My formulation for libertarians is that they didn't sell out to magaism.

They didn't start wearing MAGA hats, but they did abdicate.

They didn't do what you would have expected them to do.

And that was like a huge wake-up call for me.

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

My guest today is Shika Dalmia.

Shika is the founder of the Institute for the Study of Modern authoritarianism and publishes the unpopulist with which we at Persuasion have had an editorial partnership for a while.

Shika grew up in India and in response to some of the economic stagnation and political dysfunction

in that country became an ideological libertarian, thinking about how it is that the principles

of a libertarian thought might fix her country's problems and lead to economic growth.

She came to the United States, where she became a prominent member of a libertarian movement,

writing, among other places, for a long time for reason.

But she eventually became frustrated for reasons that we talk about in this conversation

with the fact that libertarians did not

prioritize the fight against the threats to freedom and basic liberal values

posed by Donald Trump and authoritarian populists more broadly.

So in this conversation, we talked about how she became a libertarian, the extent to which

libertarian principles can help make the world a better place, and how libertarians and Hermann

failed to pass the Trump test. In the bonus material for this week's conversation, we also talked

about the slightly different approaches we take in our publications.

I come from the left and worry very much about the rise of right-wing populism,

but have also been putting some focus on criticizing the bad ideas on the left,

...