Damon Root on Libertarianism and the GOP

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Has libertarianism taken hold of the Republican Party and ruined American conservatism in the process? New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks so. In a column this week, Brooks surveys the state of the American right and declares it to be in terminal decline. The root of the problem, he explains, is libertarianism. Traditional conservatives have been eclipsed by those who "upheld freedom as their highest political value" and worry too much "about the way government intrudes upon economic liberty," Brooks says, and the results have been disastrous.

Reason Senior Editor Damon Root has a different take. The GOP needs more libertarianism, Root writes, not less.