Aaron Ross Powell ☸️

Out Now: Liberalism's Inner Life

The first episode of The Inner Life of Liberalism podcast.

My New Project: The Inner Life of Liberalism Podcast

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The Thing About Griping About Bluesky

Let a thousand mutually suspicious communities bloom.

Don't Harm Your Enemies. Make Them Less Harmful.

Speaking with intent to harm trains the speaker in habits of hatred. The cost of online cruelty isn't only to the target.

What the Ancients Knew About Posting Well

An early Buddhist text gives us four questions to ask before posting—and most of what we post fails the test.

Two Helpful Essays Illuminating Liberal Practice

Two short Buddhist essays from Thanissaro Bhikkhu on karma as feedback loop, identity as inheritance, and intention as a skill you can practice.

The Ethics of Not Being Offended

Discomfort isn't harm. Treating it as harm burns the finite moral attention we need for the suffering that actually exists.

The Kids Aren’t Into Retro Tech Because of Surveillance Capitalism

Teenagers buying CDs aren't making a political statement. They just like CDs.

ReImagining Liberty Ends (And What's to Come)

After 101 episodes, it's time to move on to new projects.

Who Is AI Music For?

Google's music-making AI makes songs. I just can't figure out why anyone would listen to them.

The Inner Life of Liberalism

The practices that make your life better are the same ones that sustain a free society. It's time liberalism took that seriously.

Argumentation and Illumination: Two Ways Philosophy Works

Some philosophy works by proving a conclusion. Some works by making something visible you couldn't see before. Here's why the distinction matters.

ReImagining Liberty 098: The Practice and Inner Life of Liberalism (w/ Jason Canon)

A podcast conversation.

If You’ve Only Ever Played D&D, You’re Missing Out

Tabletop RPGs are story engines. Why would you want to tell only one kind of story?

The Faux-Sophistication of Doomer Despair

It's okay to feel despair in the moment. But it's dumb to insist we've already lost.

Trump is Governing a Country that Doesn't Exist—And Destroying One That Does

Cognitive decline and a curated information environment means Trump has no idea what's happening in the world outside his head.

The Regime Has No Defense Against a Good Neighbor

America’s political divide is between neighborliness and neighborhood pariahs, and neighborliness is winning.

ReImagining Liberty is taking a short break

A brief pause for the next big thing.

What Pete Hegseth’s Kettlebell Swings Tell Us About MAGA Ideology

MAGA is built on a fundamental lack of the internal protective quality that warns us when we are debasing ourselves.

My Favorite Movie of 2025

It's not the year's best movie, but Spinal Tap 2 brought me the most joy.

ReImagining Liberty 096: The Irrationality of Rationalists (w/ Samantha Hancox-Li)

A podcast conversation.

You Can't Escape the Algorithm

Chronological feeds won't fix social media

ReImagining Liberty Podcast

The emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical social, political, and economic liberalism. Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell.

Spending Time with Spinal Tap (Again)

ReImagining Liberty 095: Adam Gurri on Opposition Meda versus Complicit Media

A podcast conversation.

MAGA is an Auto-Humiliation Movement

Trump is shameless, yes. But he also has a fetish for humiliating himself.

The End of the Showman Presidency

In Trump 1.0, he'd back down when he was unpopular. Now he doesn't.

The Answer to Student AI Writing Slop is Authorial Voice

LLMs are bad at sounding unique. So we should help young writers to develop their own unique prose style.

ReImagining Liberty 094: A New American Reconstruction

A conversation with Andy Craig and Shikha Dalmia

David Boaz: Liberty's North Star

The legacy of my boss, mentor, and friend.

Why Elites Believe in Racial IQ Differences and Evolutionary Psych

Both help deflect critiques of elite status being less earned than elites want to think.

The “Likable”/“Unlikable” Political Realignment

American conservatism is a home for unlikeable people who’ve turned their unlinkability into a political project.

Most Americans Aren’t Fascists, and That’s a Big Problem for the GOP

When you let rot into your coalition, your entire coalition eventually turns rotten.

The Anti-Anti-Trans Election

Running against trans people failed and America proved itself a better place than the worst among us want it to be.

