Politics

The Conservatarian Manifesto: Should Libertarians and Conservatives Unite?

Q&A with National Review's Charles C. W. Cooke.

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"The Conservatarian Manifesto: Should Libertarians and Conservatives Unite?": Produced and edited by Meredith Bragg. Camera by Todd Krainin and Bragg. About 25 minutes.

Original release date was March 23, 2015 and the original writeup is below.

"I think the 'conservatarian' term is not a linguistic trick, it is a substantive attempt to describe a certain coterie on the right," explains Charles C. W. Cooke, a writer forNational Review and author of The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right's Future. "These are the people who say when they are around libertarians they feel conservative, and when they are around conservatives they feel libertarian. From what I can see the fault lines are that they disagree with libertarians on immigration, foreign policy, and sometimes abortion. And they disagree with traditional conservatives on federalism, on gay marriage, and on drugs."

Reason TV's Nick Gillespie sat down with Cooke to discuss his book, the historically fraught alliance between libertarians and conservatives, the limits of federalism, and how generational attitudes are changing the electorate.