Ilya Somin is a whiz of a law prof and an all-around political writer. He is my latest guest on Q&A, here. He teaches at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. He also holds a chair at the Cato Institute. He is deeply informed and easily articulate, as you will hear on our podcast — “fluent,” as Bill Buckley would say.
He started out in the Soviet Union in 1973. With his parents, he came to the United States when he was six. They lived in the Boston area. He became an ardent fan of the Red Sox — and of the Celtics, Patriots, and Bruins.
At 15 or so, he read Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. That gave him a jolt. He also read The Lord of the Rings, and has read it many times since. Right now, he is reading it with his nine-year-old daughter.
He went to Amherst, Harvard, and Yale. He blogs for “The Volokh Conspiracy” at Reason magazine. Here on the Corner, I’ll provide tastes of our podcast.
Somewhere along the way, I tell him something like this: “I have always believed in ‘a nation of laws, not men.’ I have believed in an America on something like constitutional auto-pilot. Elections should not matter a great deal. We are a constitutional republic. More and more, however, I see that the character of our officeholders matters a lot. Paper protections — ‘guardrails’ — go only so far.”
Professor Somin’s response (in paraphrase):
One reason that the “men,” rather than the “laws,” matter so much is that we have given the various offices — especially the presidency — so much discretionary authority. This is part of why I want tighter limits on government power. The kinds of people attracted to political power tend to be dangerous, harmful — seriously problematic.
Even in a tightly limited government — as tightly limited as I would like — the character of political leaders would matter. I don’t think we can do away with that entirely. But it would matter less, and a dangerous person could do much less harm.
We also discuss campus affairs: free speech, political correctness, academic freedom. As a rule, people in a minority are big on free speech and academic freedom. They rebel against political correctness. When people are in a majority, however . . .
A few golden individuals favor free speech and academic freedom no matter who is in charge: whether their own kind is or another kind. Among them, says Somin, is the late Justice Scalia.
At the end of our podcast, I bring up American exceptionalism. Are we? Exceptional?
Somin (in paraphrase):
We are — but the continuation of our exceptionalism is not inevitable. There are a number of things that make America different from most other countries. The one I think is most relevant here is that, despite what J. D. Vance recently said, America is unusual in being a nation founded on an idea — the idea of what you might call “Enlightenment liberalism,” that people have universal human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
When you read the Declaration of Independence, what’s striking about it is the reason the drafters give: the reason for their declaration. They are not saying, “We Americans are a culturally distinct people” or “an ethnically distinct people.” That’s what modern declarations of independence say. But the drafters could not, because most white Americans were English or Scots, just like the British people.
Instead they say, “The purpose of government is to secure universal human rights. The government in London has failed to do so. Therefore, we are separating.”
Professor Somin brings up George Washington and his view of America. I wish to quote a letter that Washington wrote in 1788: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.”
Again, my Q&A with Ilya Somin is here. Whether you agree with him or not, you will find him a formidable mind and formidable teacher.