Anthony Comegna joins host Timothy Virkkala to explore the meaning of LocoFoco-ism.
This is the history America’s historians shun as if it were the … coronavirus.
The issues from the 1830s and 1840s:
- anti-monopoly
- anti-central bank
- abolitionism
- anti-censorship
- extending the franchise
- general pro-freedom
Walt Whitman was a LocoFoco, and much admired its intellectual leader, William Leggett.
They were a radical bunch, and they took the liberty idea to some logical and sweeping conclusions. Their transit through America’s ideological landscape was astounding, and they changed minds. Whose?
William Lloyd Garrison’s, for one. His “no union with slaveholders” notion came from Leggett!
President Martin Van Buren — the true father of the Democratic Party — put LocoFoco positions into policy, and a number of LocoFocos into his administration.
But these LocoFocos came to learn something, and learn it hard: their love of democracy brought them face to face with an unlovely truth, that democracy corrupts its practitioners, and leads to slavery, war, and special privileges. As well as to themselves, the “equal rights” republicans.
Libertarians still struggle with these issues.
Maybe the way to really confront them is to do what most historians will not: learn from the history of actual libertarianism, in its first full flowering.
And, after catching this episode, you will also understand why our logo is a match:
Or go to iTunes, Spotify, or (perhaps) some other podcatcher to listen to the podcast hosted at LocoFoco.net:
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