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What Jennifer Burns thinks about politics

@jennifer-burns · 20 positions · 0 changes of mind

Historian of ideas at Stanford University and the Hoover Institution, and the biographer of both Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand.

Jennifer Burns did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

3 dated positions, 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what Jennifer Burns has said — not written or endorsed by them.

3 positions so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

  1. Our readingFriedman's universal minimum income went nowhere precisely because it was pure and free of moral judgment, which made it beautiful and politically impossible.

    Their wordsAnd Friedman advanced a policy that was really abstract and really it was devoid of judgment. It was pure and beautiful in that way but utterly impractical.

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 10th of 20 in this recording

  3. Our readingPolitics now runs mood first and ideas second, the reverse of how argument worked for most of the twentieth century.

    Their wordsIt seems we're driven much more quickly by moods rather than thought-through ideas. Right now, it seems the ideas they follow the political mood and try to put together the underpinning of it where it really was the opposite for much of the 20th century.

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 12th of 20 in this recording

  5. Our readingPopular postmodernism has turned into the opposite of what it began as, re-inscribing the binaries it set out to dissolve as oppressor and oppressed.

    Their wordsPostmodernism started about disrupting binaries. We're going to be fluid. We're going to go beyond the border. We're going to disrupt the binary. And it's devolved in its popular forms to the re-inscribing of many different binaries. Oppressor and oppressed has become this paradigmatic set of glasses you put on to understand the world.

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 19th of 20 in this recording