Leaflet, Blogging, and How to Fix Social Media

Decentralization, network overlap, and why we should all blog, too.

What It Means to View Ethics as a Practice

Ethics isn't a body of knowledge you study. It's a skill you practice—and that distinction changes how you should approach living well.

No Kings and Letting Ourselves Hope

There are more of us than there are of them. And we have decency on our side.

Trumpism and the Status Anxiety of Abusers

Why It Works to Call Them Weird Why It Works to Call Them Weird

Shifting political talk from policy to values

Roy Cooper, Prayer, and the Folly of Anti-Religious Collectivism

Roy Cooper's Senate campaign announcement, which included a mention of prayer, sparked backlash on social media from people who'd rather be bigots than understand another's faith.

Boys Are Falling Behind Girls Because Girls Aren't Being Held Back

Let’s not blame boys’ underperformance on women teachers.

Silicon Valley’s “996” Is About Power, not Productivity

The "996" work schedule reflects a troubling belief in sacrificing personal well-being for perceived productivity, driven more by power dynamics than actual efficiency.

AI and the Threat of Nostalgia Culture

The rise of AI-generated content risks overshadowing original creative works, potentially leading to a market collapse for writers and artists if consumers prefer nostalgia-driven remixes over new exp…

An Inconsistent Approach to Viewpoint Diversity

If school choice is the answer to fights over curriculum in K-12 schools, it also needs to be the answer at universities. But culture war supporting libertarians don't tend to apply the argument that …

If You Want to Win Political Arguments, Stop Being an Asshole

Political persuasion versus the urge to political domination.

Trump Promised Disaster. His Supporters Didn’t Believe Him.

Many Trump supporters underestimated his intentions during his first term, believing he wouldn't follow through on his campaign promises, but his second term has revealed the dangers of their misjudgm…

Reign of the Competency Cosplayers

American politics suffers from a lack of genuine expertise, as leaders prioritize performative competence and tribal loyalty over actual knowledge and skill.

The GOP is now just grifters grifting each other

Selling Out vs. Just Selling: The Weirdness of "Content" Monetization

What it means that we stopped caring so much about what we create and started caring only about whether we can sell it.

The Politics of "Unbiased" Conservative Search Engines

The Shaky Future of Trump's Personality Cult

Why, Despite the Numbers, Bluesky Feels Bigger than Threads

It's Okay if Your Social Media Platform is a Bubble

The Quillette Effect

Learning about ideologies exclusively from their opponents is a recipe for epistemic failure.

The GOP's Competence Gap

The Verge’s “Failure” is a Win for Everyone: Talent Networks as Networks

Twitter/X as a Bubble for Bad Ethics

The Misuse of Meritocracy

Why the Right Lies About Cities

The Necessary Virtue of Not Being an Asshole

The False Equivalence Trap

Why Tech Bros Overestimate AI's Creative Abilities

Substack Doesn't Want You to Leave

How to Talk Yourself into Defending Nonsense

Liberalism and Sympathetic Joy

The Challenge of Committing to Liberty—and Meaning It

Three Kinds of Conservatives

Surround Yourself With Those Who Are Admirable, and Distance Yourself From Those Who Aren’t.

How Social Media Tricks our Brains — and Destroys our Politics

Speaking Ill of the Dead

A Twitter Eulogy

You Haven’t Been Canceled. You’re Just Unlikable.

People don't like jerks. But jerks think people instead can't handle their ideas.

If Trump is So Unpopular, Why are Institutions Capitulating?

The American people can't stand Trump. His polling is abysmal. And yet private and public institutions capitulate. Why?

A Crash Course in Cultivating Liberal Virtues

Perfect virtue is impossible, and moral growth is challenging. But we can improve ourselves in practical ways, even if we can't achieve the ideal.

Social Conservatism is Suffering

We cannot make permanent what is inevitably impermanent, and insisting otherwise brings distress. Better to embrace dynamism and social diversity.

No, Midjourney (and other AI) Is Not Stealing Your Work

The argument that AI image generators steal from artists would mean that all artists are thieves.

