This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 25th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

At the Cato Institute's Benefactor Summit

held this weekend I sat down with Justin Amash for a while the only

Libertarian member of the US House after departing the GOP. We talked about

political realignment, how to make Libertarian ideas more attractive to a broader swath of Americans,

the rise of illiberalism, and the Friends of Liberty remaining in either major party.

We also talked about how libertarians ought to message on behalf of a free society.

Is it fair to say that we are still in the midst of a political realignment or can we is it over? I think it's still happening. What I think has

happened is you've seen a shift toward illiberalism in both

parties and this has had maybe a more dramatic effect on the Republican Party immediately as we saw with with Donald Trump

where populism and nationalism and the things that come along with that like protectionism and some

nativism and other things that go along with that have really permeated and

now you have a party that is not really have really well founded in classical liberal traditions.

On the Democratic side it's been maybe a more gradual creep in that direction, but it's certainly

been moving that way for a long time.

You used to have Democrats who cared about things like due process, civil liberties, and you still have some Democrats like that, but there are a lot fewer.

It's increasingly the case that for each side you see like a winner-take-all attitude and

justifies the means sort of attitude.

We must crush our enemies and grind them into the ground and then

we will have succeeded and then we'll have a wonderful place where we all hate each other.

So yeah, I think that's been the realignment.

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