoric propelled leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador ("a rabid, primitive, vitriolic, populist") to the top of the polls.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Alexis Garcia.

On today's podcast, Reason's Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Matt Welch, and Andrew Heaton discuss the trans military ban, Trump's management casualties, and free speech on Twitter.

The president is making a lot of noise and staff shuffling, but not much legislative progress. Good news? Yes and no.

"A big upside for [libertarians] is that Trump seems to be not very good at executing these [illiberal] maneuvers," says Mangu-Ward, citing the travel ban. But low trust in government "oddly doesn't seem to lead to calls for less government."

They also discuss whether Twitter is the new battleground for free speech.

And should we add Trump to Mount Rushmore or just blow it up?

"Hopefully, over time, [the] two parties start to fall apart," says Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) in an interview with Reason recorded last week at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. "I can go straight to Twitter or Facebook or elsewhere and tell people exactly what I stand for."

First elected in 2010, the libertarian congressman helped co-found the influential House Freedom Caucus, sponsored bills to cut spending and defang the National Security Agency, and took an active role in the successful effort to depose John Boehner as house majority leader.

A critic of executive power and champion of constitutionalism, the Grand Rapids native is a thorn in the side of Donald Trump, serving as one of only two GOP co-sponsors of a bill calling for an independent, investigative commission into the president's Russia-related behavior. He frequently calls out the administration on social media, and is on the receiving end of a White House call to get primaried.

This interview was recorded on July 21, 2017.

In today's podcast, Reason's Brian Doherty Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Andrew Heaton discuss how Duke historian Nancy MacLean fundamentally misunderstands her subject matter; this year's Freedom Fest (an annual convention for libertarians in Las Vegas that just wrapped up); conservative-leaning libertarians vs. left-leaning libertarians; the constitutional ramifications of Donald Trump potentially pardoning himself; and whether or not we're living in the panopticon.

"Conservatives and libertarians were always portrayed as the shrill and unhappy guys, and the left and liberals were always the people who are having fun," says Greg Gutfeld, host of Fox News' The Greg Gutfeld Show, co-host of The Five, former host of Red Eye, bestselling author, and Reason magazine intern reject.

"What you're seeing now is a lot more fun on the libertarian and right side than you've ever seen on the left."

Gutfeld sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to discuss his "ugly libertarianism," Donald Trump's love of Red Eye, why he was excited about the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and why Trump's comments on the campaign trail were best understood in the context of a Comedy Central roast.

"Don't take the meeting, don't say I love it, and don't lie to people about it," says Reason's Matt Welch about revelations that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian attorney during the 2016 election to obtain potentially incriminating information about Hillary Clinton.

In today's podcast, Welch is joined by fellow editors Nick Gillespie and Katherine Mangu-Ward to discuss whether the president's son crossed the line—or maybe he's just the latest target of an on ongoing media smear campaign?

And is Trump deligitimating American institutions?

"America did a fucking great job of deligitimating its [own] institutions," says Gillespie.

They also discuss sexual assault on campus, whether university administrators or the police are better equipped to investigate rape charges, the Senate Republicans' dreadful health care bill, and why Betsy Devos draws so much hate.