Judge Andrew Napolitano on Trump, SCOTUS, and the Return of Freedom Watch

While D.C. roiled, (some) libertarians frolicked

While the Nation's capital roiled over Congressional testimony from FBI agent Peter Strzok and his paramour DOJ lawyer Lisa Page,  over DOJ indictments of Russians who the DOJ knows will never appear in any U.S. court, and over a severe water pressure problem that has the local D.C. government warning residents that they must boil the water before drinking it, half of the professional Beltway libertarians were frolicking in Las Vegas.

The people who could usually be counted on to provide "a pox on both your houses" commentary on the Republicans asking Strzok about his adulterous affair with Page and Democrats like MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, claiming that her fellow Vowel-Impaired American Strzok is a "Patriot," are in Las Vegas with 2,000 of the like minded  at the annual FreedomFest.

FreedomFest, though not a partisan conference - stages here were shared by Republicans like Senator Mike Lee and Congressman Thomas Massie, proselytizing non-voters like reason magazine's Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Libertarian Party candidates and officers like LP national chair Nicholas Sarwark, 2012 Veep candidate Judge Jim Gray, and former Governors William Weld and Gary Johnson - actually had more major libertarian political figures in attendance than last week's Libertarian Party national convention in New Orleans.

Last year on one flight from D.C. to Las Vegas, FreedomFest passengers included FOX News contributor John Tamny, the national executive director of the Libertarian Party, and one of the directors of a non-profit dedicated to promoting the ideas of Ayn Rand.  This year on one flight one could find columnist George F. Will (this year's keynote speaker) in first class, and back in coach, Veronique de Rugy, one of those economist at George Mason University with a Koch brothers funded berth that has groups on the Left upset, and a number of staffers of free market think tanks, responsible for running the 90 booths pitching the attendees.

Will and the other speakers addressed - from their transcendent "pox on both your houses" perch - issues not of the immediate moment, instead of the Strzok/Page testimonies or Trump's European junket.   Will's keynote praised the current polarization in American politics, pointing out that consensus politics has allowed Americans to ignore fundamental issues, like the looming debt and entitlement crisis.  (A "pre-political" Donald Trump was the keynote speaker in 2015.)  In another panel Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) denounced growing budget deficits under a Republican President and Republican Congress.

Everybody in this lane politically wants to pitch the FreedomFest crowd, who skew to wealthier, older libertarian couples who like to donate and make investments.  Imagine a kind of Burning Man for gold bugs who want to keep their clothes on and stay indoors.   Exhibitors are roughly half investment opportunities, half political groups, including political magazines like the biggest libertarian magazine,  reason.  If you aren't either loaded or begging for money, you feel rather out of place.

Reason is a co-sponsor of this year's FreedomFest (convention theme: "Where is the voice of reason?") in part to celebrate reason's 50th year of publication.  The Reason Foundation's president, David Nott, as well as two of its four original founders, engineer Robert Poole, and lawyer Manny Klausner, are here meeting fans - and potential donors.  For this year reason also folded the awards ceremony for the Bastiat Prize for libertarian journalism into a closing night reception emceed by FOX Business's Kennedy.

There were also awards for the 8th annual Anthem Film Festival, with 22 films in competition.  Organized by Jo Ann Skousen, a college literature professor and the wife of investment advisor Mark Skousen (who owns and organizes the wider FreedomFest conference), Anthem offers mainly recognition, but also small ($2500) cash prizes. Last year's winner, What Happened In Vegas, was a documentary on police abuse of black (and sometimes other) Nevada residents.  The festival judges again awarded a criminal justice reform themed film this year's top prize, honoring Skid Row Marathon, a documentary about a California judge who, after being forced by mandatory sentencing laws to issue prison terms he found unjust, organizes running events to rebuild the self-esteem of those he has sentenced, when they are released.

Many of the entrants have anti-Communist themes, films about the history of totalitarianism or about far Left groups shutting down speech on campus.

