Assume for the sake of the argument that the run-of-the-mill nationalist’s expression “our national resources” is meaningful. These resources—physical resources, capital, talents, expertise, etc.—constitute a sort of “public good” belonging to, and to be consumed collectively by, the nation’s members, if not by “the Nation” herself. Consider a first contradiction. Nationalists are usually mercantilist: they want “protection” against imports and maximization of exports—the largest possible trade surplus. But this means using “our national resources” to produce goods for foreigners (the definition of exports), and using state coercion (tariffs and other barriers to imports) to limit our fellow citizens’ consumption of the production from (output of) foreigners’ own national resources. The contradiction is obvious. To be consistent, nationalists should instead favor maximum imports and minimum exports. A nationalist could offer the counter-argument that “we” export production from “our” national resources in order to be able to import the foreigners’ production from their national resources. If that is true, “we” would want the best terms of trade, that is, as much importation and as little exportation as possible. But why would “we” want to do this? Answering by invoking comparative advantage and the benefits of trade generates a second contradiction (this one more institutional than purely logical). For then, why would “we” limit imports to what our government’s political and bureaucratic geniuses think should and should not be imported and under which conditions? Economic freedom is generally more efficient than government planning and industrial policy. What does “efficient” mean? Different schools of economic thought provide different answers: maximizing economic benefits measured in terms of money (mainstream neoclassical school); maximizing social welfare (welfare economics); favoring economic growth and prosperity (Adam Smith and classical economics); “increas[ing] the opportunities for any unknown person picked at random” (Friedrich Hayek); coordinating individual actions (see, for example, Robert Sugden, The Economics of Rights, Cooperation, and Welfare or, for the matter, Anthony de Jasay); realizing the common preferences of all individuals for the basic rules of social interaction (James Buchanan). The underlying ideal is to satisfy as much as possible the demands of all individuals, all being assumed formally equal. In international trade as in domestic trade, comparative advantage simply follows from free individuals (and their private organizations) producing what each can produce efficiently enough to find willing customers, in order to be able to purchase individually what they want at the lowest price available. Economic efficiency refers to the satisfaction of individual preferences. A corollary of these individualist theories is that property of “our national resources” is held by individuals in severalty, as opposed to in commonalty (a legal term to mean “in common”). Otherwise, the principal-agent problem prevents the efficient use of resources on the Pareto frontier. (See Chapter 13 of de Jasay’s Justice and Its Surroundings.) What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody except the state. Nationalism, on the contrary, refers to the satisfaction of the national collective, which means in practice its majority or a plurality. Nationalism is a form of collectivism. In reality, the satisfaction of a collective amounts to the satisfaction of the preferences of its rulers and their political supporters. In a free society, “national resources” are private. (Exceptions for communal lands, streets, roads, and such can be justified, perhaps with a contractarian argument, but they would be exceptions.) Trade from the outputs of private resources is, at least in peacetime, freely open for individuals and their private organizations to conduct as they want. ****************************** Waiting in line to hug our national-collective tree, by ChatGPT and your humble blogger (0 COMMENTS)

One of the myriad of justifications given for Trump’s love of tariffs is that they are actually a negotiating tool to get the rest of the world to be more fair to American firms.  American firms supposedly face high trade and non-trade barriers and these tariffs are to show that “we mean business” and force other countries to the negotiating table.   Let’s take that explanation as given.  In theory, if tariffs are short-lived enough and can reduce barriers, then that could be acceptable.  But, as economists since Adam Smith have noted, the success of such a maneuver is highly dependent on the skill of the negotiator.  We have empirical evidence from Trump’s first term as to his skill in such negotiations.  The evidence is not in his favor. In Trump’s first term, there were two major trade deals:  the conclusion to the China-America trade war he started the renegotiation of NAFTA, called the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (aka USMCA or NAFTA 2.0) Let us look at each of these in turn. First, the trade war with China was a monumental loss.  Even figuring in tax revenue (which is not a welfare loss but a transfer to government), US total welfare was down following the trade war (see here, in particular Section 6, for a discussion and various estimations on welfare).  