Freespace

Talking about administrative law...and war...with Armstrong and Getty

This morning, I joined Armstrong and Getty to talk about the Jarkesy and Loper Bright cases in the U.S. Supreme Court (and we also ended up talking about Sackett)...and then they had me stick around to talk about the wars in Ukraine and Israel. If you missed it, you can listen here.

Economic liberty and civil discourse

I spoke last night at ASU as part of their series of lectures on "Civics, Patriotism, and America's Prospects." The theme of my talk was the relationship between economic freedom and democracy--specifically, how private property rights and economic freedom are essential to preserving a healthy democratic society. And in part my remarks were a response to earlier presentations by Robert George, Richard Haass, and others, who I argue were largely wrong in the prescriptions for improving American civil society.

I'm told the video of the event will be made available soon on YouTube and broadcast on Arizona PBS, but if you don't want to wait, you can listen to my remarks here.

What about the environment?

In the latest installment of the Goldwater Institute's "Foundations of Freedom" video series, I take a look at the environment. It's often said that government has to regulate our behavior in order to protect the planet. But if that's so, why are the dirtiest places on the planet the places where the government has the most power? I explain:

My article on the life and art of Frank Lloyd Wright

The Objective Standard has published my article on the life and art of Frank Lloyd Wright. It elaborates on the talk I gave at LevelUp this summer, exploring the basic principles of Wright’s “Organic Architecture” and Wright’s effort to reconcile the natural and human with the age of the machine. Here’s an excerpt:

The international style plainly appealed to those who despised individualism and viewed decoration or a concern with beauty or the human spirit as decadent distractions from the task of mass-producing uniform "machines for living."

Nothing could have been more alien to Frank Lloyd Wright. He shared the Internationalists' rejection of obsolete artistic traditions and even praised Corbusier's book, agreeing that modern architecture should emphasize "the clean lines and surfaces of the aeroplane, the ocean greyhounds [ships], and...certain machinery." But he could not abide their ascetic functionalism. He believed that humanity and The Machine could coexist, but the kind of mechanization the Internationalists endorsed struck him as fundamentally antihuman. In fact, architecture critic Henry Russell Hitchcock—who began as one of Wright's harshest detractors but became an admirer—expressed the difference between the two camps precisely when he said the former had "bowed to the material side of the machine," whereas the later "rejoice[d] in its spirit." He meant that the Internationalists sought to make people into a kind of machine—and he did not mean this as a reproach. The Internationalists "are not humanists," Hitchcock observed. "They seek to express and to take part in the possible reintegration toward which after the decadence of the nineteenth century our life seems to be moving."

Nobody represented that "decadence" more than Frank Lloyd Wright. "Poetic tranquility instead of a more deadly 'efficiency,' should be the [goal] in the art of Building," he wrote. In his view, the Internationalists' hostility to beauty—or, in his words, their "sterility of ornaphobia"—had no stopping point. If followed to its logical conclusion, it would make every building a featureless cube, so anonymous and depersonalized that it might be plunked down anywhere in the world with no relationship to its surroundings and no sympathy for its inhabitants. One might as well "trim up the trees, too, shape them into boxes," he wrote, "cut them to cubes and triangles.... We are eventually going to have as citizens machine-made men, corollary to machines, if we don’t look out[.]" He thought it was right for modern architecture to aspire to dignified simplicity, but Internationalism embraced simplicity without the dignity, effacing architecture itself. That was why international style buildings “utterly fail to make [their] virtues honorably or humanly effective."

Read the rest…

Economic freedom and democratic participation

 I’ll be speaking at ASU on Nov. 28 as part of their “Civic Discourse Project”—which focuses on the need for civil deliberation, democratic participation, and civic education.

I’ll be disagreeing with some of the previous speakers and rattling a few cages…civilly, of course.

Registration is required--please join us!