Just as Will and other speakers cover issues like entitlements that are often kicked down the road, and the exhibitors pitch cryptocurrencies and other opportunities until recently viewed as fanciful or grifter-ish, several of the films cover unknown or obscure people:  the aforementioned Congressman Massie, an MIT grad married to an MIT grad, who decided to sell a technology company based on patents he invented, and move back to his home state to live off the grid in Appalachia; Garry Davis, a chorus dancer and actor who was an understudy for Danny Kaye, who chucked Broadway to become an anti-war activist and promote the end of nation-states; Polish refugee from the Soviet occupation Wanda Was Lorenc; Ota Benga, a pygmy who was one of many indigenous peoples kept against their wills, in "human zoos," by American academics who wanted to study them; or Anders Chydenius, a relatively unknown Swedish pastor who was Adam Smith before Adam Smith put pen to paper.

The latter figure is discussed by Johan Norberg, a Swedish television journalist and policy analyst (imagine an intellectual Ryan Seacrest), in a documentary, Sweden: Lessons for America?, produced by an American non-profit, the Milton Friedman-inspired group Free to Choose media.  (One might have expected this film, a product of the libertarian media complex, to win something, but it was entirely shut out from the many awards given.)

Paradoxically, given Sweden's mythic status as an idyllic social democracy in the minds of many Americans, Norberg says the lessons learned are that the United States - if it wants to be a country with a highly literate, long-lived, healthy, wealthy population - should embrace the free market and become more libertarian.

Sweden has in the past two decades privatized the provision of most social services in its generous welfare state, for example shifting its entire education system to vouchers, which can be used at public or private schools, with parents able to send their children to any school, even in cities other than where they live.  Half of all schools are now private.

Norberg also investigates how Sweden became wealthy before it created its welfare state in the 1950s:  it had more than a century of laissez faire liberalism, during which time it leapt from being one of the poorest countries with a population with relatively short lifespans to being the 4th wealthiest and one of the healthiest.  He unearths the heretofore little known (outside of Sweden) public intellectual, the pastor and journalist Anders Chydenius, who lived in the Swedish empire (in an area that is now Finland), and articulated ideas about competition, competitive advantage, and the gains of trade that were later made famous by Adam Smith.  Chydenius came up with these ideas first, but only promoted free markets (including granting private property to peasants) in the Swedish language, so that the English speaking world had to re-discover them later on its own.  To this day, though it has a variety of labor market regulations, Sweden has no minimum wage laws.

The documentary is timed, paced, and formatted perfectly for television.  School Inc., an earlier project by the Free to Choose group, on the school choice movement, caused gnashing of teeth by "progressives" and opponents of school choice who believe politically incorrect fare should be banned from PBS and other government funded media.

"Sweden: Lessons for America?" caused its own controversy as the opening entry in a Q&A panel afterwords, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund observed that the film avoided Sweden's response to mass immigration and what lesson America should be learning from that.  One audience member pointed out that there are now Swedish neighborhoods unsafe for a Jewish person to walk through, which another panelist hotly disputed.  One speaker, Sengalese entrepreneur Magate Wade, addressed immigration again, arguing that the only way to stop the flow of immigrants to Europe or the U.S. is to encourage free markets throughout Africa and the third world, since what most of the people fleeing their countries of origin want is a job.  But overall little cogent thought was offered on how libertarians might address voters concerns about mass immigration.

You can watch interviews with some of the speakers at FreedomFest - Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com, Steve Forbes, George F. Will, Whole Foods founder John Mackey. - by C-Span's Peter Slen (as well as on the internet channel ReasonTV).

Libertarian calendar for July 2018

July 28
Conroe, TX

Mark Tippets for Governor Meet and Greet
1 pm - 7 pm

pin	Southern Star Brewing Company 3525 TX-75, Conroe, TX 77303-1430, United States, Conroe, Texas 773

--------------------------
July 28
Concord, NH

Libertarian Party of New Hampshire convention
9:30 am - 7 pm

Grappone Conference Center
70 Constitution Avenue

The State of Libertarianism in Cuba and Venezuela

Students for a Conservatarian Society

The TurningPointUSA High School Leadership Summit - four full days for 500 mainly students, who by a show of hands are almost all between 14 and 18 - could have been dubbed "Students for a Conservatarian Society," after Charles C.W. Cooke's 2015 book, "The Conservatarian Manifesto."