What’s more, the trade war resulted in permanently higher tariffs.  Both US tariffs on Chinese goods and Chinese tariffs on US goods are permanently higher after the trade war than before.  According to Dr. Chad Brown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, before the trade war, US tariffs on Chinese goods were approximately 3% while Chinese tariffs on US goods were approximately 8%.  Following the trade war, Chinese tariffs on American goods were approximately 21% and American tariffs on Chinese goods were about the same.  Furthermore, approximately 1% of American exports to China were subject to tariffs before the trade war.  After the trade war, that percentage rose to 58%.  If the trade war was meant to open China to American firms, it failed miserably.* Second, the renegotiation of NAFTA has been lambasted by Trump.  He stated that it allowed Canada and Mexico to take advantage of American manufacturers.  “Who would sign something like this?”  he asked.  He would sign something like that.  The USMCA was signed and championed by Trump in his first term.  In Trump’s eyes, his own negotiated deal failed.  Of course, the bizarre thing is that the USMCA is actually a pretty good deal.  It’s essentially NAFTA; relatively little was changed.  But in Trump’s eyes, it failed. So, Trump’s trade negotiation track record, both by-the-numbers and in his own estimations, is abysmal.  What to make of all this?  The weird thing is: Trump can actually be a good negotiator.  In his first term, he scored some major diplomatic coups.  For example, the Abraham Accords normalized relations with Israel and many Arab countries.  But he often lets his emotions rule his reason.  In trade, that seems to be the case, doubly so.  If Trump could show some restraint in trade negotiations, he might be able to reduce tariffs and increase trade.  But he also fundamentally misunderstands trade.  He is openly and shamelessly mercantilistic.  He is utterly obsessed with trade deficits and thinks trade is something one can win.  One cannot negotiate when one does not fundamentally understand the topic at hand; it’s like negotiating to buy a car without understanding what a car is supposed to do. *Decoupling (i.e., removing US firms and trade from China) is sometimes given as a reason for this trade war, but that has failed too.  There was almost no decoupling following the trade war. (0 COMMENTS)

A recent article in the OC Register discussed a proposal to stop producing pennies: Consumers could get shortchanged by a new U.S. policy to stop making pennies by early next year.While the U.S. Treasury would save tens of millions of dollars by eliminating the 233-year-old 1-cent coin, an unintended consequence would be higher prices pushed to millions of poor consumers.Bill Maurer, dean of the School of Social Sciences at UC Irvine, says removing the penny will harm those who don’t use bank cards or digital money options.He pointed to two congressional proposals that he says ignore the gap between the rich and poor — the “Common Cents Act,” which was introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers that includes U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from Long Beach, and the “Make Sense Not Cents Act.”Both proposals would halt penny production within a year of enactment. And while the penny would remain legal tender, businesses would round cash transactions to the nearest nickel under either of the new laws — a key concern for Maurer and others. I see two problems with the claims made in this article.  First, it seems very unlikely that the penny plays a useful role in our economy.  Second, removing the penny would not cause higher prices–indeed the reverse is more likely. Today, the CPI is roughly 38 times higher than back in 1900.  At that time, the smallest coin produced by the US government was the penny—just as today.   In terms of today’s dollars, the Americans of 1900 chose not to produce any coins of a denomination below 38 cents.  Not only is it not at all clear that we need pennies, even nickels and dimes are of very questionable utility.  We seemed to do fine without coins of that purchasing power back in 1900. Even in the mid-1960s (when I was about ten years old), the penny was viewed as being so worthless that children were taunted for picking one up off the sidewalk.  And yet the CPI today is 10 times higher than in the mid-1960s. So the efficiency argument for pennies is exceedingly weak.  But what about the equity argument?  Would removing the penny increase prices, as retailers round up the price of sneakers from $29.99 to $30?  I doubt it.  It seems more likely that they would round down to $29.95.   But even if I am wrong, even if retailers did round up prices from $29.99 to $30, removing the penny would not increase effective prices facing consumers, and would probably reduce them.  To understand why, we need to take a closer look at the dynamics of highly competitive markets. In most of the industries where firms price at just below a round number, competition is fierce.  Examples include clothing retailers, grocery stores and gas stations.  In those sorts of industries, long run economic profits are close to the normal rate of return in other similar competitive industries.  Any action that increases or reduces costs gets passed on to consumers.  Maybe not immediately, but certainly in the long run. It’s a hassle for retailers to handle small coins.  Removing them from circulation would slightly reduce transactions costs (although admittedly the effect would be tiny.). Even if a few products were rounded up from $29.99 to $30, on average the price level would be slightly lower than if pennies were still in circulation, as the cost saving from reduced handling of bulky coins would eventually be passed on to customers. This is similar to an argument I made in a previous post, which showed that regulations preventing price gouging actually result in higher prices to consumers in the long run. (0 COMMENTS)

