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Join the Libertarian Christian Institute as each week they explore, debate, and analyze the issues that are directly relevant to the intersection of Christianity and liberty. Always thoughtful, frequently controversial, and never boring (trust us), it is our hope and prayer that The Libertarian Christian Podcast serve as a valuable resource to the Church for years to come.
If you'd like to reach out to us and ask a question or submit some feedback, you can reach us at podcast@libertarianchristians.com, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and of course, our website, libertarianchristians.com.
Matt Bellis:
[0:03] Welcome to the show that gets Christians thinking about faith and politics. Get ready to challenge the statist quo, expand your imagination, and tackle controversy head on. Let's stand together at the intersection of faith and freedom. It's time for the Libertarian Christian Podcast.
Doug:
[0:22] Welcome to another episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty Network. I am your host, Doug Stewart, and I have a host of hosts with me today. I have Alex Bernardo, Cody Cook, and Kerry Baldwin, all hosts in the Christians for Liberty Network. And the reason that we're on today is not to talk about the Christians for Liberty Network per se, although everybody should go check out all of their shows, is to talk about Acton University. For those who haven't actually understood what Acton University is. It's part of the Acton Institute. It's one of the programs they do every summer. They've done it for, I think, two, two and a half decades, something in that realm. And they describe themselves, they describe it as a four-day exploration of theology, philosophy, entrepreneurship, international development, and market-based economics. And, you know, for anybody who knows anything about libertarianism, there's a lot of overlap there. And it is very much a conference, unlike any other that I've been to.
Doug:
[1:16] It is very educational and academic. And the four of us were able to go to Acton University through a, recent scholarship earlier in the year that was offered on the Zero Aggression Project website and there from the Zero Aggression Project, which was the foundation for harmony and prosperity. So we were able to, you know, know about that pretty early on. And I knew about it and I shared it with the LCI team and Carrie Cody and Alex got to join a small group of libertarians at Acton University. So we're here to talk about what that experience was like because there's a lot of.
Doug:
[1:52] Topics that were explored and discussed and even debated, both in the sessions, the main sessions, and then even just at our dinner tables, because they have this amazing dinners every night, which are really cool. So anyway, I wanted to have everybody on to talk about it, maybe do a little bit of a recap for our audience. I would recommend this to any libertarian who wants to go, because it is definitely worth the experience. So I'm going to open up the floor, so to speak, and just ask you guys to share what were your initial expectations of Acton U? Actually, let me go back before that. Did you know about Acton University in the first place? And if so, you know, what were your expectations as you were looking forward to attending before you got there? I'll start with you, Carrie.
Kerry:
[2:37] So I, well, I've known about the Acton Institute for years. I think I became aware of them around the time that I, you know, first became a libertarian and was looking into Ron Paul and libertarianism and all of that. So I've been aware of them for a while. I've been aware of Acton U for a while, but, there was always something about Acton U and the Acton Institute that seemed to be more adjacent to libertarianism instead of actual promoting of libertarianism. And I didn't exactly know why that was. I knew it was associated with a lot of Catholic scholars and theologians. And so at any rate, my expectations going in, I think, which were somewhat met, was that there was going to be a fairly heavy emphasis on either Catholic teaching or the philosophies that have come out of Catholicism and those sorts of things. I did see that, but it wasn't as, gosh, how do I say this? It wasn't as in my face as I thought it would be. There was still quite a bit of ecumenicism there that I think was done fairly well. Like I've seen ecumenicism done very poorly.
Doug:
[4:02] It sounds to me like that was kind of surprising to you.
Kerry:
[4:04] Yeah.
Doug:
[4:05] Yeah. Okay. Alex.
Alex:
[4:07] Yeah, I would agree with a lot of what Kerry said. I've been familiar with the Acton Institute for a while, but I didn't really know what to expect from the conference other than I figured that it would be heavily laden with Catholic theology, which, you know, it was to a certain extent. But again, I agree with Kerry. It was a lot more ecumenical than I expected and also much more international too. I think that there were people from 60 different countries, or maybe even more than that.
Doug:
[4:28] It was in the 60s, I know that, yeah.
Alex:
[4:29] At the Institute, yeah. So I thought that that was a really cool aspect of it. And I didn't really know what to expect from the sessions, other than reading the session titles beforehand. But every session that I went to, even the ones where I felt like I didn't necessarily agree with the conclusions that the scholar or the speaker made, I still thought that they were all really valuable and intellectually stimulating. So all in all, a great time. I didn't really know what to expect. And so I can't really say that it exceeded my expectations, but it was good. It was good.
Cody:
[4:55] I guess I'm up. Doug, first of all, I thank you for being the Lord of hosts today.
Doug:
[5:04] Wow. Blasphemy, not my responsibility. I did not put him up to that.
Cody:
[5:09] Doug Zavote. So, yeah. So, Acton and Acton Institute, I've known about for a good while. And I've tried to actually publish a couple of things with them. And there was, speaking of the, let me, I'll step back a little bit. The ecumenical side. So, yeah, they're started by a priest, Father Robert Sirico. And there's definitely a Catholic flavor to it.
Cody:
[5:28] But I had kind of had a sense of their ecumenical side, partly because of the people I knew who contributed to them who were not Catholic, but also because I had proposed an article that I almost got published with them. And then there was something in there where I was sort of comparing and contrasting the textual criticism or textual history of the Quran versus the Bible. And their editor was like, we actually have a lot of Muslims who are involved in acting and we don't want to be unnecessarily divisive there. And so I was like, oh, okay. But so I had kind of a sense of that and you get there and you do see that. So it's not just ecumenical in the sense of Christians because they do have Eastern Orthodox and Reformed and Catholic and other kinds of Christians. But they also there's also a very strong presence of Jewish people who are interested in some of these free market ideas, Muslims who are interested in some of these ideas. And I think I saw maybe a couple of Sikhs is there as well. So it is, I think, kind of looking to it's what is Eisenhower sort of had this coined the phrase of kind of the Judeo-Christian thing. It was a sort of idea of, you know, this general sense of faith. And so that was kind of there and then sort of paired with these ideas of free markets. So kind of markets and morality sort of thing.