It's sort of amazing that no one - the kids at one point told a Leadership Institute speaker coaching them on how to campaign effectively with social media, that "only old people use FaceBook, we are all on Instagram" - has yet produced a meme portraying the core national HQ Turning Point staffers, Charlie Kirk, communications director Candace Owens, and youth outreach director Kyle Kashuv, as Star Trek's Captain Kirk, Uhuru, and Chekov.

Held in Washington, D.C. at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium, with an amazing roster of speakers, the non-partisan, but very pro-Trump, group helmed by new media stars Candace Owens (29) and Charlie Kirk (24), the summit avoided talking about foreign policy and most social issues, and stuck mainly to discussions of free speech, on and off campus, and free markets and limited government generally.  A banner on the stage read "I(Heart)Capitalism" and one outside the building announced that "BigGovernmentSucks" (a slogan also available on the group's T-shirts).  Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke Tuesday not on civil asset forfeiture as a crime fighting tool or the need to recriminalize pot, but on collegiate Bias Response Teams as a threat to free speech on campus.  Senator Rick Santorum spoke Wednesday but didn't expound on traditional marriage or the sanctity of life, even during the Q&A.  Instead moderators and emcees made libertarian overtures, with Kirk denouncing Saudi Arabia and other countries that execute or imprison gays, and FOX News contributor Guy Benson urging students to be open minded and engage their future college dorm mates in debate, to which he attributed his shift while an undergraduate at Northwestern from being a down-the-line conservative on all issues to being more of a libertarian.  Partly because Parkland, Florida survivor Kashuv is on staff, defending the 2nd Amendment was a recurring theme of the conference, along with free speech on campus and chants of "Lock her up!"

Most such center-right conferences now feature a few speakers who are politically engaged billionaires.  Earlier this month FreedomFest in Las Vegas featured Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne and Whole Foods founder John Mackey (and in 2015 they had a pre-electoral Donald Trump.) This week TurningPoint gave the teens Mark Cuban on Tuesday, who had a contentious debate with Kirk on climate change, but told one student in a Q&A that he would have invested in TurningPoint when it was founded in 2012 if Kirk had appeared on Shark Tank, because "sometimes you bet on the jockey, if not on the horse."  (Because he'd listed the possibility of real life Terminators - artificial intelligence with weapons produced by either the U.S. or Chinese military - as one of the two biggest problems humanity faces, along with climate change, Cuban got one question one would have expected to hear at the annual Students for Liberty conference: "Would you privatize the military?")
The TurningPoint teens got another billionaire speaker, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel, discussing how immigration and international trade have not worked out in practice as they are supposed to in theory.  (The speakers are livestreamed here.)

The list of speakers addressing these students is truly impressive:  besides Cuban and Thiel, Sessions and Santorum, the young people heard from United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Education Department Secretary Betsy DeVos, Senator Orrin Hatch, Nigel Farage, Sebastian Gorka, Sean Spicer, Corey Lewandowski, Tom Fitton, Anthony Scaramucci, Ken Bone, Dennis Prager, Eric Bolling, FOX News Jesse Watters, Breitbart editor Alex Marlowe, GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, and Congressmen Thomas Massie, Louie Gohmert, Ron DeSantis, Matt Gaetz, Steve Scalise, Lee Zeldin, and Kevin McCarthy.

But the break out star of the event, the speaker most loved by the audience, is one of their own, Parkland, Florida shooting survivor Kyle Kashuv, now the Director of High School Outreach for TurningPoint and a major 2nd Amendment defender.  Kashuv, a high school junior, shared emceeing and moderating duties with Kirk, Benson, and the Daily Caller's Benny Johnson.  Kirk is a remarkably confident public speaker at 24, debating Cuban or interviewing Secretary DeVos.  But at 16, Kashuv, steady, if less polished, is even more so.

