Word: libertarianism
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Mario Vargas Llosa the politician ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of Peru in 1990 as a fiscal conservative. Happily, Vargas Llosa the winning novelist remains a staunch romantic libertarian. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 260 pages; $23) is, like his delectable Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977; translated into English in 1982), a roguish and sophisticated sex comedy with a few brain teasers tipped...
Curiously though, as "Mr. Conservative" stuck to his libertarian principles and advocated now-un-conservative positions, he was increasingly ostracized by the conservative monster he had helped create. When he argued for gay rights, abortion rights and a firm separation of church and state, Goldwater's small-minded ideological progeny would shake their hands, allude to Barry's failing health and his younger, more liberal wife. As he related to a National Review editor, "I haven't been invited to speak at the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) for maybe 15 years? You'd think I was on the other...
Early drafts of the act were specifically pro-Christian. Ultimately, however, its argument was stated in pure civil-libertarian terms: prayers that would be coercive if required of all students during class are protected free speech if they are just one more after-school activity. Nevertheless, recalls Marc Stern, a staff lawyer with the American Jewish Congress, "there was great fear that this would serve as the base for very intrusive and aggressive proselytizing." Accordingly, Stern's group and other organizations challenged the law--only to see it sustained, 8 to 1, by the Supreme Court in 1990. Bill Clinton...
...morning, activists from the Committee for the Moral Defense of Microsoft will brave Washington's rush hour, not to mention the nasty glares of enemy lobbyists, to march in front of the federal appeals court and demand an end to the "persecution" of Microsoft. The protestors are free-market, libertarian and objectivist crusaders who want to eliminate antitrust laws, and they've actually garnered more than 4,000 signatures with an online petition supporting Bill Gates's right to hawk Windows without government regulation...
Fixing what's wrong with the system is no trickier than preserving the parts that work. But first the country has to understand which is which. Everyone from the libertarian Cato Institute to the American Association of Retired Persons is ready to offer a different answer, but for now all agree that the main thing is to get people thinking about the issue--something the President alone is positioned to do. That Clinton has seized this moment is testament to political instincts and probably no small amount of polling. What he does with this moment will say something about...