Doug:
[6:42] Yeah, I think one way, Robert Sirico, who's the co-founder of the Acton Institute, he actually endorsed the original version of Faith-Saking Freedom, and he was one of the last endorsers. And I'm going to read his endorsement of the book only because it kind of gets a sense of like where the overlap is and isn't. I must confess that I am not fond of the term libertarianism for the same reason I find capitalism misleading. In almost any debate over libertarianism, one must spend half the time explaining what it is, not before moving on to what it might be. If libertarian means libertarianism, count me out. As pointed out in this text, however, referring to faith-seeking freedom, libertarianism is not a full-fledged philosophy, much less a theology, as much as an argument that maintains in Lord Acton's words that liberty is the political end of man, not, of course, his entire telos. This book is not the final word on the argument between Christian revelation and human liberty, but it is nonetheless asked many of the right questions, questions that are rarely raised among Christians. So you can kind of see the affinity for what we're doing on behalf of the founder of Acton, But what's key to note and why I wanted to read that is libertarianism is not, or sorry, if libertarianism means libertinism, count me out, okay? We understand that. We agree with that. And so there is this misperception or there's this perception that libertarians are often, you know, kind of confused with libertinism or libertines. And this is one of the reasons why the scholarship.
Doug:
[8:02] Was offered to people was Jim Babka, who was kind of the mastermind behind all this, wanted to get libertarians to Acton University to get them exposed to ones that were not libertines, which the four of us are not. And there are a handful of other Catholic libertarians who are there. Stephanie Slade was there. Let's see Kevin Vallier, who's an Eastern Orthodox.
Doug:
[8:24] At least as far as I'm remembering, he's an anarchist, philosophically an anarchist, anarcho-capitalist. There are a handful of people who belong in Acton's, purview, or sorry, experience, so that, we can then say, hey, you know, as libertarians, you know, we're not libertines and we have some, you know, insightful things to say about society, politics, the markets, morality, natural law, all of those different things. So part of the goal for us to go there was indeed to show up as libertarians, engaging thoughtfully with people who are just a little uneasy with that term. And who cares if they don't care about that? I don't care if they are uneasy about that term, but I want them to be able to engage with our ideas in a significant way, because as we'll talk about here in a minute, we did get to engage with them. And it was interesting how those responses were. I can leave it open for anybody else to remark on that.
Kerry:
[9:16] Well, I just want to say that I think the criticism that libertarianism can mean libertine is actually well-earned. And it is the thing that we as Christian libertarians are actually kind of fighting against within the libertarian movement. Now, I think it's well-earned because you have a bunch of people who, call themselves libertarian, but haven't actually delved into the philosophy. They grab a hold of some of these, you know, these trite catchphrases that get thrown around and they just attach themselves to that. And they think that that then creates a principle that they can operate from, like, you know, pro-choice and everything or, you know, well, there, there are many others, but So I don't want to say that libertarianism, like this critique is unfair. I think it's well earned. And I think what we're trying to do is push against that, both the critique, but also against the tendency within libertarianism itself.
Doug:
[10:25] Alex Cody, do you have any comments on that?
Alex:
[10:27] Yeah, again, I totally agree with Kerry. I do think that there are really kind of like two kinds of libertarians in this sense. There are the libertarians that believe in the philosophy and that want to try to apply that consistently in all areas of life. And then there are libertarians that just hate their dads and don't want them to tell them what to do. And we were very consciously trying to overcome that stereotype of libertarianism. And there were several people that we talked to, I mean, several personal conversations that I had, including with some of the speakers, where we talked about what it meant to be libertarian. And a lot of them were very surprised that we're all pro-life and that we have moral values and that we believe in virtue. And so I think that we definitely, by being there, accomplished the goal of helping at least sow the seeds of the idea that libertarianism is something deeper than I just want to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want.
Cody:
[11:13] Well, you know, the first lecture that we had to attend, because if you're there for the first time, there's like kind of four core lectures you're supposed to attend.
Doug:
[11:19] That's for the whole first day, by the way, too.
Cody:
[11:21] Yeah, for the first step. Christian vision of the person in society that was led by Michael Matheson Miller. And he kind of started sort of early on by talking about how Christians can't be radical libertarians who only care about consent. And so I had this kind of question referencing that because there was a question answer period. And I said, well, I agree that Christian ethics is about more than consent, but what do you think Judeo-Christian teaching adds to a proper philosophy of governance beyond non-aggression? And so the question was, okay, what else besides consent is, you know, part of our political philosophy? And he did, what was interesting was he sort of said, oh, well, you know, we have the belief in the value of the image of, you know, the human being is being made in the image of God and so on and so forth. And what was interesting was he didn't actually say anything that was to be added to non-aggression. He just sort of grounded it better, right? And so there's a sense in which, you know, I want to make that distinction between libertarianism and libertinism because I think it's a valuable distinction to make. But there's also a sense in which if we come together with somebody who is a libertine and they don't have a lot of our same values, but they do believe in the non-aggression principle and they do believe that there's a limited scope for government, like we would kind of more or less agree on that, right? So there's a distinction to be made, but not necessarily always a difference, at least in terms of practical policy.
Doug:
[12:44] Yeah, sorry, I thought you were finished with your sentence. I think Madison Miller would probably be pretty happy with a society that was, like, I'm making this up, sort of hypothetically atheist, but radical adherence of the non-aggression principle. He probably would like a bunch of people that may not be Catholic and may not share his worldview theologically, but would be like, yeah, you know, for politics, the non-aggression principle is where we should start. I think he would be happy with that. Or see it as an improvement over today.