How I became radicalized. [In-depth insight] #WalkAway

Rand Paul urges Trump to pull security clearances

'She Has Gone INSANE' - Tucker Carlson Mocks Hillary Clinton After Her S...

Sen. Mike Lee on Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's Tariffs, and Congressional Dys...

Russia Meddled and Almost Nobody Cared, Until…

Libertarian Running for Governor of New York, Larry Sharpe

Ron Paul: Bitcoin vs. The Fed

Swedish lessons

Johan Norberg

Johan Norberg, a Swedish television journalist and policy analyst (imagine an intellectual Ryan Seacrest), has produced a documentary, Sweden: Lessons for America?, with the American non-profit Milton Friedman inspired group Free to Choose media.

Paradoxically, given Sweden's mythic status as an idyllic social democracy in the minds of many Americans, Norberg says the lessons learned are that the United States - if it wants to be a country with a highly literate, long-lived, healthy, wealthy population - should embrace the free market and become more libertarian.

Sweden has in the past two decades privatized the provision of most social services in its generous welfare state, for example shifting its entire education system to vouchers, which can be used at public or private schools, with parents able to send their children to any school, even in cities other than where they live.  Half of all schools are now private.

Anders Chydenius

Norberg also investigates how Sweden became wealthy before it created its welfare state in the 1950s:  it had more than a century of laissez faire liberalism, during which time it leapt from being one of the poorest countries with a population with relatively short lifespans to being the 4th wealthiest and one of the healthiest.  He unearths a heretofore little known (outside of Sweden) public intellectual, the pastor and journalist Anders Chydenius, who lived in the Swedish empire (in an area that is now Finland), and articulated ideas about competition, competitive advantage, and the gains of trade that were later made famous by Adam Smith.  Chydenius came up with these ideas first, but only promoted free markets (including granting private property to peasants) in the Swedish language, so that the English speaking world had to re-discover them later on its own.  To this day, though it has a variety of labor market regulations, Sweden has no minimum wage laws.

The documentary is timed, paced, and formatted perfectly for television.  School Inc., an earlier project by the Free to Choose group, on the school choice movement, caused gnashing of teeth by "progressives" and opponents of school choice who believe politically incorrect fare should be banned from PBS and other government funded media.

"Sweden: Lessons for America?" caused its own controversy this week as the opening entry into the libertarian film competition, the 8th Anthem Film Festival, part of the 17th FreedomFest conference held annually in Las Vegas, a kind of Burning Man for gold bugs who want to keep their clothes on and stay indoors.  In a Q&A panel afterwords, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund observed that the film avoided Sweden's response to mass immigration and what lesson America should be learning from that.  One audience member pointed out that there are now Swedish neighborhoods unsafe for a Jewish person to walk through, which another panelist hotly disputed.  (One of 22 films screened, "Sweden" did not win any of the prizes awarded.)

Both the Anthem Film Festival and FreedomFest, organized by hard money advocate and investment advice author Mark Skousen ran through Saturday night, with 2,000, older, well-healed, libertarian-leaning attendees.  C-Span's Peter Slen (as well as the internet channel ReasonTV) interviewed speakers at FreedomFest, who included Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com, Steve Forbes, and keynote speaker George F. Will, Whole Foods founder John Mackey, former Governor Gary Johnson, and former Governor William Weld.  Fox News contributor John Stossel was replaced at the last minute, due to an accident resulting in a broken jaw, with a debate on the pros and cons of President Donald Trump, a repeat of a popular and hotly disputed panel held here in 2016.

2018 Bastiat Prize Winners Announced

The Bastiat Prize for Journalism is awarded to writers who best explain the importance of freedom with originality, wit, and eloquence.

The winners were announced Saturday night at the closing banquet, emceed by FOX Business's Kennedy, at the annual FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas, which attracted 2,000 attendees.