  When I started to write this article, I was ready to blame Krugman for not discussing this far more important economic restriction. Then I did some research. Research is most useful when it changes your mind, and my research did change my mind. It turns out that Krugman has been very good at laying out the large costs to the economy of making housing artificially expensive. Caplan, in Build, Baby, Build, quotes the following from Krugman: High housing prices in slow-growing states also owe a lot to policies that sharply limit construction. Limits on building height in the cities, zoning that blocks denser development in the suburbs, and other policies constrict housing on both coasts. Krugman also notes, “Meanwhile, looser regulation in the South has kept the supply of housing elastic and the cost of living low.” Many economists, to their credit, criticize these restrictions on building. But they are, on average, less outspoken against these incredibly destructive restrictions than they are against the less damaging restrictions on international trade.   The above is from my most-recent Hoover article, “Housing Restrictions Hit Harder Than Tariffs,” Defining Ideas, June 5, 2025. Read the whole thing. (1 COMMENTS)

Economist Noah Smith was so focused on libertarianism’s theoretical flaws, he overlooked its political importance. Trump’s tariff policy opened his eyes and made him re-assess the virtues of both libertarianism and Econ 101. Listen as he and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts explore the way political competition has shaped economic policy in surprising ways in recent years. The post Two Cheers for Libertarianism and Econ 101 (with Noah Smith) appeared first on Econlib.

  Is the Supreme Court Really That Divided? The Facts Say No. by Billy Binion, Reason, June 5, 2025. Excerpt: The gist is simple. That issue focused “on what appears to many to be an existential threat to democracy,” the magazine wrote, which is “the far-right shift of the Supreme Court, and the conservative movement’s plans to commandeer it.” That critique has persisted for some time now. Some decisions today from the Court help show, once again, why it is neither fair nor accurate. First up was Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, in which the justices reversed a lower court decision and sided with a woman who said she was the victim of reverse discrimination, ruling that members of a majority group do not have to clear a higher bar to prove such claims. The opinion, written by Jackson, was unanimous. Here’s the money quote from Justice Jackson’s opinion: The Sixth Circuit’s “background circumstances” rule requires plaintiffs who are members of a majority group to bear an additional burden at step one. But the text of Title VII’s disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs. The provision focuses on individuals rather than groups, barring discrimination against “any individual” because of protected characteristics. Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone. DRH comment: I disagree with the concept of “reverse discrimination.” It’s discrimination, plain and simple.   Is the ABA’s Accreditation Monopoly Coming to an End? by Jonathan H. Adler, Civitas Institute, June 2, 2025. Excerpts: The American Bar Association (ABA) is the nation’s largest lawyers’ organization. While representing only a small fraction of lawyers, it is also the sole accrediting body for law schools. Whereas universities generally are accredited by regional accrediting organizations, the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is the only game in town. Federal student loans are only available to accredited institutions, and the vast majority of states require a degree from an ABA-accredited school to take the bar exam. Could this soon change? As the cost of legal education continues to rise and technological changes threaten to transform the delivery of legal services, the ABA’s de facto monopoly on legal accreditation is under siege. Texas and Florida, the states with the third and fourth-most lawyers in the country, are both considering whether to stop requiring bar applicants to have attended an ABA-accredited school. At the same time, the Trump Administration is pushing to expand accreditation options. An April Executive Order directed the Department of Education to step up scrutiny of existing accrediting institutions while simultaneously expediting approval of new accreditors so as “to increase competition and accountability in promoting high-quality, high-value academic programs focused on student outcomes.” And: Whether the ABA sees itself as a cartel today, much of its accreditation behavior aligns with what a self-interested cartel would do. Accordingly, many of the ABA’s accreditation requirements focus on costly inputs, such as the number of books in the library or the number of full-time, tenured faculty, that have no demonstrated relationship to a student’s ability to pass the bar or become an effective lawyer. These requirements, however, have helped inflate the cost of obtaining a law degree and stifled innovation in legal education.   