Cody:
[13:11] I think culture is more than governance. And I think that's, that's, that's the distinction that I think a lot of, what LCI and Acton are bringing to this conversation is that, is that, yeah, I guess that culture is more than governance. It's, we can kind of agree as atheists, Jews, Muslims, whatever, on the role of governance, but that doesn't necessarily mean we all agree on what it means to have a good society.
Doug:
[13:29] Yeah.
Kerry:
[13:30] Well, and to be fair, you know, the idea that we have a society based on the non-aggression principle, like, yes, conceptually, that's a great idea. But part of the problem, I think, for libertarians is how that actually plays out, the implications of that. And one example being the abortion debate, which, you know, I'm quite familiar with. There's plenty of libertarians who believe in the non-aggression principle, but still are pro-choice. And so I think what, Miller is pushing against, is the inconsistency that some libertarians have with actually applying those principles. And that's where our work, I think, comes in, is in pushing on that and pushing libertarians to be more consistent.
Alex:
[14:20] Yeah. And I think one of the big aspects of that too is that there's kind of this assumption, at least for people that aren't libertarian, but on the right, that liberty is the end of libertarianism, like liberty is an end in and of itself. Whereas we really believe that liberty is a means to an end, right? Like it's a path for us to cultivate virtue in a peaceful society, not the thing in and of itself. And so I think kind of helping to try to reframe the conversation along those lines, thinking about like the proper role of liberty within a society, that's kind of a really helpful addition to this conversation. It's something that came up in several of the conversations I had with people at Acton.
Kerry:
[14:52] Yeah.
Doug:
[14:53] I want to talk a little bit, Cody, you teased out the idea that we were engaging with them through the question and answer, which I mean, for many sessions, we were all the first to the mic or the first, or the first, you know, there's four of us. We were like of the first, and there were a few others there who were libertarians in our, in our group who were part of the scholarship situation. We, we were like of the first 10 to the mic, right? So, so it's really good. We, we were shown out and, and it turned out that we were well noticed later in the week. I learned that, but I want to ask when you got there, there was a lot of.
Doug:
[15:25] It was very obvious to me that people at Acton, whether they're getting up and praying before the meal and asking the blessing and talking about, all of these topics that I don't always talk about in moral framework, but they use moral language like virtue, stewardship, dignity. They talk about those things before they talked about specific policies. And to me, that was a very refreshing situation to be in. The environment, you know, Carrie, as you noted, it was very ecumenical, but it was unapologetically Christian. It wasn't like, oh, we're going to have a rabbi pray and we're going to have a Muslim pray. No, it was a bunch of Catholics saying Catholic prayers before the meals, right? And so it was unapologetically that way. They even went to, you know, say certain, I'm going to be very careful with my language here. They went to basically excoriate certain types of views that if I were to spell them out out loud, we probably wouldn't get this video on YouTube. So we'll just leave that at that. But it was very like, yep, that thing is wrong. So, and that's a, you know, and I was like, okay, they weren't dancing around some of these cultural topics, right? But how did it, how did it sit with you guys that you were in an environment that, you know, I know you've all been to Freedom Fest and I'm not putting Freedom Fest down at all because it's a different environment. This to me felt like more home and that I was among kin, so to speak. Cody, you're going to make a remark about nationalism now, aren't you? When I think kin.
Doug:
[16:48] Yeah. So like, I think I'd rather, sorry, I'll play the joke out. I think I would rather the people that act in you run the country than the people at Freedom Fest. I don't know. Maybe not. But no, what did you guys think of the moral, the moral language? Like they just led with the moral language throughout the week.
Kerry:
[17:02] Well, I'll take that. I mean, you know, especially contrasting it with this year's Freedom Fest, which did have quite a few more conservatives, I think, than typical. The thing that I noticed is a major distinction is that, you know, Acton U understands to some degree better the relation between morality and virtue and stewardship in relation to civil governance and liberty than I would say, you know, Christian nationalists like in the MAGA movement who are really trying to be authoritarian about it, quite frankly. I think what Acton understands, and I think it's because they have a much more robust philosophy, and so their views on liberty and governance and economy are more thick concepts, we would say. And so they begin with their grounding, which I actually think, you know, we've all got our various takes on libertarianism and where our grounding comes from. And that's why we have the Four Views book coming out.
Doug:
[18:17] January 2027.
Kerry:
[18:19] There you go. And so, you know, like reformed libertarians, we begin with our grounding and our grounding isn't libertarian philosophy. It's reformed theology. And there's a reason for that because, and again, I think this goes back to the criticism of libertarianism is that it's necessarily a thin philosophy, but you have to ground it somewhere. And so, you know, comparing the two conferences, there's less grounding at Freedom Fest, which gives more room for, you know, you get to ground this, whatever the heck you want, which has its benefits. But there is a greater coherence, I think, among the people that attended Acton U because our grounding is much more similar. I mean, they went to great lengths, for example, to draw the comparison between the Catholic principle of subsidiarity and the Reformed view of sphere sovereignty. That takes both some intellectual humility. You've got Catholics and Calvinists working to try to agree with each other on some things, but it also takes some intellectual courage to do. And so I really appreciated that. And yeah, I agreed that it felt like I was around people that were much more kin, as you say, than how I feel at Freedom Fest.
Doug:
[19:48] Yeah. Yeah. Well, they had a hole in their bookstore. I mean, you have this mostly Catholic institution, although they're again, they're ecumenical having basically the entire works of Abraham Kuyper in their bookstore.
Alex:
[19:58] Yeah.
Kerry:
[19:59] Yeah.
Doug:
[20:00] Cody, Alex, any thoughts on the moral language piece before we move on to the core sessions?