The winners were:

Bari Weiss

First prize to Bari Weiss of The New York Times.  Ms. Weiss was formerly an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on The Fifth Column podcast which features a number of reason magazine editors and alumni.  reason now administers the Bastiat prizes.

Jake van der Kamp

Second prize to Jake van der Kamp of the South China Morning Post.  Mr. Van der Kamp is a former investment banker who switched to journalism because it "was more fun" and resides in Hong Kong.  At last night's pre-banquet reception he observed that most of the Las Vegas Strip is reproduced exactly, near Hong Kong, in Macau, China.

Connor Friedersdorf

Third prize went to Connor Friedersdorf, the "house libertarian" of The Atlantic magazine.

Bonnie Kristian

Two other finalists included Bonnie Kristian of The Week and Gustavo Arellano of the Los Angeles Times.

Gustave Arellano

Established in 2002, the Bastiat Prize is named after Frédéric Bastiat, whose brilliant, witty essays explained, “The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”

“This year’s finalists are all erudite and persuasive writers who consistently make the case for freedom and against tyranny,” said Julian Morris, founder of the Bastiat Prize and vice president at Reason Foundation. “What’s more, they all write for mainstream media outlets, suggesting that there is widespread demand for these ideas.”

This year, nominations for the Bastiat Prize were made by an international committee and then the finalists were selected by the Reason Foundation. The winners were chosen by a panel of five judges:

• Tom Palmer, Executive Vice President for International Programs, Atlas Network
• Louis Rossetto, Founder, Wired
• Mohit Satyanand, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Liberty Institute
• Rebecca Weisser, Former Opinion Page Editor, The Australian
• Jamie Whyte, Director of Research, Institute of Economic Affairs

The Bastiat Prize winner receives $10,000, the runner-up $5,000 and the third-place $1,000, along with a crystal trophy shaped like a candlestick, in memory of Frederic Bastiat's satirical essay about a petition of candle makers.

In 2017, The Washington Post’s Radley Balko and The Wall Street Journal’s Hugo Restall were co-winners of the prize. The complete list of previous Bastiat Prize winners is here.

Reason Foundation is a nonprofit think tank dedicated to advancing free minds and free markets. Reason Foundation produces public policy research on a variety of issues and publishes reason magazine

FreedomFest is also home to the Anthem Film Festival, the largest libertarian film festival, which also announced awards from among 22 finalist films screened over the week.

Libertarians convene in New Orleans

This article ran last week at The Federalist.

Though you can see the SuperDome just next door from the glass elevators in the Hyatt Regency, the convention hotel hosting the Libertarian Party's national convention this 4th of July weekend in New Orleans, NBC's Brian Williams is not here covering any notables who might float by.

No other major media are here either, though the delegates' convention bags all have the C-Span logo emblazoned on one side, C-Span having covered their infamous 2016 convention in Orlando, where the Libertarians nominated former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson for President, and a portly Libertarian delegate from Michigan rushed the stage nearly naked to protest that decision.  If C-Span was coming this time they changed their minds, Presidential tweeting and Democrat Congressmen at coast to coast rallies for open borders having distracted all media attention from the possibility of filming more libertarian ultra-transparency.

Over 1,000 are in attendance, including more than 680 delegates, in workshops about how to raise funds and elect local office holders, and in convention voting on a new chair and national committee.  No candidates are being nominated until next year's convention (in Austin, TX), though former Republican Massachusetts Governor William Weld is here speaking and schmoozing, the early front runner for the Libertarian's nomination in 2020.  Former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who left Congress and then ran as a Green Party Presidential candidate, is also here speaking on how Libertarians can do more outreach to black voters, who she argues have been neglected by Democrats, quoting 2016 candidate Donald Trump, "What Do You Have To Lose?"  Most of the speakers here are not well known celebrities, but nuts and bolts activists like the perpetually cheerful national Executive Director of the Libertarian Party, Wes Benedict, or even organizers who are ideological small "l" libertarians but who usually work professionally for major party candidates or for nonpartisan campaigns, like Americans for Prosperity organizer Matthew Colter Hurtt.

