Back To Buchanan

Nick Gillespie | December 19, 2005

A while back, I blogged a note about the online magazine Cato Unbound, whose first issue included an essay by Nobel-winning economist James Buchanan that laid out three new amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The replies--by Cato's Bill Niskanen, Yale legal eagle Akhil Reed Amar, and Judge Alex Kozinksi--are now in, and a lively conversation has ensued. I was especially taken by the opening of Kozinski's first rejoinder to Buchanan:

There is, alas, a lingering nostalgia for the vision of the minimalist state as a purer form of government, one that advances everyone's economic well-being while maximizing personal freedom. While I have a romantic attachment to this vision, I'm far from convinced that it would achieve the goals set for it--that we'd be living in a better world today if only we repudiated the New Deal, or had never adopted it in the first place. Whenever I try to imagine what such a world would look like, I look at the world we do live in and recognize that we don't have it so bad at all. We have the world's strongest economy by far; we are the only superpower, having managed to bury the Evil Empire; and we have more freedom than any other people anytime in history. We must be doing something right.

His whole bit here. And more here.