“Do you know anybody living who expressly consents to the existence of the government and consents to what it does?” asks Judge Andrew Napolitano, senior judicial analyst for Fox News, syndicated columnist, and author of, most recently, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Assault on Civil Liberties. “Your rights, my rights, are integral to our humanity. The government can’t take them away by majority vote!”
Reason’s Nick Gillespie caught up with the judge at this year’s FreedomFest, the annual gathering of libertarians in Las Vegas, to discuss how his traditional Catholicism intersects with his libertarian politics, why electing Trump or Clinton will likely lead to the “demise of the Constitution as we understand it,” why he thinks Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson won’t win in November, his commitment to open borders, and the philosophical underpinnings to his pro-life stance on abortion.
“My opposition to abortion is not only because of Church teaching, but also because of a rational examination of the baby growing in the womb and a belief in the non-aggression principle,” Napolitano explains. “The non-aggression principle prevents you from interfering with the life or the property of another human being without moral justification. There is no moral justification for killing a child in the womb!”
Runs about 30 minutes.
Edited by Ian Keyser and Joshua Swain. Cameras by Austin Bragg and Jim Epstein.
For transcription and downloadable files, click here.
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