The Cato Institute has generously offered me a scholarship to this summer's Cato University seminar, and I'm going to take the last week of July off from work to go! It looks very exciting.
I'm curious to see how my views will be received. I made it plain in my application that I'm a Christian and a conservative (with libertarian sympathies), and I get the impression that Libertarians don't always like Christians very much. I'm not sure about this, however. Perusing Cato's website, it also looks like they want us to pull out of Iraq ASAP, which isn't something I see as being very wise. I'm also wavering on the drug legalization thing, which is strongly supported by libertarians.
Still, I'm sure there will be a lot we will agree on, and I'm eager to engage in debate with all the brilliant people I imagine will be there. I hope I conduct myself well and learn a bunch of new things.
Plus, I hope I meet some beautiful babies.
I'm going to buy a laptop and blog from the resort as much as possible, and take a bunch of pictures. I wonder if any other bloggers will be there? To tell the truth, I don't have any idea how many people will be attending.
In earlier days, there was a strong strain of hyper-rationalistic atheism running through libertarian thought. It appears that that tendency has been mitigated, in part by the recognition that shouting "I don't have any answers and YOU DON'T EITHER!" at religionists is not a way to ingratiate oneself with them.
In any event, Cato is a classical liberal institute, rather than a hard-core libertarian one. It has some fascinating people working for it, and its catalog of publications is quite impressive as well. Its thinking emphasizes a consequentialist approach to public policy, rather than the deontological or absolutist angle favored by most capital-L Libertarians and theorists. You should learn a lot and have a good time.
As for beautiful babes...well, good luck. The typical attendance at a seminar such as this is 90% male, of which 90% are single. (There's something about liberty-oriented political activism that keeps the ladies away. Research in to this critical effect is ongoing.) Therefore, even if the remaining 10% are babes and single themselves, the competition will be intense. Lace up your running shoes.
FP: Thanks for the info. Mostly I was thinking that San Diego has babes, not Cato :) I kinda expect the Cato people to all be 50-year-old men.
I was just curious, why do you think pulling out of Iraq now would be the best solution? Don't you think all hell would break lose there and our reputation internationally would be even worse than it already is?
JG: I don't think we should pull out of Iraq immediately; libertarians typically do.