Against the New Politics of Identity

In my latest book review for The Objective Standard, I examine Ronald Lindsay’s new book about identity politics. It’s probably the best such book that’s come out so far—written with a degree of patience and calm that I doubt I could manage if I were writing such a book. Here’s an excerpt from my review:

The irrationality of some parties in today’s political and cultural disputes—especially those involving race—is now so overwhelming that anyone trying to make sense of their arguments might feel paralyzed. In fact, the very idea of “making sense” is considered racist in certain circles: In 2020, the Smithsonian Institution published a document asserting that “objective, rational linear thinking” is a manifestation of “white supremacy” (21). And physicist Chand Prescod-Weinstein has condemned “white empiricism” as a form of “epistemic oppression.”

Many of America’s major institutions, from colleges to corporations to government agencies, have likewise embraced the premise that the United States is “systemically racist” and that all good people should direct their energies to “disrupting” the alleged “oppression” of “white society”—which, of course, means the remaining elements of capitalism in today’s mixed economy. To question this orthodoxy—or even, in some cases, to agree with it—is grounds for termination, humiliation, and “cancellation.”

Amid such intellectual gloom, it’s refreshing to find a clear light of reason in Ronald Lindsay’s Against the New Politics of Identity.

Read the rest…

Talking about the "Furies" at ASU

I spoke the other day at Arizona State University about my book Freedom's Furies and the lives and ideas of Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand--particularly the question of how their being women affected their ideas. You can watch it here:

Foundations of Freedom: The Rule of Law

In the latest video in the Goldwater Institute's series on the Foundations of Freedom, I discuss the principle of "the Rule of Law." What makes laws different from commands? What about vague laws? And is "originalism" really objective law?

Talking about the "Furies" of modern libertarianism at ASU tonight!

I'll be speaking at Arizona State University about my book Freedom's Furies at 5pm today--all are welcome, and we'll even be giving away some free books! Please join us.

My Louis Sullivan pilgrimmage

I've long been a fan of the great architect Louis Sullivan, the "father of the skyscraper," who is probably best remembered today as the mentor of Frank Lloyd Wright (and is known to Fountainhead fans as the model for the character of Henry Cameron). Sullivan didn't invent the skyscraper or the steel-frame building (the first of those was built by his friend, William LeBaron Jenney), but he invented the aesthetics of the tall building, insisting in his famous article "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered" that tall buildings should look tall, and not try to look like French castles or Roman temples. And he was, indeed, one of the greatest artists of American building. He's also one of the great tragic figures of American art; in the early 20th century, the architecture profession turned against his style and toward neo-classicism, and he ended up dying bankrupt and nearly forgotten by all but a few of his admirers (among whom was, of course, Wright). 

This summer, I got a chance to see one of Sullivan's greatest achievements, the National Farmers Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota (1908), which is now a Wells Fargo and is probably the most beautiful room in America (click on pictures to enlarge):

 

More below the fold...

Foundations of Freedom: The Pursuit of Happiness

In the third episode of the Goldwater Institute's series on the Foundations of Freedom, I talk about what "the pursuit of happiness" really means. Check it out:

Foundations of Freedom: The Freedom of Speech

In the second installment of the Goldwater Institute's video series on the Foundations of Freedom, I take a look at free speech. Why do we have this right? What's it really for?

David Beito’s book on the New Deal’s war on individual rights

In the latest National Review, I take a look at David T. Beito’s book The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights. Excerpt:

Pick at random any book about the New Deal, and it will contain no mention of his policies of censorship, mass surveillance, and intimidation and persecution of political opponents. It likely will concede that his decision to imprison 100,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps was wrong but excuse his refusal to act against Jim Crow as if it were an unfortunate reality forced upon a benevolent patriarch who wished he could heal the nation.

David Beito’s The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights is a welcome break with such rosy nostalgia. In nine succinct and deeply researched chapters, he explores how Roosevelt and his allies masterminded “mass surveillance of private telegrams, crackdowns on free speech, inquisitorial investigations, sedition prosecutions,” and other abuses — while blithely facilitating segregation and violence in the South.