Nathan Fielder’s 737 Stunt Involved Elaborate Workaround of Ridiculous 1,500-Hour Rule by Christian Britschgi, Reason, June 5, 2025. Excerpt: What can be said for Fielder’s idea is that it would be at least as effective as the 1,500-hour rule (which is to say, not at all) and much less costly. No other country in the world requires airline pilots to rack up as much flight time as the U.S. currently does. Neither the Federal Aviation Administration (which regulates aviation safety) nor the National Transportation Safety Board (which investigates crashes) has found anyrelationship between the 1,500-hour rule and improved safety. (The two pilots in the Colgan disaster notably had over 1,500 hours of experience each.) Critics charge that the 1,500-hour rule reduces safety by forcing pilots to spend endless hours performing routine flights at the expense of time spent training in more productive simulators. Regional airlines complain that it’s made recruiting pilots much more difficult, leading to a shortage of pilots and reduced regional airline service. DRH comment: A better way to train pilots, on a benefit and cost per hour basis, is to have them fly simulators for a lot of hours. Why? Because simulators can simulate. That is, they can put the trainee in an emergency situation that he probably will never see in his 1,500 flight hours. And, moreover, it can do so for many emergency situations. This point was made to a good friend of mine by a retired American Airlines pilot who teaches trainees.   The Mediscare Campaign, CBO Version Editorial, Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2025 (June 6 print version.) Excerpts: Start with CBO’s estimate that 5.2 million able-bodied adults on Medicaid would lose coverage owing to the bill’s work requirements. This contradicts the Democratic claim that few able-bodied people on Medicaid don’t work. But in any case, the work requirement could spur some to find gainful private employment that provides health insurance. That’s one laudable goal of the bill. DRH comment: It appears from this quote that the CBO assumed that none of these able-bodied adults would get jobs. That’s amazing. It’s hard to believe that the CBO would be so dense. I haven’t checked the CBO study. I will later. The CBO forecast also includes 1.4 million undocumented migrants who would lose coverage, mainly because the bill reduces federal matching funds for states that extend Medicaid to illegals. The bill also bars ObamaCare subsidies for many non-permanent immigrants and asylum seekers, which CBO estimates would reduce coverage by one million. DRH comment: This is good, not bad. I’ve always advocated, along with substantially expanding the number of immigrants allowed, that the government not subsidize their health care and/or health insurance. And whatever the government does about legal immigration, it should not subsidize health care or health insurance for illegal immigrants. (0 COMMENTS)

For 35 years, I taught economics at the college level. When teaching the theory of supply and demand, I would explain how a temporary shortage of goods would lead to higher prices in the short run. The resulting excess profits would draw new firms into the industry, eventually bringing prices back down to their long run equilibrium level.  During that entire period of time, I don’t recall a single objection. No one raised their hand and told me, “That’s morally wrong, firms should not raise prices when there is a shortage of a good”. But why not? It’s not as if students never disagreed with me on anything, I can recall a number of times when I was challenged on this or that issue.  Today, I wish that college students had challenged me much more frequently, on all sorts of points. It’s clear that they left college not really believing in the things that they were being taught. Most Americans oppose price gouging. Most Americans believe imports hurt our economy and exports help our economy. Nearly half of the public supports tariffs. On a wide range of issues, most people do not accept the “economic way of thinking.” I believe students should challenge their professors far more often. Indeed I’d argue that if college has any purpose at all (which is becoming increasingly controversial in an age of AI), it is not in sitting at a desk taking notes, it is in challenging the professor. Why else would you wish to go to college? Anyone can sit at home and read a textbook. Some might argue that this proposal is unrealistic.  But I know it is not.  Students did occasionally challenge me on one point or another. As an undergrad at Wisconsin, I occasionally challenged my professors (once successfully), and they were invariably quite respectful of my criticism.   It makes me sad to think of the millions of students who sit in college economics courses, not believing what they are being taught, but somehow feeling that they need to keep quiet.  I can sort of understand how that might be the case in a sensitive area like identity politics—but supply and demand? Today, I meet many middle-aged people with very uninformed views on issues like price gouging and international trade.  If only they had challenged their professors in college, they might have avoided adopting erroneous views on these issues. PS.  Some college classes are too large to have Q&A.  But the classes I taught were generally around 30 students. (0 COMMENTS)

