I was privileged to take part in a debate yesterday at the American University Law School on “Politics and the Public Interest” and was in the audience today at a Cato Institute conference on “Lessons from the Iraq War: Reconciling Liberty and Security.” The former was a three-way debate and discussion with fellows from the Heritage Foundation and the Center for American Progress. (Since the leftist fellow lit into the rightist fellow — even answering “What is the greatest threat America faces today” by answering “the Heritage Foundation” — I managed to be the sweet voice of reason, by explaining that you should look at the arguments, the evidence offered, and the like when evaluating a policy proposal, rather than asking who funded it or whether they might have a secret agenda.) The latter brought together an interesting array of libertarians to debate and discuss how libertarians should think about the use of military force.
This looks like it was a great event. Was the conference recorded, and will it be posted as MP3s or at least be for sale on CD’s?
It was filmed (just with Cato’s standard camera, so nothing all that fancy) and taped. Usually they are put up within a few days. (A whole conference full of audio or video takes a bit of time to prepare.) I’d check back to the Cato web page (http://www.cato.org/events/calendar.html) in two days and go to the archived events. If it’s not going to be put up, I’ll get back to you.
Video for the Cato conference on foreign policy is now online: http://www.cato.org/events/041022conf.html.