Cato Event Podcast

At the end of the Cold War, the United States was confident that it stood on the precipice of a new era of peace and prosperity as the world’s sole superpower. U.S. leaders adopted a strategy of primacy, aimed at discouraging others from challenging American power, and they sought to spread democracy and liberal economics within an American sphere of influence that encompassed most of the world. Today, relations with Russia and China have deteriorated, nationalist movements are on the rise, and the European Union seems unsteady at best.In his new book, The Hell of Good Intentions, Stephen Walt traces many of these problems to the flaws inherent in primacy. U.S. power has allowed policymakers to pursue ambitious foreign policy goals, even when those goals are unnecessary or doomed to fail. And yet, despite many setbacks, an entrenched foreign policy elite retains its faith in liberal hegemony. Join us at noon on Wednesday, October 17, as Walt explores these ideas and outlines the case for a fresh, new approach to American foreign policy based on realism and restraint. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paid family leave has become an issue of national significance, and some policymakers think the federal policy status quo is insufficient. As a result, in 2017 congressional Democrats proposed funding leave through payroll taxes on businesses and workers, and the Trump administration suggested providing paid parental leave through state unemployment insurance. In 2018, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) proposed legislation allowing workers to dip into Social Security retirement benefits to cover paid leave.Please join us for a conversation about paid family leave and current federal proposals for paid leave. Emily Ekins, director of polling at Cato Institute, will provide a first look at new public opinion polling on paid leave. Vanessa Brown Calder, Veronique de Rugy, and Rachel Greszler will discuss their research on paid family leave, with a focus on current federal proposals like the FAMILY Act (the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act) and Social Security–paid family leave. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Like many Americans, Randal O’Toole loves passenger trains, yet he acknowledges that intercity passenger trains and — outside of the New York region — urban rail transit play little role in American life today. The replacement of passenger trains with cars, buses, and airplanes is similar to many other recent technological replacements: word processors replacing typewriters, calculators replacing slide rules, telephones replacing telegraphs, and cell phones replacing land lines. However, only for passenger trains has the government spent billions of dollars a year attempting to turn back the clock and slow that replacement. O’Toole’s book Romance of the Rails asks why this is so and whether passenger rail has a significant role to play in the future. Art Guzzetti, an advocate for urban rail transit; Jim Mathews, an advocate for intercity passenger trains; and Marc Scribner, an advocate for free-market transportation, will offer their comments on the book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the past few years. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. How did this happen?First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: (1) what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, (2) always trust your feelings, and (3) life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths are incompatible with basic psychological principles as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. They interfere with healthy development. Anyone who embraces these untruths—and the resulting culture of “safetyism”—is less likely to become an autonomous adult able to prosper in a free society.Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to produce these untruths. They place the conflicts on campus in the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization, including a rise in hate crimes and off-campus provocation. They explore changes in childhood, including the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the past decade.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transit ridership is declining nationwide despite billions of dollars in federal subsidies, observes Randal O’Toole, one of the nation’s leading critics of the transit industry. He argues that the federal government should stop subsidizing a dying industry. Jarrett Walker — one of the most innovative thinkers in the transit community — disagrees, arguing that public transit has a vital role to play in urban transportation and urban growth. Join us to hear these two experts debate the appropriate role of federal funding in urban transportation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The internet and social media were supposed to radically democratize news and information — yet many observers now worry that they are undermining the preconditions for healthy democracies. Misinformation peddled by conspiracy theorists, unscrupulous clickbaiters, and even intelligence agencies spreads around the globe at the speed of light, while in the United States, citizens increasingly retreat into distinct media ecosystems so divergent as to be mutually unrecognizable. Can liberal democracy function in a world in which voters no longer inhabit the same universe of facts?We’ll take up these questions with renowned scholar Yochai Benkler, coauthor of the important new book-length study Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. We’ll take a close look at the dynamics of how propaganda, misinformation, and “fake news” propagate across modern information networks. Rebecca MacKinnon, author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, and Cato senior fellow Julian Sanchez provide commentary. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Trump administration has taken a hardline approach toward Pakistan, cutting military and security aid throughout 2018 and accusing Pakistan of not doing enough to combat militants operating on its soil. Pakistan, however, maintains that it has eliminated all safe havens and that the United States is unfairly targeting the country.Washington’s conventional wisdom on Pakistan correctly links militant sponsorship with the state’s military and intelligence agencies. As such, U.S. policies to combat Pakistan’s militant sponsorship have primarily focused on pressuring the military. In a new report, Sahar Khan analyzes Pakistan’s anti-terrorism legal regime, judiciary, and police and finds that in the context of counterterrorism, civil institutions have developed policies and bureaucratic routines that reinforce the military’s policy of sponsoring militant groups. And this is one of the primary reasons why U.S. attempts to change Pakistan’s policy of militant sponsorship have failed.Please join us for a lively discussion, with lunch to follow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In early May 2013, an online open-source organization called Defense Distributed released design files for the Liberator, the world’s first completely 3D-printable single-shot handgun. In just two days, the plans were downloaded more than 100,000 times.Within days, the United States Department of State demanded that Defense Distributed take down the files, kicking off a long legal battle that culminated in a settlement allowing the sale of plans for 3D-printed firearms online beginning August 1, 2018. However, that win was quickly undermined by an order—issued by Robert S. Lasnik, Senior District Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington—demanding a stop on the spread of the design files. States and Defense Distributed have filed multiple lawsuits, and the legal drama continues.What are 3D-printed guns, exactly—and are they more dangerous than other legally available weapons? Is the right to distribute 3D-printed gun blueprints a free speech issue? Are gun control policies viable in a world where people can make guns at home?On Thursday, September 27, please join the Cato Institute for a robust discussion of the complex legal and practical issues surrounding 3D-printed guns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recent political tumult and the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency have driven anxious commentators to lament the collapse of a post-1945 liberal world order. Invoking the supposed institution building and multilateralism of the last 70 years, the order’s defenders urge U.S. leaders to restore a battered tradition, uphold economic and security commitments, and promote liberal values. Others caution that nostalgia has obscured our understanding of the old order’s hard edges and its shortcomings, and has forestalled a serious assessment of the changes that will be needed going forward.Panelists will discuss the core principles of the liberal international order — both as those principles have been professed by its defenders and as they have been practiced by U.S. and world leaders. They will also consider the present and future of the liberal order. What revisions, if any, are necessary? Should U.S. leaders embrace the old liberal international order and reaffirm American leadership within that order? Or is it time to reassess U.S. grand strategy and bring U.S. goals in line with modern-day realities? Join us for an important and timely discussion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.