Tracinski's Rejoinder to O'Sullivan's Law

I have a set of announcements to send out today, then I’ll have some commentary on a few big news stories shortly.

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Buck Up, Sissypants

First, Juliette Sellgren at the Great Antidote podcast just posted a great discussion we had recently. This is a podcast meant to make the case for liberty to a younger audience, so I got the opportunity to state the main message I would like to convey to today’s youth, which is basically “Buck up, sissypants.” They live in a world that is by and large in the best shape it’s ever been, and they should attempt to enjoy it.

What is perhaps more interesting is that she asked me what idea I had changed in recent years, and I named a greater appreciation for democracy. I have discussed before my struggles with accepting the word “democracy,” but what I meant here specifically is my greater appreciation for the importance of representative government and voting, which seem more precious when they are threatened.

Please give the podcast a listen.

What I didn’t think to say but would add in retrospect is that I have become more of an incrementalist. My view of the ideal political system has not changed, but in watching all the apocalyptic types on both the left and the right trying to talk themselves into the idea that we live in an utterly worthless system, so why not burn it all down, I have grown more inclined to say that we should not burn it all down. Let’s chip away at it and improve it one step at a time. Things are good, and we can make them better.

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The Prophet of Causation

I also did another podcast with my friends at the Secular Foxhole about my recent article on the AI non-apocalypse, and also about my Prophet of Causation class. Give it a listen.

Speaking of The Prophet of Causation, I just gave the first lecture, and I think it went very well, including an interesting new theory and some discussion about “Objectivism 1.0” and “Objectivism 2.0.” I’m posting the recordings soon, so there is still time to sign up if you haven’t gone over there, or if you’re still lurking on the class’s free list.

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The Philosophy of Ayn Rand in Ten Country Songs

I am also signed up for a new Summer student conference that is going to be held by The Atlas Society in Nashville in late July. See the official announcement. We’re still settling the exact schedule, but it looks like I’ll be doing two presentations, one about the nature of selfishness and the other about the role of art.

Since the event is going to be in Nashville, I’m trying to work out a way to do a presentation on “The Philosophy of Ayn Rand in Ten Country Songs.” I’m not making any promises—it’s only in four months, and I’ve got a lot on my plate as it is—but we’ll see if we can pull that one together.

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Tracinski's Rejoinder to O'Sullivan's Law

I saved the biggest announcement for last, which is the formation of the Symposium Foundation for the Study of Liberalism—that’s political liberalism, i.e., freedom—to support my renewed efforts over at Symposium, where I have a lot of new things in the works.

I’ve toyed with creating a non-profit before, but in most of what I do, I want the flexibility to be able to comment on electoral politics, and you can’t do that with a 501c3 educational foundation. But since part of the mandate of Symposium is to stay out of electoral politics and focus on the big ideas, it seems a perfect fit.

I am also getting very serious about making this grow, because I think there is a desperate need to create new pro-liberty organizations, in part to replace the ones formed 50 or 60 years ago that have undergone a natural process of regression, not unlike what has happened to many mainstream institutions. Here is how I put it.

[M]uch of the current threat to liberalism comes from the corruption of established institutions, from publishers to universities to think tanks. O’Sullivan’s Law famously declared, “All organizations that are not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing.” But one of the more disturbing drivers of the current illiberalism on the right is the transmogrification of conservative institutions like Claremont or the Manhattan Institute that were once more libertarian-leaning and are now full-on culture warriors. Given that the man who coined O’Sullivan’s Law, conservative writer John O’Sullivan, later founded the Danube Institute—which uses Hungarian government money to promote the influence of Viktor Orban’s authoritarian regime among Western intellectuals—I think we need an updating of his law. All right-wing organizations that are not explicitly classically liberal will over time become authoritarian nationalist.

We need new institutions that will be explicitly liberal—that is, they will exist to argue for freedom as the central value of a civilized society. We need new institutions that will help rebuild the neglected intellectual case for a free society and reach across the old partisan lines to forge a new liberal ideological coalition.

“All right-wing organizations that are not explicitly classically liberal will over time become authoritarian nationalist.” You can call this Tracinski’s Rejoinder to O’Sullivan’s Law. But the real rejoinder will be to help get this new foundation off the ground.

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Thanks in advance.