"Do you know anybody living who expressly consents to the existence of the government and consents to what it does?" asks Judge Andrew Napolitano, senior judicial analyst for Fox News, syndicated columnist, and author of, most recently, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Assault on Civil Liberties. "Your rights, my rights, are integral to our humanity. The government can't take them away by majority vote!"
Reason's Nick Gillespie caught up with the judge at this year's FreedomFest, the annual gathering of libertarians in Las Vegas, to discuss how his traditional Catholicism intersects with his libertarian politics, why electing Trump or Clinton will likely lead to the "demise of the Constitution as we understand it," why he thinks Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson won't win in November, his commitment to open borders, and the philosophical underpinnings to his pro-life stance on abortion.



"My opposition to abortion is not only because of Church teaching, but also because of a rational examination of the baby growing in the womb and a belief in the non-aggression principle," Napolitano explains. "The non-aggression principle prevents you from interfering with the life or the property of another human being without moral justification. There is no moral justification for killing a child in the womb!"

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This is a rush transcript. Check any quotations against the actual recording.
NICK GILLESPIE: I'm Nick Gillespie with Reason TV. Today, we're talking with Judge Andrew Napolitano. He is with Fox News. He's the senior judicial analyst and the author of many books, and a great friend to freedom and to Reason. Thanks for talking with us.
NAPOLITANO: Pleasure being with you, Nick. Thank you
GILLESPIE: 2016 election. Stuff's getting real. What do you see as the major stakes in this game? There's Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as the major party candidates. Are either of them acceptable as President of the United States?
NAPOLITANO: A complex question for me working at Fox News, being aware of Mrs. Clinton's criminal behavior, having a personal financial relationship with Donald Trump. I might add the Donald Trump I know personally does not resemble the Donald Trump that you see on the campaign trail.
GILLESPIE: And what is your—what is your personal—
NAPOLITANO: I own a piece of real estate with others that he manages.
GILLESPIE: Oh, OK.
NAPOLITANO: And the people that own this with me love him because the value of it keeps going up, and he is worth what we pay his management company to, to improve it.
GILLESPIE: So let's stipulate he's a fine business man or property manager but—
NAPOLITANO: At least in this particular case, he is.
GILLESPIE: But should he be president?
NAPOLITANO: Well, the issue, as I see, it is the likely demise of constitutional government as we understand it, as we have come to understand it. It is—
GILLESPIE: And this is whether it's Clinton or Trump?
NAPOLITANO: Correct!
GILLESPIE: Yeah.
NAPOLITANO: Correct, Nick, because they each believe in their own version of big government. Neither of them recognizes the natural law of restrains on government. Neither of them recognizes the constitutional restraints on government. They each believe they can use the powers of government to build their version of big government, whether it's sort of an economic egalitarianism that Donald Trump preaches, or whether it's a Bernie Sanders, redistribution of wealth which Hillary now embraces.