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Milton Friedman may be the most famous American economist. His research and theories have profoundly shaped the modern American economy. But few of us can clearly articulate what he taught and what it means for our times. Friedman's career was defined by the aftermath of the Great Depression. He worked in the government administering the New Deal, but never really agreed with it. He joined the faculty at the University of Chicago and built a department around him that taught a version of free-market economics known as monetarism. Essentially, monetarism is the idea that inflation is a product of how much money is in circulation. Friedman did not like the Federal Reserve or the gold standard, instead, advocating for a standard 4% increase in the money supply every year that would not be shifted. By setting a rule, he hoped to do away with an entire governmental department.

Friedman and his co-authors ventured into areas that other economists thought, perhaps, unwise. They used economics to explain things like marriage and school choice. He was also a proponent of school vouchers.

Stanford professor Jennifer Burns joins Chris today to explore the many facets of Milton Friedman. This is the first of two parts.

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William F. Buckley Jr. helped change the face of conservatism in the US because he gave it intellectual backing. But that doesn't mean that his ideas were accepted completely. He had several nemesis within his own movement that tried to derail him.

One opponent was the John Birch Society. Buckley's whole modus operandi was to make conservatism respectable. But Robert Welch and other members of the JBS were using their movement to spread bogus conspiracy theories. They were actively discrediting the movement that Buckley tried to build. So Buckley, National Review, and Barry Goldwater tried to bring it down.

Another enemy was Ayn Rand. Buckley and Rand were libertarians, but they disagreed on something important: religion. Rand was an ardent atheist, while Buckley believed Christianity and conservatism were inseparable. When Buckley started Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) he discovered that his young followers were incorporating many other ideas into their ideology. Rand's writings were impacting the students. So Buckley had to work to expel those ideas from YAF.

Libertarian economist Murray Rothbard was another enemy. Rothbard actively encouraged his followers to split YAF and leave the organization.

Extremism leads to extremism. Extremism lends itself to ideological purity, which means that groups like YAF were destined to split and split and split again. Buckley has his work cut out for him.

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Senator Robert Taft couldn't get the nomination. He tried to be the GOP's nominee for president three different times but could not get elected. Conservative Republicans' failure to get nominated by their own party was a source of much frustration. What could they do? Concerns of conspiracy spread through people like Phyllis Schlafly whose book A Choice Not an Echo claimed that "elites" were steering the party.

It was into this world that a bright young man with an untraceable accent found his appeal. William F. Buckley Jr. was born into a wealthy family that was deeply Catholic and driven by concern over the New Deal. They were libertarians and wanted a small government. Buckley lived a childhood of privilege, riding horses, playing piano, and mostly private education. His first book, God and Man at Yale, was a sharp critique of his alma mater, stating that they should have done a better job promoting laissez-faire economics and religion. The book was a smash hit, in part, because Yale fought its charges in the press.

Buckley followed it with a rousing defense of Senator Joseph McCarthy's tactics in the early 1950s, but the book was published just as the senator was revealed to be the demagogue he was. So Buckley decided to shift his effort to creating a journal of opinion that would appeal to conservatives. National Review became the "it" publication for conservatism in the US, and the most successful journal of opinion in the country. Its greatest impact was giving conservatism an intellectual voice in an era when the "liberal consensus" dominated.

Buckley then went on to start in the PBS television show Firing Line, a funny thing for a libertarian because the show was sponsored, in part, through government funding. Buckley succeeded in giving conservatism an intellectual voice. In the process, he won his greatest victory: convincing Ronald Reagan to become a conservative.

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In the first part of our series, Chris explored the beginning of Barry Goldwater's career, from his early days as a young man to his rise to the Senate. In the second episode, Goldwater still hasn't agreed to be the nominee, even though groups are raising money in his name.

One of his most valuable supporters was a woman named Phyllis Schlafly. In 1964 she published a small book, A Choice Not an Echo. It claimed that GOP nominations had been rigged going back many years. She felt burned that Robert Taft (a true conservative) had been avoided over Dwight Eisenhower. Her book earned Goldwater the eventual nomination by his party.

At the 1964 GOP convention, Goldwater announced that extremism was a thing he was okay with. While this excited his base, it scared a good many others who were already afraid that he'd use his power to launch nuclear weapons.

Lyndon Johnson won that year in the greatest landslide in US presidential history.

CORRECTION: The original version of this episode said that LBJ's win in 1964 was bolstered by the Civil Rights Act. Historian Rick Perlstein wrote in to say that he won despite the Civil Rights Act.

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Barry Goldwater may be one of the most interesting figures in Republican history. He grew up the son of a wealthy department store owner. He was a city council member and then a senator from Arizona. He was handsome and took pictures with guns and cacti. Goldwater was also a libertarian who wanted a small government and low taxes.

