José Niño | The Libertarian Institute

The Success of Bottom-Up ‘Constitutional Carry’

by José Niño | Mar 29, 2021 | Featured Articles

Few political movements can boast of success like the firearms movement in the United States. Often overlooked is how before the 1980s there was no concept of licensed, let alone unlicensed, concealed carry in the overwhelming majority of the country. The sole exception was Vermont, which through an idiosyncratic state supreme court decision in 1903 has had unlicensed carry for over a century. “Vermont Carry,” the concept of unlicensed concealed carry, would be the Holy Grail for Second Amendment advocates for up to a century. In the intervening decades, in large part motivated by notable...

Return to Normalcy: Victoria Nuland Back To Managing the Empire

by José Niño | Mar 22, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Some things never change in American foreign policy. While there’s a lot of chatter about a “Great Reset” in terms of rebuilding society along technocratic lines in the wake of covid-19, U.S. foreign policy appears to be going through its very own “reset.” Specifically, it appears to be going back to the neoliberal interventionist order of pre-Trump administrations. One of the most palpable reversions to the neoliberal mean was President Joe Biden’s nomination of Victoria Nuland to the position of under secretary of state for political affairs at the State Department in early January....

We Must Come Home from Korea

by José Niño | Mar 17, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

America’s military footprint abroad is unmatched in human history. With more than eight hundred military bases in over seventy countries across the globe, the US is in an ideal position to carry out all sorts of imperial adventures, though the emerging multipolarity on the world stage with the rise of Russia and China has thrown several wrenches into many of the regime change orchestrators' wildest fantasies. America’s overstretched presence abroad began to receive significant pushback after bungled nation-building experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Donald Trump’s election in 2016...

Talk of Secession is the ‘New Normal’

by José Niño | Feb 23, 2021 | Featured Articles, Politics

Secession is a four-letter word for the millions of Americans who have gone through the conventional educational pipeline that teaches them that the American state is indivisible and sacrosanct. However, intellectually honest historians whose minds haven’t been warped by educational institutions know better than to dismiss secessionism as some nefarious activity that only treasonous Southerners of the Confederacy are capable of engaging in. For all intents and purposes, the founding generation was secessionist. When they signed on to the Declaration of Independence, those who fomented the...

It’s Time to March Home

by José Niño | Jan 20, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

One becomes a hardened cynic when following U.S. foreign policy. Such pessimism is justified: looking at nearly two decades' worth of nation building abroad and a seemingly shatterproof consensus on foreign policy interventionism in DC $6 trillion and roughly seven thousand American lives later, America’s foreign policy machine appears to be chugging along just fine. The election of Joe Biden as president may represent a partisan change in terms of who will be the face of the country. In terms of substance, however, it may not amount to much. Biden has a long track record of promoting...

A Reader’s Guide to Liberalism

by José Niño | Jan 8, 2021 | Featured Articles

Has the definition of “liberal” changed over time? One of the more compelling debates in American intellectual circles concerns classical liberalism vs modern liberalism. In American parlance, the word liberal is used reflexively, often without much deep thought about its origin. It usually refers to individuals associated with the contemporary left and loosely connected to the Democratic Party. However, liberal did not always have that connotation in American politics. To understand these changes, let’s take a stroll down memory lane to learn how its meaning has evolved over time. Classical...

Why the NRA Should Seek Refuge Outside New York

by José Niño | Oct 11, 2020 | Featured Articles

The state of New York has wasted no time reminding Americans about its pathological disregard for personal freedom. Its COVID-19 lockdown policies were among the most heavy-handed responses implemented by a state government in the country. Controversies surrounding the state government’s decision to place recovering COVID patients in retirement homes, arguably a major factor behind the state’s deadly retirement home outbreak, were major black eyes for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration. The Empire State’s overreach hasn’t been confined to COVID-19, though. New York policymakers are...

Foreign Aid Can’t Fix Bad Economics

by José Niño | May 6, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

Some myths in politics die hard. We are constantly reminded by the managerial classes that foreign aid is crucial to lifting the developing world out of poverty. With the magic wand of public spending, money is sent to the developing world in hopes of pushing these countries out of their economic stupor. We’ve seen this story play out domestically when politicians call for wealth transfer programs with the purported intent of “investing” in economically beleaguered sections of America. With the universalist ethos of American politics, inevitably the domestic redistributionist logic is taken...