In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer and Nikos Sotirakopoulos review Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi's new book The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism, and argue that the authors' attempt to define libertarianism demonstrates that it lacks a coherent ideological identity.
Among the topics covered:
Zwolinski and Tomasi's book and the liberty vs. libertarianism movements;
The connection between libertarianism and the progressive left;
Why libertarians share an intellectual alliance with the reactionary right;
How the connections between libertarian factions are sociological rather than ideological;
Why defending liberty is meaningless without a philosophical foundation;
Criticizing libertarianism is not infighting but a fight over what liberty is.
Mentioned in this podcast and relevant to the discussion is Peter Schwartz's 1985 article "Libertarianism: The pervasion of Liberty" in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, Foundations of a Free Society: Reflections on Ayn Rand's Political Philosophy edited by Gregory Salmieri and Robert Mayhew, and a two part lecture series by Gregory Salmieri and Onkar Ghate on "Politics, Liberty, and Objectivism."
This podcast was recorded on September 27, 2023.
