Word: libertarianism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mainstream argument for legalization is pragmatic: the war against drugs has failed, and the cost to society of keeping them illegal is greater than the cost of learning to live with them. Out at the fringes of respectability is the libertarian argument: people have the right to control their own lives, even to wreck their own lives, if that is their choice. Unmentioned as a reason for legalizing drugs, though widely believed and acted on as a practical matter by most Americans, is what might be called the Dionysian argument. Look, it says, the desire for an occasional artificial escape...
...Sullivan--generally prefer the existing Cambridge controls. In the meantime, 2,500 citizens languish on the Cambridge public housing waiting lists that date until 1992; professionals seeking absurdly cheap apartments offer "finders" up to $1000 for information leading to the discovery of a below market-rate unit; and libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick rented a 2500 square foot apartment--complete with jacuzzi, sauna, and balcony--that was nonetheless subject to rent control restrictions...
...civil rights: I've always been against laws that discriminate. In the '60s, in my libertarian phase, I opposed what I considered government interference with individual liberty. I changed my mind on that and said so publicly in 1971. My thinking as a voter ever since is, Does the law do more good than harm? Civil rights laws meet that test...
...theories sowed the first seeds of his current trouble. Writing in popular journals, starting with the New Republic in 1963, Bork attacked the proposed Public Accommodations Act, a civil rights measure, as an unconstitutional infringement of the right to free association. In 1968, at the culmination of his libertarian phase, he wrote a FORTUNE article advocating judicial protection for a variety of liberties, including privacy, not specifically mentioned in the Constitution...
...views on privacy and other libertarian ideals soon changed radically, - when Bork realized that his ideological outlook had taken another turn. After a year's sabbatical in England with his family, he returned to Yale in 1969 to find that his once lively seminar with Bickel had "gone flat." Recalls Bork: "When I asked him why, Bickel explained, 'It's because you're not saying those crazy things anymore.' I suddenly realized I'd basically adopted his position." He abandoned his belief that constitutional law could be made to conform to rigid ideological or economic principles. "I gave up trying...