“Does the election of Barack Obama represent the triumph of progressivism and the end of libertarianism? Many on the left seem to think so. Obama’s victory, argued blogger Matthew Yglesias, represents a ‘resounding victory for progressive ideals.’ The ‘old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism,’ declared The New Yorker’s George Packer, ‘have, like a charlatan’s incantations, failed to work.’ But what the current vogue for the term progressive fails to acknowledge is that the original progressives embraced the worst abuses of state power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Libertarians, by contrast, stood as consistent defenders of individual liberty in all spheres of human life.” (11/12/08)