Dan Sanchez | The Libertarian Institute

President, Party, or Principle: What Should MAGA Stand For?

by Dan Sanchez | Jul 7, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

The MAGA movement has fractured recently over the contentious issues of foreign military intervention and government spending, with each faction accusing their opponents of betraying MAGA. This raises a question: What does it mean to be MAGA? Considering “MAGA” as a brand name for a political movement (which is how it is commonly used), there is no way to definitively answer that question. But if we take the acronym literally and examine what it would mean to truly “Make America Great Again,” the matter is much clearer and more significant. To know what would make America great again, we...

The Philosophy that Framed the Constitution

by Dan Sanchez | Sep 18, 2024 | Featured Articles

Today [September 17] is Constitution Day in America. The federal holiday (technically Constitution Day and Citizenship Day) commemorates the signing of the US Constitution on September 17, 1787. The 2004 law that established it requires all taxpayer-funded educational institutions to provide lessons on the Constitution on that day. However, learning cannot be legislated into existence. Two decades later, the Constitution is as misunderstood by the American public as ever. The education establishment bears a big part of the blame for this plight. But another culprit is mainstream media....

Black Magic, Mad Science, and Super-Nazis

by Dan Sanchez | Jul 25, 2024 | Featured Articles

On a London soundstage in 1987, a British pop star is filming a music video when he is interrupted by a visitor who has what he considers an insane request: You’re asking me to help you because Nazis from another dimension are trying to take over the world and only you can stop them? I’ll tell you the kind of help you need… That is how pioneering comic book writer Grant Morrison began episode 4 (publication date: September 12, 1987) of his breakthrough series Zenith, published in the British comics anthology magazine 2000 AD. This story can be found in the Zenith: Phase One collected...

A Note About My Health

by Dan Sanchez | Aug 27, 2023 | Blog

I have some hard news to share. I recently had a seizure. After undergoing tests, I was diagnosed with stage-4 lung cancer (although I have never smoked) that has spread to my brain. The average life expectancy of those with my condition is very short. I am grateful that I found my way back to Jesus Christ before I knew I was ill. And I am choosing to regard this affliction, not as cause for despair, but as a challenge and opportunity to serve and glorify God, whatever may come. If I am to suffer, decline, and die soon from this disease after a relatively short life (I’m 45 years old) filled...

If Joker Met Jordan Peterson: What separates a monster from a hero?

by Dan Sanchez | Oct 20, 2019 | Featured Articles

What does it take to turn an ordinary person into a monster? To create a mass shooter, a terrorist, a Joker? According to Joker himself, “One bad day.” That’s how he tells his own story in Batman: The Killing Joke, a 1988 graphic novel by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. This classic origin story heavily influenced the controversial new Joker film. Once, Joker was an ordinary man. He was trying to be a good husband, preparing to be a father, and striving to make it as a stand-up comic. But his jokes were bombing and his family was trapped in poverty. He felt like a failure. He was overwhelmed...

The Federal Reserve’s Shell Game

by Dan Sanchez | Jun 8, 2018 | Economics, Featured Articles

The Federal Reserve is a key component of the US government's wealth redistribution apparatus. Under the guise of “macroeconomic management,” it redistributes vast amounts of wealth on an ongoing basis through inflation. The victims of these transfers are ordinary Americans. The beneficiaries are the government and its elite cronies. The Fed masks the nature of this surreptitious taxation and corporate welfare by performing a simple shell game that is just complicated enough to confound the general public. First, let’s imagine the government performing this kind of inflationary transfer...

Trade Is What Makes Us Human

by Dan Sanchez | Aug 30, 2017 | Featured Articles

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith famously wrote of humanity’s “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” Smith noted that trade is a characteristic mark that distinguishes humankind from all other creatures: “It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. (…) Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing...

The Sweet Sociability of Self-Interest

by Dan Sanchez | Jun 27, 2017 | Economics, Featured Articles, Libertarianism

undreds of liberty-loving students, professionals, and entrepreneurs recently gathered in Atlanta for the first-ever FEEcon, an event celebrating the ideas of freedom and free enterprise. Judging from attendee feedback, it was a smashing success. But it raises an interesting question. A skeptic might ask, “Isn’t a gathering of individualists a contradiction in terms?” Such a critic might have been even more flabbergasted had he attended. The conference was successful, not only because of meticulous planning (perhaps another shocking word in this context), but because of the communal spirit...