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The Spirit of Independence
The Social Psychology of Freedom

July 2, 2010  •  The American

Several years ago, while attending a street festival in the small town of Tucker, Georgia, I came across a booth sponsored by the local libertarian society. At the time, I did not realize that my encounter would generate my next book. I only remember being struck by the question asked of everyone who visited the booth that day: "So who owns you?"

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The Revolt Against Cronyism

June 24, 2010  •  The American

Just when we think we have a handle on the Tea Party, it immediately slips out of our grasp. Up until quite recently, the Tea Party was widely accepted as a racist movement made up of grumpy old white men only interested in keeping their pockets well-lined. Then, only this week, the Tea Party pulls the tea tray right from under us by helping Nikki Haley, a woman of Sikh descent, and Tim Scott, a black man, to win Republican primaries in South Carolina—South Carolina, of all the states in the Union! This kind of unconventional, wisdom-defying behavior just won't do. It produces consternation in the minds of those who prefer never to change theirs. Some, of course, will still not change their opinions. Many will no doubt deride Haley and Scott as mere tokens supported by the Tea Party in order to conceal their true racist motives. Or perhaps Haley and Scott will be dubbed the unwitting stooges of the Tea Party, and of the sinister corporate interests which ultimately pull all the strings behind the scenes—in short, as stooges that other stooges were conned into voting for.

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Extremism in the Defense of Rand Paul Is No Vice

May 25, 2010  •  The American

After winning Kentucky's Republican Senate primary, Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, swiftly became the focus of a furious racial controversy. Quotes began to circulate that made it appear that Paul advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In subsequent statements, Paul sought to clarify his position on the question, eventually conceding that if he had been in Congress in 1964, he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act. In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Paul explained: "I think that there was an overriding problem in the South that was so big that it did require federal intervention in the '60s. There was a need for federal intervention."

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Weak Tea or Strong Tea?

March 10, 2010  •  The American

When reading articles that aim at understanding the Tea Party movement, I am reminded of the ancient fable of the elephant and the blind men. Unable to see the whole elephant at a glance, each of the blind men drew his conclusions about the nature of the elephant by laying his hands on one of the elephant's parts. The one who seizes the tail of the elephant says that the animal is like a rope. The one who puts his arms around the leg says that the elephant is like a tree trunk. The one who takes hold of the ears thinks he is handling a large fan, and so on.

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'Attention Must Be Paid...'

February 19, 2010  •  The American

Within hours after Joe Stack had crashed his plane into the Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas, the American political class began a mad scramble to figure out what political ideology had motivated his action. Stack was a terrorist, most agreed, but was he a conservative terrorist or a liberal terrorist?

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