Cody:
[20:05] Yeah, I mean, maybe not so much on the moral language, but just maybe the environments and the grounding, how they were different from Freedom Fest to Acton. I mean, I would be inclined to say Freedom Fest is more unapologetically libertarian, although that seemed a little bit less that way this last time. But I think, you know, at Acton, it's basically Christian and basically libertarian, even though they're sort of ecumenical, they don't necessarily want to use the word libertarian.
Doug:
[20:33] Yeah.
Cody:
[20:34] So there was, I think, more that we had in common in that regard. I think that Acton environment was more intellectually rigorous. I think Freedom Fest represents a little bit more of a kind of populist libertarianism, maybe not as much as Pork Fest, but more in that direction. Whereas I think Acton is a little bit more sophisticated, is a little bit more intellectually rigorous. I didn't see Rob Schneider, Dean Cain, for example, at Acton. But so, you know, for me, I did value that experience more. It was more engaging. There was a lot more I was thinking about, taking notes, having really good conversations. For those who are thinking about, you know, whether they want to go to Acton, also the food is really good. So, yeah, I did value going to both, and I think both ended up contributing to LCI's mission. I'm glad that we were at both places. But in terms of just kind of the value to me, and also, in fairness, at Freedom Fest, I was manning a booth more than I was watching presentations, but I did see a few. But I just, I think I valued overall what we got at Acton more than what we got at FreedomFest.
Alex:
[21:38] Yeah. And one of the things that happened at FreedomFest, and they were all good and productive conversations, but there were many people that came up to me and they said, well, I don't see how libertarianism can be compatible with Christianity, or I don't think that Christianity is true. And they would want to have debates with you about like theology, which was great. And I, like I said, I met a lot of good people and had a lot of productive conversations at FreedomFest, but we already have a shared set of theological values at Acton. And so it did feel like I was much more at home amongst the Acton U crowd than I was at the Freedom Fest crowd, because I think the only shared value that I had with the majority of people at Freedom Fest was the political value. But as we've all been kind of talking about, and as I think Acton does a great job of highlighting, there's a lot more to this life than just our shared political commitments. And so having kind of that fundamental theological presupposition shared with everyone at the event made it just, it was a much more comfortable environment, I think, for me to be in Freedom Fest, even though i love freedom fest.
Cody:
[22:32] Well i mean just to just kind of put a finer point on that i mean it goes back to this the thing i said earlier about culture a little bit right like there's, feeling at home feeling like you're with people who share your values can be very i don't know sort of encouraging and reassuring although reassuring but but also you know it's also good i think sometimes to step out of that and have those um, more difficult conversations but but there is, I think, a lot of value in sort of feeling, okay, I feel at home here. This is the kind of, these are the kind of conversations that I wish we were having as a culture.
Doug:
[23:04] Yeah. I'll plug the four views book here for a second, because I just got done reading all the responses. And I feel like what you just described, Cody, is the sort of, the experience that we had at Acton would be very similar in the sense that if we have conversations, what we're having is not a combative conversation. Sort of apologetics conversation with the so-called, you know, not so-called, sorry, with the like Libertarian at Freedom Fest who like is challenging Alex on whether or not those two things are, you know, aligned, but more like discussing the depths of theology and understanding like, well, wait a second, but what about Romans 13 or what about this particular principle in Catholic theology and being able to sort of like go deeper and richer, which again, just to plug the book a little bit, we do that pretty well. Like the pushback and And the push and pull, you know, dynamic in the book is actually, you know, really enriching as opposed to just defending your side
Doug:
[23:54] from these like, you know, from these like opposing viewpoints in particular. So I want to move on to the core sessions and just talk a little bit about that. First, you know, thought, what was your experience of the core sessions? I should probably sort of preface this.
Doug:
[24:10] Acton University requires first-time students, I think they call us students, to attend their four core sessions. I'm going to read them out. This is all, so everybody gets there Monday afternoon, Monday evening. There's an evening session, and then Tuesday starts all of the sort of like, you know, strict educational stuff. The first one, we'll start off in the morning, is the Christian view of the person. The second one is natural law and human flourishing. The third one is the economic way of thinking. The fourth one is the Christian view of a free government. So I just want to get your all's take on.
Doug:
[24:46] The requirement for everybody who's never been to Acton to go through these, I personally feel like was a really is a really good move. It grounds everybody in the rest of their way of thinking. And it also because those four really, you know, tie together, it gives it's almost like it's a one day session, even though it's done by four different people. And it's, you know, there's a variety of personality styles that are that are leading those. What did you guys think? And then if you want to share, you know, your experience of the core sessions in general. And then after that, what I want to do is we'll talk about how we've engaged with them. Cody, I'm going to make you go first this time. I'm not going to make you. I'm going to invite you to go first.
Cody:
[25:25] Actually, I was just looking at my little Acton Institute book that they gave us, which was pretty neat. And I got a cool pen in there. So I was trying to kind of keep notes as we were going through it. So I like the idea of, of kind of starting with, with some grounding and some foundation. I will say some of the lectures I think did a better job than others. Of providing that grounding. And there were certain ones I attended later that I thought, oh man, this would actually even be maybe a better one to start with. But I think that the one I really valued and I think probably everybody will agree with me here was Anne Bradley's economic way of thinking lecture. Which was, I guess, maybe a little bit less grounded in theology, but it was very much sort of focused on kind of what it means to think economically in a way that people who've, read a little bit of Mises or Rothbard or Hayek would appreciate. And I jotted down occasional quotes, something that stuck out. And so what I liked was, if we defy economic realities, we get hurt and we hurt other people. And the other was, the economy is not an engineering project, which I thought was a really great quote. And Bradley was just a great speaker and I think just really was able to communicate these ideas really well. And also I learned was a big fan of the Protestant Libertarian podcast.
Alex:
[26:45] Yeah.
