In the over five decades since Dr. King laid out his dream at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, our country has made great progress toward racial equality by destroying Jim Crow, expanding voting rights, and more thoroughly integrating our society.
Today, black people hold seats in Congress, the Cabinet, Fortune 500 company boardrooms and, of course, the Oval Office.
Twenty-four years ago today, on December 8, 1991, the Soviet leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus concluded an agreement on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the USSR became history.
Perhaps most importantly, for a number of different reasons, Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisers finally figured out that you need market forces to make an economy work.
Leading into the revolutions of 1989, the Soviet government faced increasing difficulty controlling information. Soviet citizens increasingly were exposed to the improved standard of living enjoyed by those living in Western countries, leading them to discount the propaganda they were otherwise being fed.
At the fall of the USSR, if you compared the standard of living of the average citizen of East Germany, the richest of the fraternal nations of the socialist camp, with that of the party members who lived in Wandlitz, the neighborhood of the party elite, you would findincredible disparities of income. Similarly, if you looked at the 22 palaces of the Ceaucescu family in Romania, or the sports complexes in Bulgaria that were only for members of the Zhivkov family, or the dachas of the Soviet party elite, you find more inequality than in the market societies of the West.
Happy Women’s Equality Day! On this day in 1920, women were granted the right to vote when the 19th amendment was certified by law. In honor of this occasion read Cato research on feminism and women in the libertarian movement.
“A so-called “libertarian moment” can only be helped along by expanded appeal among women, and among feminist-minded folks of all genders. Individual rights are at the heart of feminism. It’s time for libertarians to reclaim that.” — Elizabeth Nolan Brown at libertarianismdotorg
“A libertarian must necessarily be a feminist, in the sense of being an advocate of equality under the law for all men and women.” — David Boaz in huffingtonpost
The U.S. Women’s World Cup team is back from Canada with victory in its players’ pockets, but not much else, to judge from media reports now unfolding. The question of whether U.S. Women’s soccer is getting shortchanged led last night’s CBS Evening News story about the gross income inequality between male and female professional soccer players—and in today’s battle between the sexes, few issues are more demagogued or more inflame the adversarial passions than inequality between the sexes.
“Cato has consistently embraced civil liberties, including but not limited to the right to same-sex marriage. By contrast, conservatives – with whom we are mistakenly equated – have been selective in their endorsement of personal freedom.”
A new HBO documentary, The Case Against 8, takes a behind-the-scenes look at Proposition 8 and the case to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, when it comes to libertarianism, they don’t quite get it right.
The film focuses on Ted Olson and David Boies, political foes who faced off as opposing attorneys in Bush v. Gore, yet fought on the same side in first federal marriage equality lawsuit to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
In one scene, Chad Griffin, then Board President of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, discusses the battle for gay rights with Olson. Griffin suggests, in an ill-conceived attempt at humor, that he might re-think his support for same-sex marriage after hearing that both Cato and its chairman, Robert A. Levy, are vocal advocates for marriage equality.
Responding to the film, Levy points out that the filmmakers have made the all-too-common mistake of conflating libertarians with conservatives. But, marriage equality is just one of many issues where the libertarian perspective is much closer to the liberal stance than the conservative one.
The reason for this, according to Levy, is that both conservatives and liberals are philosophically inconsistent. While conservatives want smaller government in the fiscal sphere, they demand bigger government in the social and foreign policy realms. Meanwhile, liberals want less government control of their personal lives, but more government oversight over markets.
“Unlike liberals and conservatives, Cato scholars have a consistent, minimalist view of the proper role of government,” writes Levy. “We want government out of our wallets, out of our bedrooms, and out of foreign entanglements unless America’s vital interests are at stake.”
A D.C.-based public policy research organization (or "think tank") dedicated to the values of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
