27% of Americans identify as libertarians according to Gallup. The finding has encouraged folks at the Cato Institute. Gallup gets to that conclusion by somehow combining the answers it gets to these two questions:
After the most libertarian candidate in the Republican race, Rand Paul, suspended his campaign, after getting just 4.5% of the Iowa caucus vote, we approached the issue of size and scope of government in a rather more direct way. We got very specific and asked if respondents were ready to accept smaller government for themselves. Only 20% were ready to accept cuts in their own government entitlements in order to get the deficit down. 71% were not. It may be the case that most of us want smaller government for everyone else but don’t want to bear any personal sacrifices to ensure that government lives within its means.
This may be one of the reasons why Donald Trump is outflanking the small government Republican establishment. When we asked YouGov’s First Verdict panellists to say which of Mr Trump’s policies were “sensible” (without identifying them as Trump policies), the top-rated policy with 65% was his “no cuts to Medicare and Social Security entitlements”. Focusing on defeating ISIS rather than overthrowing regimes like that of Assad won 62% support – again suggesting Trump is closer to the mainstream than interventionists like Senator Marco Rubio. These policies are much more popular than his much-covered temporary ban on Muslim immigration, which got just 33% approving, or his wall across the Mexico border, winning a thumbs up from 36%.
‘I’m personally convinced that our civilisation is approaching its end,’ wrote the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge in 1980. ‘I think of St Augustine when, in AD 410, the news was brought to him in Carthage that Rome had been sacked by the Barbarians.’ Jim Callaghan was equally gloomy. In 1974, he remarked: ‘When I am […]
Josiah Quincy Jr., who was the mayor of Boston in the middle of the nineteenth century, wrote in his Last Will and Testament that his son should read ‘John Locke’s works, – Lord Bacon’s works, – Gordon’s Tacitus, – and Cato’s Letters. May the spirit of liberty rest upon him!’ Indeed, there is nothing closer […]
Spare a thought for Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, heading the US negotiating team, as they met with Qatari Emir Al Thani this week to discuss the ‘progress of the negotiations’ between the US and the Iranian regime in the Qatari capital, Doha. While the venue for the talks has shifted from Pakistan to Switzerland […]