Read the rest…

Frank Lloyd Wright: the rebel architect

I spoke at LevelUp (formerly TOS-Con) this summer about the life and career of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the video of my presentation has just been posted online. Unfortunately, due to some kind of technical error, the video consists almost entirely of my PowerPoint slides, so you'll probably find it easier to listen to, rather than watch, the presentation:

The Supreme Court decision that could help us take back our cities

I have an article on the Fox News site this morning about the Grants Pass lawsuit that the Supreme Court is being asked to take up—a case with important ramifications for the homelessness crisis in American cities, and especially in Phoenix. Excerpt:

To be fair, both of those rulings said cities can still enforce laws against camping on the streets. "Even where shelter is unavailable," the Martindecision declared, "an ordinance prohibiting sitting, lying, or sleeping outside at particular times or in particular locations might well be constitutionally permissible."

Nevertheless, bureaucrats nationwide have found the "involuntariness" rationale so confusing that some can’t figure out how to address their local homelessness problems—and others have seen the rulings as a handy way to evade responsibility. As Judge Blaney put it, "city officials that wish to do nothing while such encampments grow and fester" have viewed the Martin and Grants Passcases as "convenient excuse[s]."

Read the rest…

Talking with A&G about the homelessness cases

I joined Armstrong & Getty this morning to talk about the homelessness lawsuits in Phoenix--where a state trial court judge has ordered the city to clean up the "Zone" encampment--and in the U.S. Supreme Court, which has been asked to take up the Grants Pass case. If you missed it, you can listen here:

The Goldwater Chair in American Institutions at ASU

I’m honored to announce that I have been named the Barry Goldwater Chair in American Institutions at Arizona State University for 2023-24. This position (which has no relationship to the Goldwater Institute) was established on May 16, 1977, and according to its founding charter, is “a visiting professorship for scholars in political science, economics, history and related fields” with the goal of “honor[ing] Barry Goldwater for his distinguished service as a United States Senator and help students better understand the principles of Americanism, individual freedom, and the free enterprise system for which he has stood throughout his career.” I am profoundly moved to hold a position that has been held in the past by such luminaries as John Dean and Jack Goldsmith.

In my role as Goldwater Chair, I will be working with the Center for the Study of Economic Liberty to teach a class in the spring semester entitled “The American Dream: Economic Liberty as an American Institution,” which will explore the political, legal, and cultural ramifications of the right to economic freedom. The class will be hosted by ASU’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.

In addition to the class, the Goldwater Chair traditionally delivers a number of public lectures, and I will be presenting three of these. The first will be on October 17 at 5 p.m. at Memorial Hall on the Tempe campus, on the subject of my book Freedom’s Furies: How Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand Found Liberty in an Age of Darkness. The second will be on November 28, on the subject of how licensing laws and other restrictions on economic liberty harm democratic values. The third will be announced as soon as it’s arranged.

The Foundations of Freedom

One of the projects I've been working on at the Goldwater Institute is a series of videos on the Foundations of Freedom. These short educational videos explore the principles of liberty, from private property to freedom of speech to the question of individual pride. The Institute will be releasing them in stages over the coming weeks--and here is the first one: The Power of Property. Hope you enjoy--and please share!

Emanations, Penumbras, and Zeugmas,* and Distributions

In my remarks about Haaland v. Brackeen at Cato Monday, I feel I gave short shrift to the question Prof. Christopher Green asked regarding Justice Gorsuch’s view that the Indian Commerce Clause gives Congress greater powers than does the Interstate or Foreign Commerce Clause, and I want to address it more fully.

I discussed the alleged “plenary power,” which the majority stitched together from the penumbras and emanations of the Treaty, Commerce, and other powers, and which Gorsuch rightly rejects. But I also rejected Gorsuch’s view that the Commerce Clause itself can encompass child welfare matters with respect to Indians when it obviously doesn’t encompass that with respect to states. I said that there are not three Commerce Clauses; there is just one: “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” Yet Gorsuch, relying in part on Prof. Green’s article in the Pennsylvania State Law Review, wrote in his concurrence that these three powers are substantively different.

Why Haaland v. Brackeen is not the end of the story

I spoke at Cato yesterday about the ICWA decision. You can watch my remarks here, and read my commentary on the case in the new issue of the Cato Supreme Court Review.