His platform was laid out in a ghostwritten book Conscience of a Conservative. L. Brent Bozell wrote the book. He was a member of the John Birch Society. The book advocated for state's rights, though Goldwater argued that he was not a racist. The problem is that the South had long been using state's rights complaints to justify their oppression of black people. So, was Goldwater a racist? He sure as heck did what racists wanted.

He also advocated for nuclear weapons in the US, an end to progressive taxation, and strange plans to reduce government spending. He courted extremists, mashing traditional conservatism false conspiracies and bad actors. The Republican Party would eventually bounce back to being an establishment party, but not for long. Many of Goldwater's ideas would be carried out by Reagan just a decade and a half later.

CORRECTION: The original version of this episode said that Goldwater served in WWI. It was WWII. Sorry! The error has been corrected.

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Robert Welch was a candy magnate who invented the Sugar Daddy and sold favorites like Junior Mints and Milk Duds. He was also very anti-communist. His dubious research led him to found the John Birch Society, a group whose mission was to spread conspiracy theories worldwide. They had major support from wealthy men like Fred Koch, father of the Koch brothers (who financed opposition to Obamacare and climate change legislation).

Some of their most notable campaigns were those against Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren and President Dwight Eisenhower. They claimed that these men were communist sympathizers working behind the scenes to put the communist agenda. Bogus stuff, but they gained thousands of followers across the country. They also fought the income tax, said that black people would not have wanted equality if the communists hadn't taught them to, and argued that the US is a republic and not a democratic republic.

Phyllis Schlafly, RJ Rushdoony, Tim LaHaye, and many others had ties to the birchers. This group had a huge influence on the Religious Right! Not to mention shifting the GOP to accept extremists.

Our special guest for this episode is Dr. Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. His book is Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right.

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Modern evangelicalism sometimes incorporates pieces of different ideas. Things that are in the air. Social messages. Political stances. But has evangelicalism been enchanted by libertarianism?

In this episode, we cover a brief history of libertarianism. What is it and who are some of the main thinkers? We discuss Murry Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, and Robert Nozick.

What is a libertarian? Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi define libertarianism by six characteristics. Libertarians are defined by a love of private property, they are skeptical of authority, and they like free markets, spontaneous order, individualism, and negative liberty. We will define each of these throughout the episode.

Our special guest for this episode is Andrew Koppelman, law professor at Northwestern University. He's the author of the book Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed.

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Well, we survived the 2024 US presidential election! But many people still feel anxiety as we head into the Christmas and New Year holidays. How can Christians prepare for a holiday season when politics will likely arise?

Chris Staron is joined by Karl Klemmer, Nick Staron, and Ray McDaniel at First Baptist Church in Jackson, WY to discuss these issues and more. Plus Chris talks about his own anger as a pedestrian as drivers have come close to hitting him. How do Christians respond when they are wronged? We also spend a lot of time talking about Romans 14 which encourages believers to love their brothers and sisters who struggle in their faith or who have convictions different than our own. Can verses about food sacrificed to idols teach us something about dealing with loved ones who are different than us?

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• Romans 12-15 (mixed translations)

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How do ultra-wealthy people avoid paying taxes? It seems like a strange subject to bring up when discussing why some evangelicals are drawn to the Republican Party. But many of the ties between evangelicals and the GOP have to do with money. So, let's take a little side trip and explore the tax loopholes of today. More importantly, let's try to understand why so many Americans are tax-averse. Could it possibly be because we, deep down, know that someone else is getting a better deal than us?

One tactic used by the ultra-wealthy is "buy, borrow, die". They avoid "income", instead opting for assets like stock and real estate they can borrow against. Borrowed money is not taxed. Then they either pay back those loans with other loans (often with interest rates that are much lower than their tax rates would be) or they fail to pay back the loans. Then... they die.

Jesse Eisinger is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with Pro Publica. Chris first heard about him from his book (pardon the language) The Chickenshit Club and met him when he appeared at a live event in Jackson, WY hosted by the Teton County Library, the Center for the Arts, and the Jackson Hole News and Guide.

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It all started with a meeting over fancy donuts. Paige Patterson and a friend met together to plot the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Before that time, the SBC had been more theologically diverse (though, not necessarily racially diverse due to its founding as a group that desired slavery). But if this group of fundamentalists was going to get a whole denomination to turn their way, they'd have to be clever. It would take time.

Their scheme involved getting fundies elected into high office who could then turn committees and sub-committees to their side. It's a story of a minority group gaining control of a large organization, and steering it toward their vision of what it means to be a Christian.

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