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Woody Holton, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina, and Phillip Magness, director of research and education at the American Institute for Economic Research debate the resolution, "The New York Times book The 1619 Project, and the Hulu video series based on it, are important contributions to our understanding of slavery and the role of African Americans in American history."

The debate was held at New York City's Sheen Center and hosted by The Soho Forum, which receives fiscal sponsorship from Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason.

Taking the affirmative was Holton, who is the author of Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (1999), which won the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Social History Award; Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, a finalist for the National Book Award; Abigail Adams, which won the Bancroft Prize; and Liberty is Sweet: The Epic of the American Revolution, which Holton wrote as the Huntington Library's Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellow and as a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow.

Arguing against the resolution was Magness, the author of The 1619 Project: A Critique. He holds a Ph.D. and master's from George Mason University's School of Public Policy, and a bachelor's from the University of St. Thomas (Houston). Magness' work encompasses the economic history of the United States, with specializations in the economic dimensions of slavery and racial discrimination, the history of taxation, and measurements of economic inequality over time. In addition to his scholarship, Magness's writings have appeared in numerous venues including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Politico, Reason, National Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Does the 1619 Project Have Anything To Teach Us?

Forty years ago, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation At Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform, a scathing indictment of public K-12 schools in America. "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war," announced the report's authors, who included Nobel Prize–winning chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and Yale University President A. Bartlett Giamatti. The report catalyzed massive increases in per-pupil spending, standardized testing, and "common core" style curricula. Yet by almost every measure, educational outcomes are no better than they were in 1983.

In Mediocrity: 40 Ways Government Schools Are Failing Today's Students, the Libertas Institute's Connor Boyack and the American Federation for Children's Corey DeAngelis outline what's wrong with the ways our public schools function—and they offer concrete solutions to improve outcomes for children.

In this podcast version of The Reason Live Stream, I talk with Boyack and DeAngelis about why they support maximizing parental rights through education savings accounts (ESAs), disagree with conservative Republicans who want to ban critical race theory and other controversial concepts, and believe that the end of "factory schooling" will vastly improve the civic life of the United States of America.

Connor Boyack and Corey DeAngelis: Why K-12 Education Sucks and How To Fix It

Established in 1958 and peaking in influence and membership in the mid-1960s, the staunchly anti-communist John Birch Society quickly became a powerful force in conservative politics, with leading figures such as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan making appeals to its members without fully endorsing its paranoid vision of a country secretly controlled by Soviet agents. Indeed, the society's founder, retired candy magnate Robert Welch, denounced President Dwight Eisenhower as a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy."

The society also became a running punchline during its heyday, with Bob Dylan recording a song called "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" and the society's fixation on water fluoridation and vaccines finding its way into a character in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove who is obsessed with protecting "our precious bodily fluids."

In the new book Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, George Washington University's Matt Dallek puts the rise and fall of the Birch Society—which still exists and is based in Appleton, Wisconsin—into a larger Cold War context and argues that its influence on contemporary conservative politics remains as strong as it is unacknowledged.

"More than the most hard-line Goldwater, Nixon, or Reagan Republicans," he writes, "the Birch Society…bequeathed to subsequent generations an extreme antigovernment zeal and rhetorically violent appeal" that remains part and parcel of Donald Trump's MAGA movement. The Birchers' focus on ending the Federal Reserve; getting the United States out of the United Nations, NATO, and the World Trade Organization; and anti-interventionist foreign policy parallels many of the key elements of the political program articulated by libertarian Republican Ron Paul, who keynoted the group's 50th Anniversary Celebration. And the society's past antagonism toward integration and continuing attacks on feminism and gay rights—and emphasis on traditional Christian values and family structures—is widespread among contemporary conservatives.

Dallek's book is not a sneering attack on a backward-looking group but a deep dive into the context and personalities that made it so powerful, if only for a short period of time. He recaptures a sense of just how radical post-war America was, both on the right and the left, and how "conspiracism"—the idea that things are never simply what they appear to be but are really the result of hidden elite machinations—continues to inform how we all think about politics.

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The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

Matt Dallek: The John Birch Society's Deep Influence on Trump's GOP

Democrats and the media go insane over Elon Musk’s young DOGE team; we analyze ‘Beast Games’; and Kanye West is back on X.

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Ep.2134

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Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings

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Ep. 2134 - Democrats Fear BIG BALLS!

President Trump launches a rhetorical assault on Ukrainian President Vlodomir Zelenskyy; the Department of Defense examines possible cuts; and Pete Buttigieg makes his play to lead the Democratic Party.

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Ep.2142

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Ep. 2142 - Trump HAMMERS…Ukraine?!

How legal is Trump's governing agenda? Just asking questions.

Today's guest is Randy Barnett, a Georgetown constitutional law professor who has argued before the Supreme Court, was part of a legal team that challenged the constitutionality of Obamacare, is a contributor to The Volokh Conspiracy blog hosted at Reason, and is the author of several books, most recently the memoir A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist. In this week's episode, Barnett discusses the legality of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the various federal injunctions and restraining orders issued against the Trump administration, and whether libertarians should celebrate or be concerned about President Donald Truamp and Elon Musk's methods for slashing government. He also explains why he thinks Trump's executive order rescinding birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants might triumph before the Supreme Court. 

Randy Barnett: How legal is Trump's agenda?

The Trump administration announces the imminent release of new Epstein files…only to tell us nothing new; President Trump dissociates from the release of the Tate brothers; and Keir Starmer visits the White House.

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Ep.2148

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Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threatens to shut down the government over literally nothing; turmoil continues in the markets as the Trump tariff war continues; and Russia considers joining a Ukrainian ceasefire.

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Ep.2157

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Ep. 2157 - Democrats To SHUT DOWN The Government?

Why wait centuries to terraform Mars when you could build a habitable world overnight? In this episode, we explore the concept of Worldhouses—planet-spanning domes that let us colonize hostile worlds by enclosing them beneath engineered skies, one dome at a time.

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Worldhouses
Episode 499; May 15, 2025
Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur
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Worldhouses: Building Planets, One Dome at a Time

An Introduction to SFIA's Civilizations at the End of Time series, looking at how we might go about surviving the end of the world, the end of all stars, and even entropy itself.

Civilizations At The End Of Time Series Introduction

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Ep. 2148 - The Epstein File Release FIASCO

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