Doug:
[26:45] I want to insert something. Anne Bradley's session was probably what I would call the most vibrant. And it was timed right after lunch, which is a very difficult time to give a talk when everybody has been like, you know, possibly exhausted from learning two hour and 20 minute sessions before lunch, then having lunch, and then sitting back down again, talking about economics. And yet Anne Bradley gets up on the stage, and I'm not tired at all. And it's just I actually told her this and I was like they placed you in the right spot they have the right person teaching this she was really thankful for that feedback but anyway Alex since you were named a moment ago that Anne Bradley is one of your fans how was your experience of the entire core session set and then you know if you want to, Talk about any of those. Yep.
Alex:
[27:30] Yeah, no, I totally agree with Cody's analysis. I thought that Dr. Bradley's session was incredible. She just did such a great job of taking these concepts and making them like palatable and fun. And she was she was a very good presenter. And again, going back to what Cody was saying, like we've all read The Economist. So we kind of knew like we kind of knew what direction she was going to be headed. But kind of seeing some of these old arguments being presented in a fresh light, that was really helpful. I thought that the other core sessions were good. They really were. And some of the presenters were pretty lively as well. I think the real benefit of the core sessions for me was kind of preparing me for what I was going to be experiencing in the sessions that I got to choose in the later day. So you kind of got a feel for what Acton University was all about, what kind of people were going to be there, what kind of subjects were going to be broached. So I thought that even though I didn't find them to be as informationally valuable as Dr. Bradley's, I did think that it gave us a good sense of how ActonU works. And again, there were some good ideas that were shared there too. So I thought it was a really valuable time and just gave us a good foundation for the rest of the week.
Doug:
[28:29] Cool. Carrie, thoughts on the core?
Kerry:
[28:31] So when I first found out that we had to do these core courses, I was like, man, that means we're going to miss the good stuff on the first day. I was pleasantly surprised. I think what I really liked about it actually is that again, it provided not just the grounding for the way the Acton Institute approaches these topics, which was good, but I think that that was also the opportunity for non-Catholics in the audience to find their common ground with them. So I thought that was helpful. But, I think also, you know, one of my own critiques of libertarian, not really libertarianism, but libertarians is that they tend to not understand, not all of them, but many of them tend to not understand the grounding principles of libertarianism. They completely skip over that and jump into, whatever issues are their pet issues.
Doug:
[29:46] My body, my choice.
Kerry:
[29:48] Yeah. And so they miss the grounding. And I think the Acton Institute did a good thing by saying, look, if this is your first time here, you need to get the grounding. You need to get the foundation from which we are launching off of. And then all the rest of the sessions would, you know their, their talks would point back to that grounding yeah, and so making that connection i think is very very important and so i was happy for it i don't think i learned anything new in particular just because i'm already into natural law i'm already into a non-reductionist view of of the person already into a free market already into limited government like I've already bought into those things. And so it wasn't really new information, but I thought it was good that they made that their grounding and then expand out from there and all the rest of their talks point back to it.
Doug:
[30:46] So, when we were there, I mentioned earlier that we were some of the first to the mic. Do you guys want to share any of your questions? I mean, Cody, you already shared one to kind of tease this out a little bit. Do you guys want to share any of your other questions or even conversations you had afterward?
Doug:
[30:59] One of the things that we were sort of assigned to as sort of part of the scholarship was basically is a deliberate and overt engagement. And we, you know, we got up and we didn't necessarily ask entirely libertarian oriented questions. I mean, I asked a question about anti-Semitism and anti-capitalist mentality, of one of the guys, let's see, Miller. Michael Matheson Miller asked him about that. But we were encouraged and strongly, we were strongly encouraged, I should say, to basically engage and be openly identifying ourselves as libertarian, whatever the question might be, and having those conversations. So I want to, you know, ask you guys, you know, what, what conversations or questions do you remember asking in those sessions, whether the core sessions or even beyond the core sessions throughout the week?
Alex:
[31:48] I guess I haven't gone first, so I'll take this one. There were two that stood out to me. I did ask a lot of questions. The first one was with Dr. Miller's session. He had a session called The Cultural Critiques of Capitalism, which I thought was a really good session just talking about how capitalism is not a utopian ideology. There are trade-offs with the free market system, and we have to take those into consideration and be honest about those. And I thought that was really good. And I was kind of able to push him on his definition of capitalism, which I thought at many times were too expansive. And I think the point that I made was that if we have if we have a definition of capitalism, which is too wide, and that incorporates state action, then it is very confusing and difficult for us to identify the many problems in our society that are caused by state intervention. And he seemed to like that. So, you know, we talked about that. And then even after the session, we talked about it with him a little bit more. So I thought that that was a really good back and forth. And then in the conversation.
Doug:
[32:43] Before you go on with that, Alex, I want to ask you, what did you think of his response? Because if I'm not mistaken, his response or justification was essentially, if I titled this talk, people are wrong about capitalism, it's actually really great. Nobody's going to come to it. And yet people are intrigued when you call it the cultural critique of capitalism. I think that's roughly what his answer was. How did you feel about it?
Alex:
[33:02] No, yeah, he was pretty open to it. And I mean, I understand that from like a marketing standpoint, you want to make sure that the title of your talk is something that is attractive to people and that they would want to come and see. So I totally got that. And I feel like there I feel like there was at least an understanding with my response that he was like, yeah, that no, I mean, that that makes sense. So I think that was really helpful.
Doug:
[33:18] Yeah, good.
Alex:
[33:19] And then the other one was in the session on fusionism with Stephanie Slade. She was talking with two conservatives. And one of the issues that came up was the Iran war and that conversation. And so I was able to get up and ask a question essentially about the relationship between being pro-life and being anti-war. And so the point that I made is that, you know, as a libertarian.
