Isonomia Quarterly is a public affairs journal dedicated to two big ideas that Friedrich Hayek insisted were essential to liberal political economy but that have long been swept under the classical liberal rug: equality under the law and global federalism. In place of these two essential ideas have arisen buzzwords — growth, progress, open borders, emergent orders – in the hope that liberal political economy will once again become popular in the public sphere.
Yet buzzwords are no substitution for good ideas. More worryingly, a focus on buzzwords suggests a lack of focus on the fundamentals, and a lack of focus on the fundamentals has historically spelled doom for liberalism’s prospects as a public’s default cultural mode.
So, equality under the law and global federalism. These two ideas are going to be confronted and digested under four rubrics essential to who we are as humans: order, technology, faith, and security.
A final rubric, yarn, is dedicated to short stories and memoirs, because stories — shared at the fire pit of hunting camps and at feasts on Thanksgiving Day or Eid al-Fitr – are also essential to who we are.
