Posted by Ilya Somin: Brink Lindsey's Case for Libertarian Optimism: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_07_08-2007_07_14.shtml#1184128125
At Cato Unbound, Brink Lindsey (who earlier won fame for [1]his interesting proposal for a liberal-libertarian political alliance), has a [2]fascinating essay arguing that longterm historical trends favor libertarianism. Lindsey makes a compelling case that both economic and social freedom have made significant advances over the last 40 years, and that both popular and elite opinion has gradually moved in a libertarian direction over that time. Obviously, Lindsey's analysis of longterm trends has to be weighed against the significant setbacks that libertarian causes have sustained during the Bush Administration as a result of Bush's [3]disastrous big-government conservatism and the resurgence of old-style big government liberalism on the political left. I also have a few other reservations about Lindsey's arguments that I may detail in a later post, if time permits. Nonetheless, I think that Lindsey is right to insist on the primacy of longterm trends over short-term ones. And I also agree that many libertarians are unduly pessimistic as a result of overrating the significance of recent events, a point I elaborated on in [4]this post. For the reasons Lindsey elaborates, long-run economic and social trends favor libertarianism in significant ways, though we will have to find better tactics for beating back resurgent statism over the next few difficult years. References 1. http://volokh.com/posts/1165288649.shtml 2. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/07/09/brink-lindsey/the-libertarian-center/ 3. http://volokh.com/posts/1146756572.shtml 4. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_03_11-2007_03_17.shtml#1174182832 _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