Alex:
[33:39] Like we believe that in the sanctity of human, as Christian libertarians, we believe in the sanctity of human life, which is why we are pro-life. And we extend that also to warfare too. and so we should be skeptical of warfare. And Slade said that foreign policy wasn't really her thing, which is fine. But one of the people that she was talking, and I cannot remember what the panelist's name was. He's very nice, but he said that he didn't really agree with that. And you have to have a strong foreign policy basically to be a deterrent towards evil actors in the world. But I thought that there was kind of an inconsistency in the logic. And I'm glad that I was able to get up there and make the point that from a libertarian perspective, In some senses, we're actually more pro-life than the conservatives who restrict pro-life ideology only to infants that are in the womb. For us, we're pro-life all the way through. And just because someone happens to be born on another side of an imaginary line doesn't mean that their life is somehow less valuable than another person. So I think that that was a really helpful point. And throwing that out there into the conversation was really important. So those were two responses that really stood out to me. And like I said, I had a positive interaction with the people I was responding to after the talk. So I went up and shook the guy's hand and said, I really appreciated his response. even though I didn't agree. So it was all good, but it was nice to be able to push back a little bit and just kind of insert some of those ideas into the conversation.
Cody:
[34:52] Maybe I'll go next just because I think it's relevant to what Alex was talking about. As I said, acted was kind of basically libertarian. Maybe a more accurate description would be classically liberal because there were certainly places where, they were kind of negotiating with these kind of more fundamental libertarian values and putting that into conversation with things like the kind of traditional, kind of foreign policy approach that we sort of found. On the left and right, or trying to kind of, I guess, maybe balance with positive rights in a way. So one of the questions I'd asked was, there was a panel called The Soul of the Machine, where they were talking about kind of AI and sort of.
Cody:
[35:36] The ways in which our interactions with technology, we're putting up our data for other people to, for companies to use. We are, AI is interfering with intellectual property to kind of learn from or whatever. So I'd asked a question about, you know, does approaching political theory from a positive rights framework where we're constantly negotiating among these constructive positive rights, like intellectual property, or a right to not have Facebook use your data for advertising, does that risk eroding those more fundamental and concrete negative rights that we all sort of agree are fundamental? And I don't remember all the things they said in response. I know one thing, and this is actually the only time I asked kind of a pushback question. They said, well, you know, in the Constitution, there's a right to intellectual property. And I said, well, just to be clear, does the Constitution say that because of the benefit of promoting the progress of science and useful arts, that we will give to.
Cody:
[36:37] Patents and give the exclusive right to those people? They said, yeah, but they use the word right. And it's like, well, yes, but it's not like a real right. It's a right that's grounded on something else we want to accomplish for someone else. So it's a positive right. So anyway, I think if there's a weakness in some ways, it was, I think, that desire to negotiate a more kind of, red-blooded libertarianism with these kind of more traditional, I don't know, I don't exactly what to call it, traditional sort of positive rights or whatever. Yeah.
Kerry:
[37:09] Yeah. So two questions. I mean, I asked, I asked several questions, but two questions that I kind of felt were, you know, impactful to my experience. The first, the very first question, I was the very first one to identify as being from the Libertarian Christian Institute. That was in the first, the, the first core.
Doug:
[37:30] You set the standard.
Kerry:
[37:32] I did. We couldn't hide. Heck yeah. So that was asking Michael Matheson Miller about the different aspects of the human person. And so I asked him a question about what he took the economic aspect to be. I suggested that it was self-ownership, although I would probably qualify that now as I've thought about it more since. But at any rate, I think that was a question that Miller wasn't expecting to get, especially as his first, you know, or second question. I went behind Cody, but his first sort of challenge really came from a libertarian. And I don't think he was expecting that. So, and his response sort of left something to be desired, I think. But it also indicated to me kind of what we already understand about, Christian criticisms of libertarianism is that they almost always come from a place of not really having a deep understanding of what these principles are. And so they're often mischaracterized. And, I think part of their aversion to libertarianism is that.
Kerry:
[38:53] They, on the surface, see that some of these principles like self-ownership have led to at least a popular idea that libertarianism is per choice. And so they have to reject both libertarianism and self-ownership because it seems to lead to a pro-abortion perspective. But with that said, the second question that comes to mind was actually very well-received. And this was by, I had asked it of Stephen Burrows in his talk. It was titled Fertility Decline, Why Government Cannot Engineer a Baby Boom. And, you know, I attended that one for a couple of reasons. One, obviously, it would touch on the pro-life issue. But two, it's pushing back against this pronatalism that has surfaced recently since just before, I think, Trump took office.
Kerry:
[39:54] And that is this idea that you can leverage government to incentivize women keeping their babies. And so there's an organization out there called Americans United for Life that really promote not just pronatalism, which is government-incentivized babies. You know, government incentives for having babies, but really pushing a socialist agenda with healthcare and things like that. And so the question that I asked him was about thinking about woman and her, you know, her position as far as her capacity to have children, thinking about that as an owner of a means of production and really starting to flesh out the economic aspects of that. And he was quite intrigued. So he's an economist. He had never heard that perspective before, but he was quite intrigued. And so that was encouraging. And he didn't seem turned off by the fact that I was libertarian. And we had a great conversation afterwards. So those are sort of two examples of questions that I asked in different contexts, In hindsight, I kind of feel bad for Michael Matheson Miller because he heard a lot from us, had a lot of pushback from us.
Doug:
[41:23] We ambushed him a little bit after his cultural critique session, too.
Kerry:
[41:27] Like, you know, I would like to be able to say, hey, can we have a just, you know, a sit down coffee chat with Miller and be a little bit, you know, friendly and say, look, these are friendly. We're not antagonistic towards what you're saying.
Doug:
[41:43] Yeah.
Kerry:
[41:44] But yeah, at any rate, I do think that, and to kind of dovetail Cody's comments, I do think that they are holding on to some ideas that are fundamentally authoritarian. Like, I think positive rights are authoritarian. I don't think that they're well grounded. I do think that my position on fetal self-ownership and non-aggression actually, is the grounding to refute it. But, you know, this is where I think we can, if we can open up a conversation with them and start digging deeper into some of these ideas, flushing them out, challenging them. I would really like to persuade them that libertarianism is necessarily pro-life. But, yeah, it was an interesting experience for sure. Yeah.
