Yesterday, I posted a short clip from the 1949 film version of Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. The film stars Gary Cooper as Howard Roark, an architect and individualist. Here’s a bit more. Rand wrote the screenplay for the film, and one can easily hear her voice in Roark’s words. Roark finds himself on trial, and delivers a…
Libertarians
Libertarians
Howard Roark as Frank Lloyd Wright
by JOHN ADAMS •
Yesterday was the anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth. I thought I’d follow up with a movie clip, from Rand’s Fountainhead. Ayn Rand often denied that the Fountainhead‘s architect Howard Roark was based on Frank Lloyd Wright. (She did, however, commission a home from FLW, one that was never built.) Still, the real and fictional…
Libertarians
From Cato: Citizens United (Hillary: the Movie) v. Federal Election Commission
by JOHN ADAMS •
Campaign finance laws are often heralded as positive reform — but there’s a much darker side to those laws — they often limit free expression of political speech. Over at Cato, they’ve prepared a video to discuss aspects of a case involving the Federal Election Commission’s presumed entitlement to regulate political speech, a case now…
Libertarians
Ultra-Sophisticated Terrorist Quiz
by JOHN ADAMS •
Libertarians, Police
Missouri Libertarian Party Condemns Missouri Highway Patrol Training Document as Political Profiling
by JOHN ADAMS •
In Missouri, a state highway patrol memo ignorantly linking members of the Libertarian Party (America’s third largest party) with militant fringe groups is the subject of the Missouri LP’s legitimate anger. One finds many people who are ignorant of what the LP represents, but surely someone in government must have been able to visit the…
City, Libertarians, Press Release
Free Speech Victory — Wisconsin Restrictions on Referendum Communications Declared Unconstitutional
by JOHN ADAMS •
Last March, I posted on the speech-quelling practice of using supposed election law infractions as a way to prevent citizens from speaking out on election issues. In that post, entitled “Free Speech for the Town of Whitewater,” I wrote that There’s a story from the Town of Whitewater that calls out for notice — the…
City, Free Markets, Libertarians
Mercatus Center at George Mason University – Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom
by JOHN ADAMS •
For George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, professors William Ruger and Jason Sorens, tenured elsewhere, have published a study of American liberties entitled, “Freedom in the Fifty States.” The scholars define “individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does…
Libertarians
The Libertarian Party Writes
by JOHN ADAMS •
In December, I received and posted a cheery dour Christmas email from Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr. (See, from December 22nd, a post entitled, Libertarian Bob Barr Says Hello.) Well, I saw that the LP’s Director of Communications, Andrew Davis, must really care about me, too, because yesterday I received his email (and he’s…
Libertarians
Libertarian Bob Barr Says Hello
by JOHN ADAMS •
Libertarians
Libertarians as a Loyal, Zealous, Principled Opposition to Obama
by JOHN ADAMS •
Yesterday, I posted on Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s view that a new ‘libertarian moment’ awaits America, and that the best days for libertarianism are yet ahead. Their optimism was general, not specific to any strategy. Reason follows that article from its December issue with another, from January’s issue, on how libertarians will argue against…
Libertarians
December’s Reason Magazine: “The Libertarian Moment.”
by JOHN ADAMS •
In our time of unfolding recession, criticism of free exchange, and bailouts, one might conclude that the libertarian way of life is a faint shadow from another time. Nothing could be more false. Over at Reason, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch persuasively contend, in the Libertarian Moment, that far from ending, a new libertarian era…
Libertarians
Smoking in a Nanny State
by JOHN ADAMS •
I don’t smoke, although reading about Democrats’ plans to try (again) for a statewide smoking ban makes me think about lighting up in protest. Having now secured the majority in both chambers of the legislature, in a state suffering a projected budget deficit, and a declining economy, someone must think that keeping tavern patrons from…
Libertarians
ACLU’s Actions for Restoring America: Day One
by JOHN ADAMS •
Limited government is good government. The ACLU’s efforts to limit government power, power that often denies rights of oversight, have been useful for America. At the ACLU’s website, there’s a program entitled, “Actions for Restoring America,” listing steps a new federal administration can take on its first day, within 100 days, and beyond. Here are…
Libertarians
Contrasting Barr and Nader on Obama’s Victory
by JOHN ADAMS •
Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr had this to say about Obama’s election victory: It just illustrates the tremendous demographic changes, generational changes in this country. This really is a very different country, in some ways much better country, than it was several years ago. Grandstanding septuagenarian crackpot independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader had a different…