I don’t want to sound too paternalistic, but one thing should be said: poor Elon Musk played a game he does not understand. “This is what victory feels like,” he shouted with overexcitement at Mr. Trump’s inauguration event (it is worth watching the one-minute video). He had contributed more than $250 million to the Trump 2024 campaign. He carelessly promised that he would cut $2 trillion, or one-third, from federal government expenditures, before he cut his cutting promise to $1 trillion, and he finally achieved less than 20% of this last goal. His conspiracy theorizing did not help him, as it never does. The acrimonious crash of the Trump-Musk relationship was predictable. (See “The Trump-Musk Relationship Ruptures in Real Time,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2025; and “The Trump-Musk ‘War of the Roses,’” June 5, 2025.) Neither of the two men is used to being bullied around. It is not the first time that Trump has turned against a former associate. I suspect that Mr. Musk, like Mr. Trump, requires personal loyalty and fealty of the medieval sort, but neither can fathom decentralized power. They both think in terms of power, not in terms of liberty. And both are more emotional than rational. Musk is certainly a great visionary and entrepreneur, but he does not mind getting or requesting assistance from governments. As we have seen in the last election, he is also a daring political entrepreneur, although his bad bet on Trump may haunt him for a long time. Although he did oppose the deficit-happy “Big Beautiful Bill” and (less openly) the trade war, Musk is certainly not a libertarian or classical liberal. The classical liberal tradition entertains an economic and philosophical theory of politics that excludes the Princess-Mathilde view—that the criterion of a good government is that it serves my immediate interest at the cost of others. At best, Musk’s political ideology looks like naïve democratism based on a “will of the people” that even lawyers dare not oppose. He probably has never read any structured libertarian argument. Some of us may have hoped that Musk would eventually discover the liberal ideal of liberty. If any hope remains, it will likely be frustrated. At any rate, few people in their fifties (even in their thirties, John Maynard Keynes believed) are able to seriously consider new ideas. I doubt he will take the red pill. (See my post “Elon Musk, Edward Luce, and Libertarianism,” June 5, 2023.) The stronger the embrace of Leviathan, the more politics becomes what Anthony de Jasay described: a game of coercively harming some people in order to favor useful clientèles. Mr. Musk thought he had positioned himself on the right side of the divide; he may now, poor man, have fallen on the other side. Trump wrote on his social media: The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. Musk’s billions will help him survive on the wrong side of the adversary and discriminatory state, if only Leviathan does not seriously get on his case. As Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief, reportedly said, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” According to the Wall Street Journal, Steve Bannon “suggested that Musk’s immigration status be investigated.” According to The Economist, Bannon wants him to be stripped of American citizenship. Other threats have been voiced. Musk may end up wishing there are judges to block the “will of the people” against him. If one chickens out between the king and the courtier, it will nearly certainly be the latter. In the meantime, some chaotic surprises and reversals are not impossible. As Trump also has much to lose, it is possible that the two warriors will bury the war hatchet, at least publicly or for a time. As William Riker noted, in democratic choices insufficiently constrained by institutions, “anything can happen.” ****************************** In this fictional future, Elon Musk would need a companion (2 COMMENTS)

‘Men of good will, will be called upon to use the power of government to solve our problems of all the social ills: poverty, ignorance, squalor. We as economists are entrusted with these tools and with this now power to be able to achieve that.’ ~Paul Samuelson In this episode, Peter Boettke of George Mason University joins host Russ Roberts to delve into the historical and contemporary relevance of the socialist calculation debate. The discussion reminds us why a centrally planned economy can allocate resources as efficiently as a market-based system, but raises more questions about the debate’s resurgence today. The conversation begins with Boettke recounting Ludwig von Mises‘s 1920 critique of socialism, where he argued that without market prices for capital goods, rational economic calculation is impossible. He then walks listeners through Friedrich Hayek‘s subsequent expansion on Mises’s ideas, in which he emphasized the dispersed nature of knowledge and how market prices communicate information necessary for efficient resource allocation. Following these seminal contributions, economists like Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner proposed models of market socialism, suggesting that central planners could simulate market outcomes through trial-and-error pricing. Boettke and Roberts then turn how the debate remains relevant today; what once may have been considered an “archaic academic debate,” has risen anew, particular with the advent of technologies like artificial intelligence. Below are some questions that occurred to me that I hope might spark conversation and deepen what we might learn together from this episode: 1- What are the “three P’s” Boettke points to that are key to combating the Romanticism of socialism, and what is the significance of each? 2- How does Boettke apply Thomas Sowell’s famous Conflict of Visions to the socialist calculation debate? What do you think this implies about the possibility of settling the debate once again? 3- Boettke describes Hayek’s critique  as deeper and more insightful than Mises’s. For what reasons does he say this, and to what extent do you agree? What does Boettke mean when he says that Hayek teaches us that the problem with socialism is a generative (rather than computational) one? 4- The conversation turns to the role of Ronald Coase in the story of the debate. Where do firms sit in relationship to the debate- or why do we need firms if we have markets? 5- Roberts and Boettke also discuss Michael Polanyi’s turn from science to philosophy, and Boettke stresses Polanyi’s work on the importance of science to a free society. Why is science so important to a free society? What is (or should be) the role of wonder, surprise, and admiration (cue Professor Smith) in both the physical and social sciences? 6- Toward the end of the episode, Roberts poses two questions to Boettke. I’d like to hear your answers to each of these questions: a. Why won’t AI be able to solve the problem of economic calculation? Or will it??? b. Why has socialism come into vogue again? What is it about today’s culture and/or economy that has rendered socialism an attractive option again? 📖 Further Reading: Ludwig von Mises’s “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” Friedrich Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society” Oskar Lange’s On the Economic Theory of Socialism Ronald Coase, “The Nature of the Firm“   (0 COMMENTS)

An Econlib article by Peter Boettke on “Virginia Political Economy: James Buchanan’s Journey” shows how political philosophy and economics were enmeshed in Buchanan’s work. It also reminded me of an interesting two-part video of an interview of Buchanan by Geoffrey Brennan. The two economists often worked together and were notably co-authors of The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy (1985), which provides a summary of the contractarian and constitutional construction that is central to their work. (This classic book is available online; I recently reviewed it for Econlib.) The video gives a less technical and more conversational overview of the work of Buchanan, who died in 2013. At the very end of the two-hour conversation, Buchanan disserts on what he believes, à la Albert Camus, is the ultimate absurdity of life, except for one sort of consideration. He confesses a departure from methodological individualism as if death and the meaning of life (or at least of his life) require an exception. I wish the whole conversation were transcribed, if only because a Southern accent is not exactly a French accent. In my own transcription of that passage below, the ellipses indicate conversational hesitations, details, or simply words that I could not identify; Buchanan continues about life: The whole thing may be absurd. What is it all about? … Why is it that I am interested in what’s going to happen when I am no longer around. In my case, it can’t be genetic because I don’t have any children. … But yet then I am intensely interested in that. … It seems to me that—and this does get me a bit away from the methodological individualism … we, or at least I, feel like I am a kind of member of a kind of a tribe, what we might call a tribe that is a continuing tribe, it doesn’t die … it may die, but it does not necessarily die, but it does beyond my mortality, it’s kind of a tribe that would called, described as the spirit of liberty or the spirit of classical liberalism. And it seems to me as a participant in that game … furthering those ideas … and I live as long as those ideas live in a way. I am just a part of a stream and in a sense that stream is moving on. Now it takes people to keep pushing and keep motivating that stream, or else the stream can die, it’s not necessarily immortal. On the other hand, it transcends human life … it provides meaning to ordinary life. … It seems to me the spirit of liberalism, the spirit of classical liberalism, or the spirit of liberty if you want, can be a kind of justification that sort of gets you away form this ultimate absurdity in a way. There are great mysteries in the universe that lie much beyond political philosophy. But whether life is meaningful or absurd, whether eternal life exists or not, it is always the individual who experiences life or death. “Tho’ there is a God or not,” sang poet Leonard Cohen. ***************************** Buchanan’s family farm in Tennessee (0 COMMENTS)