ZadekpediaGary Johnson and the 2012 campaign
In a January 2012 episode, Bob Zadek interviewed Governor Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for President, describing him as a former two-term Governor of New Mexico and stating that the Libertarian Party is on the ballot in all 50 states. Zadek said a recent political poll indicated that about two-thirds of Americans would consider voting for a third-party candidate. The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012)
Johnson advocated submitting a balanced budget to Congress in 2013 and replacing the federal tax system with the Fair Tax, which he said would do away with all existing federal tax—income tax, corporate tax—and withholdings, replacing them with a 23% consumption tax. He said it would do away with the 16th Amendment, which allows for income tax, and that it is cost-neutral over a very short amount of time. The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012)
Johnson said a study of all the presidential candidates’ records on job creation found he had the best record of everybody running for President, but that as Governor of New Mexico he did not create one single job. He said the ACLU gave a grade to all the presidential candidates on civil liberties; Barack Obama took third place, Ron Paul took second place, and Johnson got the highest grade. The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012)
Libertarianism as a philosophy
In an April 2013 episode, Zadek described Libertarianism as a philosophy, a point of view, a way of examining and testing the relationship of citizens and their government, focused on the preservation of individual freedom, private property, and the right to live one’s life as you wish so long as in doing so you don’t cause harm to the person or property of someone else. He said he does not aspire for the Libertarian Party to itself become a dominant political party, and that third parties are never very successful in the United States. We Are All Libertarians (2013)
Zadek argued that as Democrats and Republicans struggle to find common ground, inevitably the common ground is the Libertarian approach, and that both of the two main political parties find themselves gravitating towards a Libertarian point of view. We Are All Libertarians (2013)
The libertarian legal movement
In a November 2014 episode, Damon Root told Zadek that the conservative legal movement grew up in response to the liberal court victories of the ’50s and the ’60s, the Warren and the Burger Courts, and has grown up over the past 40 years. Zadek said the Federalist Society is perhaps the point organization in all of this. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Root said the real fault line between conservatives and libertarians is over the role of the courts—whether the courts should be deferential to the elected branches of government. He said conservatives have focused on privacy—sexual privacy, birth control, abortion—because the right to privacy is an unenumerated right not listed in the Constitution, and that in 1965 the Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law which banned the sale of birth control to married couples. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Root said the libertarian legal movement disagrees with conservatives on that, arguing that of course there is a right to privacy in the Constitution and that the state should not be able to prevent married couples from obtaining birth control devices to use in the privacy of their own home. He said people like Scalia and Robert Bork and John Roberts apply a deferential philosophy also in economic regulation cases, treating economic rights in a second-class way. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Root said the healthcare case in 2012 raised the question whether Congress has the authority under the Commerce Clause to impose the individual mandate, and that one of the lawyers who was the architect of that legal challenge is Randy Barnett, a law professor at Georgetown. Root said Barnett argued a medical marijuana case at the Supreme Court in 2005 and lost, and that Scalia and Kennedy voted against him. Zadek called that the Raich case and a terrible decision. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Root said that seven years later Barnett’s arguments about the Commerce Clause became the default conservative position, and that the entire conservative movement in America lined up against Obamacare in that case. He said the King v. Burwell case involved the folks at the Cato Institute, law professor Jonathan Adler, and Michael Cannon at Cato. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
The Libertarian Mind and the Libertarian Constitution
A 2015 episode featured David Boaz, Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute, discussing his book The Libertarian Mind, exploring individual rights, spontaneous order, and limited government, and tracing libertarianism’s historical roots through the abolitionist and feminist movements. David Boaz on The Libertarian Mind (2015)
In a November 2021 episode, Zadek interviewed Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute about the “Libertarian Constitution” project commissioned by the National Constitution Center. Zadek said the Center is located in Philadelphia, is nonpartisan, and commissioned three teams of scholars—a libertarian team, a progressive team, and a conservative team—to rewrite the Constitution in a way more consistent with their respective values. Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021)
Zadek described Sandefur as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute, an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, a graduate of Hillsdale College and of the Chapman School of Law, and a professor of law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law. Sandefur said of the project, “we rescued the Constitution.” Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021)
Across episodes
The episodes show the same question—what libertarianism is and where it belongs—argued across multiple episodes, with the treatment shifting from electoral politics (Johnson’s 2012 campaign) to philosophy (Gray, 2013) to legal strategy (Root, 2014) to constitutional revision (Sandefur, 2021). The later episodes place libertarian ideas inside legal and constitutional institutions rather than third-party campaigns.