Cody:
[42:37] Well, I'll add, Carrie wasn't the first person to mention Libertarian Christian Institute and to identify herself. But then it was, I think, a habit that we started to develop after that. And when I was at Freedom Fest two weeks later, someone walked up and said, I've been hearing a lot about the Libertarian Christian Institute lately. And then she paused and she said, were you at Acton? So anyway, so it did leave a mark in some people's heads. So maybe we have some
Cody:
[43:01] new listeners from Acton potentially to this conversation.
Doug:
[43:04] That's good so we've been talking about our sessions and stuff I mean guys, I don't know about you but I think Jim Babco's session was like the best he was like the most well-dressed he was the most articulate he didn't stumble or stutter at all best slides yeah, how, I don't even know where to go for that actually what sessions did stand out to you other than Jim's because it was just you know overshadowed everybody else's But what other sessions did stand out to you as important?
Cody:
[43:38] And to be clear, in case someone was paying attention earlier and realized that Jim is the reason we went there, we're not blowing smoke when we say he had a really great session.
Alex:
[43:45] He really did. He did.
Doug:
[43:47] We're blowing smoke, but it's not undeserved.
Cody:
[43:51] It deserves smoke. Okay. Oh, I'll say this just in case any feds are listening. I'm not sure if it's technically a scholarship that we had. There was some question about the right framing for it or something. but we're calling it that was the colloquial.
Doug:
[44:05] Word for it there was.
Cody:
[44:06] Some that's what we're calling there's parameters.
Doug:
[44:08] That you have to label these things the right way and handle them the right way.
Cody:
[44:11] But anyway so just in case Jim's pulling his hair out as he listens to this, I mean I mentioned Ann Bradley's which was so great and there was another one she did too on the cost of living crisis that I thought was pretty darn good too, I'm trying to think. Yeah, Jim's was really good. There was one in immigration that was not bad. I thought there was some good. It was still kind of doing that positive rights thing where it was kind of doing sort of the calculus of immigration, which, you know, to me coming from a more negative rights perspective, I'm a little less interested in that. It's kind of like, you know, what are the costs here and what are the benefits there? But it was still, I think, useful. And there's a lot of data there that I think I'll use in future conversations about immigration. But yeah i mean i don't know i mean yeah jim's and bradley's was really good, i think most of us attended the future fusionism panel which was later which was interesting and i know alex you and i both going to be interviewing stephanie slade who participated in that she has an upcoming book on fusionism which so far i'm really liking but i guess, i guess i'd say bradley's and bradley's too and then jim's were really good for me.
Doug:
[45:13] Yeah carrie anything stand out that you haven't already mentioned?
Kerry:
[45:18] Yeah, just agreement about Anne Bradley's presentations. I really enjoyed her listening to her, listening to just the way she, you know, brought the matter of economics down to the family, making those connections, I think were quite useful. Who else? Like I mentioned, Stephen Burrows, I really enjoyed that session. There were a few others that I'm forgetting off the top of my head. Overall, I think that the whole thing was really well done. There were good conversations in all of them, even if in some cases, I wish that they had taken a different track than they did. Mm-hmm. But all in all, I found them quite engaging.
Alex:
[46:11] Yeah, I agree. And again, there were a lot of really, really good. I mean, I didn't go to one that I thought was bad. Honestly, I thought that they were all really good. Again, Ann Bradley was a standout. She did a panel on Adam Smith in 1776, which I thought was really good and entertaining. One of kind of the curveball outlier lectures that I found really interesting was the professor's name was Jared. I think it's Peninchin or Pinchin from Cedarville University. But he did a session on the ethics of sports gambling, which I thought was really interesting, just kind of going through the statistics behind sports gambling, how impactful it has been, especially among young men, and just what that looks like from a Christian moral standpoint. And the night before that session, kind of serendipitously, I didn't know who he was at the time, but he sat at our table for dinner. And him and I wound up talking about our political differences for about 45 minutes, had a really great conversation. And then I went to a session And it was just it was a very, very interesting topic that, again, just think about like my like my friend base or whatever. I know a lot of people that are very heavily involved in sports gambling. So it was cool to see a Christian take that on from both an economic and like a moral philosophical perspective. So that was a real big standout session to me.
Doug:
[47:19] Okay. One thing that stood out to me is sessions that I left sort of contemplating what was said, as opposed to just being like, okay, yeah, I know some of this, or I know all of this. Oh, that was nice to hear it to put differently. Okay, now I can just sort of, you know, ingest that and kind of walk away. But things that like prompted me to consider what was said and sort of you kind of carry it with you afterward. And one of the people who are just really good at that is Luke Burgess. Luke Burgess just finished a book called The One in the 99. It has to do with the wisdom of kind of self-differentiation and some other, you know, things related to that. He's very deep into mimetic, mimetic theory. Jim's session was also like that. Jim's session left us with.
Doug:
[48:02] This idea of, oh, well, I didn't think that companies could be run a certain way. Because his title, his was instead of unions. And it actually has less to do with unions per se as it does with the problem that unions were ostensibly created to resolve. And he gives a demonstration or a story or an explanation for, you know, you can actually manage a company in a very decentralized way and it can be very, very successful. And so that gives you a lot of food for thought so that when you leave, you're just like, wow, okay, that's a lot to process. And you have to process
Doug:
[48:34] it afterward. And I think some of the best sessions do that for us. Final question for you guys I just want to I want you to each describe how how you thought the receptivity to our libertarian presence there was I will start because it gives you a little bit of time, in one of the sessions on see it started on Tuesday I think this is a Friday late morning or early afternoon session there was another guy whose name was Doug and he saw my name tag said Doug and so he was you know humorously coming up and saying hello and he goes oh you're with that libertarian group that's here wow you guys are really you guys are really showing up strong here.
