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The Arizona Gift Clause in the Twenty-First Century

I signed a publication agreement today with the Drexel Law Review to publish my paper "The Arizona Gift Clause in the Twenty-First Century." This paper is a companion piece to my paper "The Origins of the Arizona Gift Clause," forthcoming in the Regent University Law Review, which discusses the history of this provision of the Arizona Constitution. The "Twenty-First Century" paper discusses the current state of Gift Clause jurisprudence and discusses one issue that is definitely on the horizon: whether that Clause limits the government's power to grant tax exemptions as a form of subsidy. You can read the current draft on SSRN here.

A centennial appreciation for Albert King

This week is (probably) the 100th anniversary of the birth of my favorite blues musician, Albert King. Probably the most influential blues musician after Robert Johnson, King was a hero to such performers as Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and his most famous song, "Born Under A Bad Sign," has been covered by everyone from Eric Clapton to Homer Simpson. I got a chance to write about his unique artistry for The Dispatch

What Vaughan admired most was the way King sang with his guitar, bending Lucy’s voice into a personality as real as his own. In “Laundromat Blues,” she’s alternately sassy and vindictive; in “I Wanna Get Funky,” she’s a confident, cunning seducer; in “As the Years Go Passing By,” her brooding matches Albert’s introspective vocals. That took more than proficiency; it required a grasp of the emotional impact of Lucy’s sound, and a willingness to hold back. “If you play too fast or too loud, you cancel yourself out,” King advised young players. “First, you got to get in your mind what you want to play. If you hear a good lick—even if you’re just rehearsing to yourself—and you feel it, then hit another one…. But if you rush right through, hitting them all, you’re not even going to know what you did. You’ve got to…take your time in your delivery.”

It wasn’t that King played slow, but he had a spare form of expression, with the patience to build a mood. “When we’d get tired of jumping up and down in the clubs,” he told Stevie Ray, “we’d back up—reach and get one from the bottom.” The conservatism of his playing in such slow-burn tunes as “The Sky is Crying” (performed here with Vaughan, Paul Butterfield, Phil Collins, and B.B.) shows the wisdom of not confusing profusion with eloquence. “[King] can take four notes and write a volume,” said bluesman Michael Bloomfield. “He can say more with fewer note than anybody I’ve ever known.”

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Are some forms of Populism more equal than others?

At Discourse, I have a review of a new book about the rise of populism. Believe it or not, this article was originally commissioned by a different journal, which then rejected it for being too "pro-Trump." Seriously. The editor said I was "wearing my MAGA hat while writing it." I'll let you judge for yourself. Here's an excerpt:

In the sixth century B.C., Pisistratus rode into Athens in a chariot beside an actress dressed as Athena, to wow the hoi polloi into thinking he was divinely selected for dictatorship. Episodes like that were precisely why the classical liberals who founded the United States fashioned a constitutional state instead of a pure democracy. They did so with a clear eye to the underlying principle that democracy is legitimized, and thus necessarily limited, by deeper principles of individual liberty—principles we flout at our peril.

Issacharoff makes no mention of this. Instead he asserts that “a well-functioning democratic state should offer citizens a sense of individual dignity emanating from control over their political fate and a sense of collective gain from an accountable state delivering material improvements over time.” He maintains that “wrest[ing] popular support for democracy back from authoritarian demagogues” depends on proving that democracies can give people a “sense of common mission” by engaging in public works projects such as railroad construction and green energy programs.

But the authors of the Constitution believed the opposite: that a properly designed state would preserve freedom by so severely restricting what citizens could accomplish through politics that they would concern themselves with productive private-sector undertakings instead. The American Constitution’s legitimacy rests not upon a desire for government munificence, but on the wish, as George Washington liked to say, for the freedom to rest under one’s own vine and fig tree, with none to make him afraid.

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The Origins of the Arizona Gift Clause

This morning I signed the publication agreement to publish my article "The Origins of the Arizona Gift Clause" in the Regent University Law Review. The article offers the first-ever comprehensive look at the history behind the Arizona Constitution's categorical prohibition on corporate welfare--a provision adopted from the Montana Constitution, but based also on experiences in many other states. I learned some interesting stuff while writing the article--and you can check out the current draft here.

Talking with Hugh Hewitt about Freedom's Furies

I talked this morning with Hugh Hewitt about my book Freedom's Furies, about which he said some very kind words--although our conversation ranged into some other fun topics, as well. Check it out:

Upcoming speaking events

Here's the latest list of my upcoming speaking events. Remember, if you're interested in having me come speak at your campus or to your community group, drop me a line!

Apr. 6 - 5 p.m. - Freedom's Furies - Dartmouth College Libertarians - Dartmouth College, NH

Apr. 17 - noon Eastern Time - The Indian Child Welfare Act: separate and unequal? - University of Florida Federalist Society - Gainesville, FL

May 11 - 6:00 p.m. - Freedom's Furies - Hayek Group - Reno, NV

June 22 - 4:45 p.m. - Rebel Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright - Level Up Conference - Phoenix, AZ

June 23 - 2:45 p.m. - A Future of Flourishing and How to Achieve It - Level Up Conference - Phoenix, AZ

June 28 - 3:30 - The Indian Child Welfare Act - Arizona Judicial Conference - Scottsdale, AZ