Hate Can Be Mainstream

Bigotry is bigotry, even if the bigots are in the majority.

How the Right Distorted Libertarianism

Once rooted in liberalism, libertarianism's detour through the conservative movement has blunted its radical edge and commitment to principle.

Two Kinds of Libertarians

Some libertarians oppose the state because it reinforces social hierarchies. Others because it threatens them. Only the former is worthy of the name.

Elite Complicity in the Rise of Fascism

America's elites downplay Trump's authoritarian fascism out of a corrupt sense of class consciousness and solidarity.

How to Be in a World on Fire

The values and perspectives our political moment demands of us.

Silicon Valley’s Very Online Ideologues are in Model Collapse

The combination of exceptional wealth and a closed and uniform ideological and intellectual community wreaks havoc on one's epistemic psychology.

Liberalism, Virtue, and the Crisis of Young Men

Liberals should stop pretending liberalism is value-free, and instead argue that liberal values are better than the alternatives.

Fight Now, Hope Always

Even as we fight back against illiberalism, we must always be examples of what makes liberalism worth fighting for.

Why Reasonable Doubt Matters (and Why You Should Serve on a Jury)

Prosecutors need juries to hold them to account and demand they do what they're duty-bound to do.

The Emperor's New Annexations: Journalism and the Normalization of Nonsense

Presenting "both sides" of an issue when one side is patently absurd undermines journalistic integrity and normalizes dangerous rhetoric.

Bad Policy Comes from Confusing "Complexity" and "Complication"

If we're going to solve difficult problems, we need to know whether they're just difficult ot understand or entirely unknowable.

Politics as a Tool: Shaping Society for Good

Before we can do politics well, we need to know why we do politics in the first place.

The Limits of AI Learning: Why Drilling Down Can Lead You Astray

The more you ask follow-up questions, the worse the answers get.

Twitter and the Confusion of Medium and Message

Journalists' attachment to Twitter stems from a conflation of the platform with the act of journalism itself.

It's Okay if Your Social Media Platform is a Bubble

Is it wrong to have a social media feed primarily of people you agree with?

Small Reasons for Hope

We might just see a significant anti-Trump backlash in 2026 and 2028.

What Do We Do Now?

The worst happened, and America will be ruled, for four years at least, by fascism.

Don't Turn Away

Mindful and compassionate attention and awareness are needed to get through what the country now faces.

The Staggering Promise of AI Tutors

Chatbots can help students understand concepts when their teachers can't.

Representation in Video Games and Movies is Not "Politics"

It's not "political" when a game or movie isn't a bunch of straight white guys.

The Basic Case for Liberalism

Change and diversity are inevitable and good—and our politics should reflect that.

Barriers in the Way of an Ethical Life

Five persistent mental habits that sabotage ethical practice—and what to do about each.

AI and Theft: A Thought Experiment

A thought experiment about a mysterious box that reads and learns everything. Does that make it a thief?

Actually, Trump Would Be Terrible for the Economy

Mass deportations and sweeping tariffs are not bold economic thinking. They're a recession in policy form.

A Rorschach Test for the State of American Free Speech

Surveys showing Americans self-censor don't tell us whether free speech is under threat. They mostly just confirm whatever we already believe.

A Politics of Harmlessness

The first principle of ethics is not causing harm—to others or to ourselves. A liberal politics follows from there.

“Social Liberalization” in Opposition to “Social Conservatism”

Social liberalization means giving people more freedom—not whatever the left happens to want. A necessary clarification.

History's Social Conservatives Were Always Wrong. So are Today's.

Every prior generation of social conservatives was wrong about the dangers of social liberalization. Why assume today's are different?

What happens if Trump loses?

A Trump loss won't end MAGA or restore the old GOP. Here's what it would actually mean for American politics.

The Elite Protect Their Own

The Kim Philby affair shows what happens when elite institutions protect their own from warranted criticism. American media has the same problem.

In Politics, Don’t Aim to “Win,” but Rather “Win Over”

Destroying your opponent's argument is satisfying. Changing their mind is the point. The two aren't the same thing.

The Innsmouth Immigrant Crimewave the Democrat Party is Hiding from You

A Lovecraftian dispatch from the front lines of the right-wing immigration panic machine.

