The Reason Roundtable

Daniel Hannan is one of Brexit's biggest champions. A Member of the European Parliament and a leading Euroskeptic, Hannan's advocacy of withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union has earned him international attention. While critics regarded the "Vote Leave" campaign as a dangerous retreat from globalization, Hannan has made consistent, libertarian arguments for withdrawal as a path towards greater democracy and free markets.

Noting the E.U.'s sluggish economic growth rates and its failure to establish free trade agreements with China and India, Hannan believes the U.K. should take charge of its own economic destiny. "I want people to be making the ethical argument for free trade as the supreme instrument of poverty alleviation, of conflict resolution and of social justice," Hannan says. He adds, "It's the multinationals that thrive on the distortions and the tariffs and the quotas, he says. "And it's the poor who will benefit most from their removal."

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Alex Manning.

"What we know [about Trump] so far is that he talked a lot about crumbling infrastructure and the need to make America's infrastructure great again," says Bob Poole, Searle Freedom Trust Fellow and the Director of Transportation Policy at the Reason Foundation. "This suggests a big new emphasis on some kind of federal transportation program."

Poole sat down with Nick Gillespie to discuss the transportation policies likely to be introduced in the new Trump administration and reasons for libertarians to feel hopeful when it comes to the president-elect's infrastructure plan. "I'm encouraged by what I see," says Poole, who cites the involvement of Shirley Ybarra, a former Reason Foundation fellow and Secretary of Transportation in the state of Virginia, as a sign that Trump will look to public private partnerships as part of his transportation strategy.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Alexis Garcia. Music by Topher Mohr and Alex Elena and Jingle Punks.

The World Health Organization achieves consensus through secrecy, mass detentions, and media censorship.

Produced, photographed, narrated, and edited by Todd Krainin.

"So long as people are coming here to live peacefully and work peacefully," says Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia, the burden should be on the government "to show to us why they shouldn't be here."

Dalmia sat down with Nick Gillespie to talk about the scary prospects for U.S. immigration policy in the incoming Trump administration. Particularly worrisome is that Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) is Trump's chief adviser on immigration. He's uniquely dangerous, Dalmia says, and has broken with the Republican Party by opposing high-skilled immigration—even floating a proposal to scrap the H1-B visa program.

Watch the video above for the full conversation.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Produced by Justin Monticello. Camera by Meredith Bragg and Jim Epstein. Music by Silent Partner.

As our world becomes more hyper-individualized, our taste in food is following suit. From cooking in our own kitchens to finding new creative dishes at restaurants, we're all becoming artisanal chefs and demanding gourmands. Yet politicians and activists, often in a misguided attempt to keep us safe, are passing increasingly bizarre and counterproductive laws to keep us from buying, making, and eating the food we want.

In Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable, lawyer Baylen Linnekin gives readers a view of the overlooked consequences of the many absurd rules baked into America's food system. Since at least the New Deal, he writes, overreaching buttinskies on the federal and local level have tried to shut down entrepreneurs, charities, and even home gardeners who are just trying feed themselves and others. From the U.S. Department of Agriculture dictating how butchers cure meat to New York City's then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg banning food donations to homeless people to banning berry-picking in public parks, no food practice seems too small to regulate in the name of safety.

A solution, says Linnekin in an interview with Reason's Nick Gillespie, is to simply emphasize good outcomes rather than rigid processes. Linnekin, who founded the nonprofit Keep Food Legal and has served as an expert witness in an ongoing federal First Amendment food-labeling lawsuit, also writes about "food freedom" at Reason.com every Saturday (check out his archive here).

"Stop wasting your breath. Start working on your own parties. Start working on your own issues," says Libertarian Party national chair Nicholas Sarwark, responding to criticism that Libertarians played a spoiler role and handed Donald Trump the election. "See if you can take my votes in the actual arena of ideas instead of trying to shame me."

Sarwark sat down with Reason's Matt Welch the morning after the election to discuss the performance of the Libertarian presidential ticket this year, which drew about 3.7 million votes, or slightly less than 4 percent of the national popular vote. He also spoke about the future of the Republican Party and directly addressed Democrats complaining that third parties "spoiled" the election for Donald Trump.

Interview by Matt Welch. Edited by Zach Weissmueller.

Supporters of Gary Johnson gathered in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Tuesday to celebrate the end of the 2016 presidential campaign and a record-breaking vote total for the Libertarian Party. The former New Mexico governor and his running mate, former Massachussetts governor William Weld, earned nearly 4 million votes as of Tuesday night, more than tripling the Libertarians' 2012 vote total.

But Tuesday night also saw the election of Donald J. Trump to the highest office in the land, upending the collective political wisdom and nearly all pre-election forecasts. The Libertarian ticket drew more votes than the difference between Trump and Hillary Clinton, leading to an outpouring of criticism from Democrats who claimed that Johnson voters handed Trump the presidency. So what do Libertarian voters think of this charge?

Reason TV traveled to Albuquerque to get Johnson supporters' take on this election and their role in it, and to find out what's next for the Libertarian Party after an historic showing in the popular vote.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller, Justin Monticello, and Alex Manning.

If you think that much of anything related to politics will be settled by Tuesday's election, here's some bad news for you: Nothing that matters is really over.

There are at least three major issues facing the country when either President Clinton or President Trump gets sworn in next January.

Written by Nick Gillespie. Video by Meredith Bragg.

The 2016 presidential race features two of the most disliked candidates in electoral history, which has given a boost not only to the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson, but to Jill Stein, a 66-year-old Harvard-trained physician from Massachusetts who's running on the Green Party ticket.

"We have every reason to be terrified of Donald Trump in the White House," says Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. "But I don't think we should fool ourselves into thinking that we should sleep well at night with Hillary Clinton in the White House either. They're both dangerous and unacceptable in different ways."

Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Produced and Edited by Justin Monticello and Jim Epstein. Music by RW Smith.

There's more on the ballot in 2016 than the giant trainwreck on national television. Let's stop rubbernecking for a minute and take a look at 6 other important things at stake on November 8th.

Produced by Austin Bragg. Narrated by Nick Gillespie.