Today things get particularly radical, with an introduction to left market anarchism. I'm joined by Zak Woodman, host of the Mutual Exchange Radio podcast from the Center for a Stateless Society. We talk about whether we need a state at all, the dangers a powerful government poses, even if its values are arguably good ones, and why the aims of the left are better advanced through free markets than state control of the economy. We end with a call to take anarchist ideas seriously, even if you don't ultimately accept them, because they contain lessons for how to navigate and respond to our contemporary authoritarian moment.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

I've got a special bonus episode for you today. In August, I attended the second annual Liberalism for the 21st Century conference in DC, organized by the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism. That's the group that runs The UnPopulist, a publication I occasionally guest host for on their Zooming In podcast. I led a special live recording of that show at the conference, a conversation with journalist (and ReImagining Liberty guest) Radley Balko and commentator Charlie Sykes.

I framed the conversation around the second Trump administration as vigorous effort to roll back the Civil Rights Movement, legally, institutionally, and culturally. This led to a deep and spirited discussion. I hope you enjoy this very ReImagining Liberty adjacent discussion.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Cathy Reisenwitz's "Sex and the State" is one of the handful of newsletters I consider indispensable. She writes, from what I'd label a radical liberal perspective, about culture and gender in ways I consistently find illuminating. And she was my guest on episode 50 of this show, on misogyny and the political divide, which remains one of my favorites. So when she and I were recently chatting about the future of the liberty movement, and what's needed in our authoritarian moment, I wanted to get her back on.

We discuss her early days in the liberty movement, why she left, what's brought her back, and what she learned in the intervening years. Then we discuss making the case for liberty, and why the right's focus on cultural issues has given it a leg up in persuading many Americans to its side. A strong case for liberty demands taking social issues seriously, and interrogating social patterns and their origins.

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

The political right, including more right-wing sorts of self-identified libertarians, are rather down on feminism. For those right-wingers, their hostility is understandable, because feminist insights challenge truths the right imagines to be natural and immutable, about equality, and gender, and hierarchy. But for radical liberals, feminist theory offers powerful tools for understanding and critiquing power and its use by the state.

Today I have on my friend Kelly Vee for a discussion of these ideas and their place within a radical liberal framework. Kelly is an individualist anarchist-feminist and a graduate of Tulane University with degrees in accounting and finance, which she puts to good use when she’s not writing about mental health, feminism, and the State.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

The last episode of this show was about what ReImagining Liberty is. With frequent guest Cory Massimino, I talked about the values and perspective behind ReImagining Liberty's approach to liberalism, and how it's distinct from right-libertarianism. Today's episode is a nice companion to that. Not just because it also features a frequent guest, this time my friend Matt McManus, but because it runs further with the theme of distinctions. Namely, in this case, the ideas of the anti-liberalism of the far right. Our topic is the contemporary right-wing canon, the thinkers whose ideologies have come to dominate, and whose writings are giving form to the authoritarian fascism challenging liberal values and virtues.

Matt McManus is an Assistant Professor at Spelman College and the author of The Rise of Postmodern Conservatism and The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism, among many other books.

• Here's Matt's essay on "The Modern Far Right Canon" that was the spark for today's conversation.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

You can think of this episode as kind of a soft reboot of ReImagining Liberty. Or a back-to-basics. This is a show about politics, but it's a politics grounded in a particular set of values and a particular perspective, and with the political and policy specifics downstream of those. Ever since the election, I've spent a lot of time on those specifics, as well as on the policy details of what the forces of illiberalism are up to. And that's important. But I want to bring the show back, at least a bit more, to those values and that perspective. What is it about the kind of radical liberalism motivating this show that sets it apart? What are those values? What is that perspective?

So today's episode is the start a series of conversations on just that. And it's framed around change. I've brought back my very first guest, and my dear friend, Cory Massimino. He has been, it is fair to say, one of the biggest influences the evolution of my intellectual and moral approach to politics over the last ten years. We talk about how our views have shifted, what it means to be a radical liberal, and what sets the kind of radical liberalism at the heart of ReImagining Liberty apart from the right-leaning libertarianism many are familiar with.

Cory is an independent scholar and a Fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society, where he hosts the podcasts Mutual Exchange Radio and The Long Library.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Today's episode gets a bit meta. I've done something like ninety ReImagining Liberty shows, and hundreds more on other podcasts, but I've never done one on the place of podcasting itself in the political environment. This even though podcasting has been one of the big themes of politics lately, in many ways blamed for the rise, or at least persistence, of the ideologies that have reshaped our political culture and institutions.

I'm delighted to bring on Landry Ayres for that. You probably recognize his name, especially if you're a long-time ReImagining Liberty listener, and especially if you listen all the way through to the end credits. Landry has been my producer for the better part of a decade, going all the way back to Free Thoughts, the show I hosted for eight years before this one. He is also Creative Director at the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism and Managing Editor and Senior Producer at The UnPopulist.

Get early access to ReImagining Liberty, listen ad-free, and get access to our listener Discord community, by joining my Patreon. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

We sometimes talk about technology on ReImagining Liberty, in the context of how it interacts with a liberal society, or how technology can help us defend and advance liberal. The big technology everyone's talking about right now is, of course, artificial intelligence. It's a topic I've written about, but not one I'd yet done an episode about specifically regarding what it means for liberalism.

Then I read an essay by Ted Underwood, a professor in the School of Information Sciences, and in the English Department, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It's titled "A more interesting upside of AI" and you can find a link to it in the show notes. He argues that the framing of AI technology as aiming at "super-intelligence" is misguided, both undesirable and misunderstanding important aspects of society and culture. Instead, he's an advocate of viewing AI as a cultural technology. What grabbed my attention was his further claim that, as a cultural technology, it can help us map and appreciate cultural differences, and cultural similarities, in ways that line up with, and support, liberal principles like pluralism, tolerance, and understanding.

It's a big claim, and a fascinating one, and it lead to really fun and illuminating discussion.

Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell

Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.