The Cosmopolitan's Case Against Donald Trump or, Make Mine Mises! [Reason Podcast]
Free trade and free migration form the core of the American libertarian identity, says Brian Doherty. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Donald Trump has promised to slash taxes, junk regulations, repeal Obamacare, and expand school choice.
Given all that, shouldn't libertarians give him at least a little (maybe even a whole lotta) love?
No, says Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty in the latest Reason podcast, because Trump is actually trafficking in a "Dangerous Anti-Libertarian Nationalism" that is actually the antithesis of classical liberalism. "Free trade and free migration are…the core of the true classical liberal (libertarian) vision as it developed in America in the 20th century," says Doherty, author of Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement. "If you don't understand and embrace them, you don't understand liberty, and you are not trying to further it."
In a wide-ranging conversation, Doherty and Nick Gillespie talk about the rise of Trump and the role of Steve Bannon in the president's administration; why being a "rootless cosmopolite" isn't in any way antithetical to patriotism; and why the great Austrian-born economist Ludwig Von Mises—a Jew who escaped Nazism—provides the strongest possible case against Trump's "America First" message.
Produced by Mark McDaniel.
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