Cass vs Slade Debate - Part 1
Conservative vs. Libertarian
Hello, everyone! The week off from Daily Inchoate gave me time to work on and to plan a little — vs. my usual seat-of-the-pants posting. In other words, I’m trying to be a bit less inchoate!
I hope you had a chance to watch Hannah Ritchie’s TED talk yesterday and consider buying her new book, Not the End of the World. There’s more coming on Ritchie’s work this week (Wednesday, Friday). But I want to keep at deeper issues in political economy; plus, I want to experiment with a read-first, discuss-later cadence. I’m thinking to give you all a reading (or listening, watching) “assignment” on Tuesdays and then broach follow up questions and conversation on Thursdays. With a little luck, the Tuesday-Thursday cadence will even tie into the Monday-Wednesday-Friday theme.
If you know someone who might enjoy this kind of things, feel free to share.
Okay, so today’s “reading assignment” is actually to listen to two smart and nuanced people debate their differences, each with a gift for bridging traditional divides.
Here’s the interview, with both audio and transcript available.
Critics Corner with Stephanie Slade - American Compass
The conversation partners are Oren Cass, founder of American Compass, whose new think tank is heavily invested in the project of constructing a new conservative economics; and Stephanie Slade, a Catholic libertarian, senior editor at Reason magazine, who champions traditional libertarianism (which used to be part of conservative fusionism) as a political and economic — but not a cultural — goal.
Here’s the teaser:
Stephanie Slade: I think the main thing that I’m concerned with is a rejection of the classical American conservative commitment to limited government and individual liberty as two of the driving forces behind what it means to be a conservative in the United States of America. There seems to be an increasing comfort among some folks on the right-of-center with seizing the power of the state and using the coercive power of the state to try to get what we want out of society, as opposed to limiting the role of the state to protecting individual rights and liberties, maximizing individual freedom, so that people can then pursue their vision of the good life and the good society. It’s a desire to seize power and use it to impose top-down a vision of society, which necessarily means somebody has to come up with what that vision is and impose it on others, whether they like it or not.
Bottom-up vs top-down sources for vision(s) of society. There are two questions here: one about goal(s) or vision(s) and their sources; and one about method, about how to work towards those vision(s).
What if there is disagreement on either score?
What if the vision, a la Ritchie, is to combine ongoing economic growth for people in the present with protection for both planet and people in the future? I.e. sustainability?
Have a listen, and let’s talk more on Thursday. In the meantime, feel free to drop your first thoughts here.