Doug:
[49:09] And I was like, well, that's really great to know. I mean, I didn't tell him that that was our, you know, covert mission, but it wasn't a covert mission. It was just, that's what we wanted to do. So, so we had a really good conversation about, about that. He was an economist from Florida State University and we had a good conversation. So the receptivity was good because I think there was one other person that I, that, that made a comment very similar to that. And it was like, oh yeah, you're, you're one of the libertarians that are here. What was your guys' experience and the receptivity to that? I'll let you describe that however you want and whatever experiences, conversations you had. You get to pick who goes first amongst yourselves.
Cody:
[49:46] I'll say something just quick then. I'll start. Most of the attendees that I talked to did not have the squeamishness about the word libertarian. I felt that some of the Acton organizers did because most people I talked to, either they were, they sort of felt that the word kind of described where they were. They didn't see us as kind of weird or outliers. They thought we, you know, it was reasonable for us to be there, that we were kind of integrated into what Acton was doing. So I think it just maybe some of the branding from the higher ups, maybe they're just a little more concerned about using the word because of things, that I think it might connote.
Kerry:
[50:22] Yeah, I had nothing but positive reception. In fact, I remember I had, you know, a lot of my comments were, or my questions when I stood up were framed with respect to abortion and pro-life and things like that. And it prompted attendees to really ask me questions about the connection between libertarianism and pro-life, which was great. There was one attendee that really stood out as being particularly receptive. And she was from France where abortion.
Kerry:
[51:04] Is ubiquitous there. It's very uncommon to come across pro-life people in France. And so she and I got into some really good conversations about how libertarianism, can offer some solutions to that whole debate that haven't been offered before. And so that was lovely. Not only did I get to actually talk about that connection with some of the attendees, I got to talk with somebody from France about it. And so that was exciting for me. But yeah, the receptivity I think was great. I think there was a lot of excitement around the fact that, you know, there was a Libertarian Christian Institute. We were present. We weren't antagonistic towards Acton U's ideas. We were engaging and we were noticed. And I think that was really, really exciting and encouraging.
Alex:
[52:04] Yeah, I want to agree with what both Kerry and Cody have said. I didn't have any pushback about my libertarian views from any of the attendees at the conference. And even when I talked to some of the presenters who were a little bit more skeptical of the label libertarian, they didn't talk down to me. I felt like they very much treated me like an equal. It was a very, very positive reception overall. And so even those people that were skeptical of libertarianism, they were fine having the conversation. And I really valued and appreciated that. But there were a lot of people that were in attendance that were curious about what we believed. And even some that came up to me and said, hey, we're kind of with you. Like, I feel like I feel like that this philosophy is the right the right way to go. And so that was that was really heartening. It was good to see that there were a lot of people that were, you know, they were both receptive to our ideas and then not having anyone there that was antagonistic to what we believe.
Doug:
[52:51] Yeah.
Doug:
[52:52] All right, guys. Well, we are at roughly the time we kind of allotted for us to have this conversation. Are there any remaining thoughts that you didn't get to get out there based on the questions? I mean, we had a lot more questions to kind of prompt our conversation here, but anything else that you'd like to add?
Kerry:
[53:07] I just want to thank Jim Babka again and the foundation that gave us this opportunity.
Doug:
[53:12] Foundation for Harmony and Prosperity. Yeah.
Kerry:
[53:14] Yes. Thank you. Because, As we mentioned at the beginning, a lot of us were very familiar with Act and You. And for me, I've not had the opportunity to actually attend in part because of what it cost. And so I want to thank Jim Babka. I want to thank the foundation for actually giving us that opportunity. It was quite valuable to us, and I hope that they see it as a good investment.
Doug:
[53:45] You can almost see the value of Acton when I'm pretty sure it was within half a day, all four of us said, yep, we're going.
Kerry:
[53:51] Yeah.
Doug:
[53:52] It was like, we already knew that there was a value. It wasn't just there's a scholarship for this thing that we didn't know about. It was like, oh, we don't have to weigh this. We know we want to go to this. So Alex, Cody, anything remaining from you?
Cody:
[54:03] Yeah, I'll certainly reiterate what Kerry said and our gratitude to our gym, the foundation for inviting us to do this. And it was, I think, a great thing for LCI to be a part of. And I hope that we will have future opportunities to partner with Acton or work with Acton on some more things.
Alex:
[54:21] Yep, completely agree with what both Cody and Carrie said. Really thankful to Jim, really thankful for the organization for hosting and really thankful that Acton put on a great week. So it was all positive. Loved it.
Doug:
[54:32] Excellent. Well, guys, thank you for joining me on this conversation about Acton University. For listeners who haven't been to Acton University, you can check them out at acton.org. And they do this every year. It's been, you know, for many years that they've been doing it. And I would go back again. In fact, one of the things that I wanted to do is bring my wife and at least one of my children back because I think they would benefit from it. So hopefully we might get to see you next year and maybe some of our listeners, because of this conversation, we might get to see them next year at Acton University. Who knows? So guys, thank you so much. And I'm sure we'll chat again in some variation of this show.
Norman Horn:
[55:09] Thank you for listening to another episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast. If you liked today's episode, we encourage you to rate us on Apple Podcasts to help expand our audience. If you want to reach out to us, email us at podcast@libertarianchristians.com. You can also reach us @Lciofficial on Twitter. And of course we are on Facebook and have an active group you are welcome to join. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
Katherine Williams:
[55:33] The Libertarian Christian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute, a registered 501(c)3 non-profit. If you'd like to find out more about LCI, visit us on the web, at LibertarianChristians.com. The voiceovers are by Matt Bellis and Katherine Williams. As of Episode 115, our audio production is provided by Podsworth Media. Check them out at Podsworth.com.