How Demanding is Self-Authorship?

Self-authorship doesn't require constant self-reinvention. It just means your life shouldn't feel like someone else's.

What is Ethics?

Defining ethics and distinguishing it from morality is crucial for clear philosophical thought.

The Politics of Broken Values and Warped Perspectives

The toxicity of our politics isn't just about bad policies. It's about a perspective of aversion and clinging that makes people both cruel and miserable.

The Worst Argument in Politics

Most political arguments fail for the same reason: they prove too much. Here's how to spot it—and how to build a better one.

David Boaz: Liberty's North Star

Four Bad Arguments Against AI

Critics of AI keep making the same mistakes. Here's why the most common arguments against the technology don't hold up.

The Liberal Identity Crisis

How the "Overton Paradox" explains the intra-liberal culture war.

Why AI is the New Sliced Bread

Artists upset about AI automation buy factory-made bread without a second thought. They need an argument for why their craft is different.

Against a Life of Moderation

Buddhism's Middle Way is not a call for moderation. It's a call for radical focus on what actually matters.

Your Philosophy Might Be True — But Not for the Reasons You Think

The arguments that convince us of our philosophical positions are often the least important reason we hold them.

How LEGO Can Teach Us About Meaning In Liberal Societies

A family parable about forging a sense of place and meaning—and what it says about the liberal project.

Scott Adams, "Scientific" Misogyny, and Roland Barthes's Mythology

The right's "scientific" case for misogyny isn't science. It's myth in the sense Roland Barthes meant—political prejudice dressed up as natural fact.

Political Optimism in 2024

Despite the very real risk of fascism in the 2024 election, there are genuine reasons to think the future is brighter than the doomers suggest.

A Conflict of Visions

Arguing with the reactionary right about tactics misses the point. The problem isn't their methods. It's what they're trying to build.

Living Well Means Recognizing Three Facts of Our Existence

Impermanence, dissatisfaction, and the lack of a fixed self aren't causes for despair. They're the starting point for a life lived well.

This is the Good Life

What the ethical project is actually aimed at: happiness, flourishing, and freedom from the suffering we bring on ourselves.

Just One Fewer God?

Atheists can't make their case if they insist on straw-manning faith.

The Limits of Reason

Our brains have limits on what they can think and what tools they can bring to thinking.

(Anti-)Wokeism as a Rorschach Test

Liberal speech norms and deciding which ideas are worthy of engagement.

A Twitter Eulogy

On deleting my Twitter account, an old friend I met there who died, and what Elon Musk destroyed.

Goodwill, Sympathetic Joy, and Liberalism's Foundations

Mere tolerance is necessary for liberalism to function, but liberalism becomes stronger if we can move beyond it.

Why Do Conservatives Keep Hyper-Sexualizing Men in Dresses?

The moral panic about drag shows says more about what conservatives find to be sexual than it does about what's appropriate for kids.

If Your Faith Makes You a Bigot, It's Time to Question Your Faith

Some more likely possibilities to consider before accepting that God believes it's wrong to be LGBT.

The Ideology of Hang-Ups

Moral panic about drag queens and gender fluidity isn't principled ethics. It's ideology constructed on personal hang-ups.

The Drabness of Conservative Philosophy

Conservative philosophy is mostly personal distaste for novelty dressed up in elaborate intellectual costume.

ReImagining Liberty 002: "Does Political Liberty Require Social Liberalism?"

A podcast conversation with Stephanie Slade

ReImagining Liberty 001: How To Be a Better Advocate for Liberty

A conversation with Cory Massimino

Liberty Upsets Patterns—and Conservatism

Liberty is dynamic. Conservatism is static. They cannot coexist.

The American Right Never Really Loved Freedom

Conservative ideology fundamentally contradicts individual liberty and self-determination.

Why Josh Hawley Hates Your Freedom

Josh Hawley doesn't just oppose the left. He opposes liberty itself. And he's built a political philosophy to justify it.

The Last Jedi Betrays the Original Trilogy and its Heroes

Through sheer storytelling laziness, it tells us that nothing that came before mattered.