The absence of media coverage is so complete that Libertarians not at the convention are dependent on  a live stream of the main hall from YouTube.  Matt Welch, an editor of the libertarian magazine reason (who moderated some panels but has not yet covered the convention) promises wrap-up coverage after the convention ends, and two smaller Washington, D.C. news outfits - 71Republic and News2Share - that specialize in coverage of protests and political conventions, are the only media presence there..

Libertarian delegates will spend the remaining two days of the extended July 4th weekend on debates between and voting on a half dozen people running for national chair of the Libertarian National Committee and another half dozen running for for the vice chair position.  And Governor Weld will continue to endorse local Libertarian candidates he likes and to solicit their support, including Larry Sharpe, the 2018 Libertarian New York gubernatorial candidate who as Politico reported has raised more money and is running a more serious campaign that the Republicans are in New York.  Watching Weld escort Sharpe about the convention it is easy to predict that Governor Weld could be asking Sharpe - who is African-American - to be his vice presidential running mate, especially if his NY race shows well in November. Weld and the rest of the LP are hoping that the increase in registered Libertarian voters, donor lists, states with permanent ballot access, and elected state delegates who switched party registrations, will allow them to continue to grow in 2020.

There is almost no formal discussion of the - almost literal - elephant in the room, namely, how to run against Donald Trump.  If you already have an "outsider," "disruptive" President who is cutting taxes, deregulating, considering Pentagon base closings, having unprecedented peace talks, appointing libertarian-leaning judges from Federalist Society lists, and possibly returning marijuana policy to the states, it is unclear what the Libertarians do to run against him.  They could talk about tariffs or freer immigration, but several Libertarian candidates for federal office here admit off the record that it is hard for them to distinguish themselves from Trump in a broad sense, other than saying that they are more principled about it.

In some jurisdictions, Libertarian candidates like attractive Yale-educated Seattle lawyer Matt Dubin will run for State house and local offices against extreme local policies - often implemented by Democrats - that have nothing to do with Trump.  But nationally Libertarians may have been shunted by Trump's successes into adopting as a slogan: "Peace, prosperity, a growing GDP, falling unemployment - IMAGINE if you had elected an ACTUAL Libertarian!"

Anthem: The Graphic Novel

FreedomFest

Democrats Hate Black People #walkaway

My WalkAway #WalkAway #WalkAwayCampaign

Bret and Eric Weinstein on the psychoepistemology of "progressives"

Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Eric Weinstein, and Dave Rubin LIVE!

Heather Heying on Evergreen State, Trump, and What Happened To Progressi...

Is Jonah Goldberg Turning Into a Libertarian? It Sure Sounds Like It.

'Warlords Will Take Over' and Other Lines Libertarians Are Tired of Hearing

"The WalkAway" Movement Gains Momentum As People Leave Democrat Party

Libertarians contemplate 2020 Presidential nominees

Barry Donegan

· Nashville, TN · 

Most libertarians will hate me saying this, but I like Bill Weld a whole lot and wish he could be the LP nominee in 2020 because he'd have a chance to win.

Those who claim he's not "libertarian" should try and see if you can get elected governor of Massachusetts, the most progressive state in America, and immediately slash welfare, fire thousands of government workers -- deal with that heat, then get reelected in the largest margin pretty much by any governor in U.S. history.

It's one thing to sit on the internet and talk about what would be perfect libertarianism, and it's another to convince the rabidly progressive voters of Massachusetts that government has become too large and actually fire useless bureaucrats and slash unchecked largesse. 

Bill Weld is more or less the Lebron James of deleting government as a governor and in the bluest of states, no less. 

2020 the Dems will put up an extreme progressive to bash Trump because none of the middle of the road guys are going to want to go head to head with Trump, so the LP should put up a candidate that appeals to the middle of America that neither wants full-blown communism nor nationalist authoritarianism. A back-bencher with no political experience can't get on TV, so people like that aren't on the table to impact the race.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Libertarian National Convention New Orleans July 1, 2018 Live Stream